Just checked his wiki page. I always thought his would be a more humble story than most Indian IT titans since he went to Manipal rather than one of the IITs, but turns out his dad was an IAS officer. Interesting tidbit.
That's like saying, having an IAS father makes no impact for someone wanting to be a top doctor in the US.
In reality having an IAS dad means having access to tuitions, mentoring, ability to afford a whole lot of other things like say education in a foreign university etc etc.
Most kids don't have access to this because they have to work immediately after they finish their education in India, or worse have to work through their education. There is no one back home providing financial support to your family. There is also pressure to send money back home, or handle other responsibilities(eg. Marrying off a sister). Each of these things gradually drive to last straw on the Camel's back for a lot of people.
There is only that much you can do in life when you have n things demanding your attention, and resources all at the time when you should be focusing on working on that career.
That said, we are also making this huge presumption that since his dad is an IAS, he must have have shitload of money for US tuitions and rest. This isn't possible with normal salary, unless of course he is corrupted, and I find it distasteful to deduce something like that about someone specific. It is one thing to say most IAS are not honest, and it's another thing to insinuate that this particular IAS isn't honest.
We all try to make best of whatever situation we are in, and most of us (at-least I most likely) wouldn't achieve what he did even with 100x resources (lack of hard work, motivation, making excuses to ourselves). Let's not undermine that by saying "there is only that much you can do in life when you have n things demanding your attention".
Satya has two advanced degrees from US Institutions and has worked at Microsoft for over 27 years. I think his father has had very little to do with his current stature.
As an aside, salary is just about the worst way to evaluate power and privilege of government officials. By that metric, an AVP at Google is more privileged than the President of the United States.
Heck bribes itself can set your 7 generations for a life time of nobility.
There is a reason why people waste years behind cracking these exams.
If you're not, you are still a big deal, on a different scale.
The gov of India has a cadre or trained bureaucrats, who are selected after passing a rigorous exam. Its a check on your real world thinking skills in many ways.
The exam is hard, and people spend years to ensure they get through.
The people who pass are sent to the foreign services, admin services, and police services.
IAS officers have over the years earned a rep for being capable bureaucrats (modulo the level of noise coming from a massive developing World population dealing with issues ranging from poverty to corruption).
These are the people who run municipalities for what would be high populations cities in the west, secretaries to ministers and so on.
They don’t have money, but they are the nerves and ligaments of state machinery.