Good grades, got a job I thought was good at the time, great grades in a masters program (expanded network outside the company), became an expert at my company, filled a role on the team 1-2 levels above mine. Then got denied promotions based on political games and contrary to policy, more ignored policy to my detriment, even worked a second job for a while, outsourced my team, forced to switch to even less known tech, etc etc. Got AWS and financial certs, filled a role above my grade (again), more politics, more violation of policy to my detriment, etc etc. No other good job options in this area, wife won't relocate, multiple family health issues in the past year and family commitments (ie my wife walks all over me now that we have a kid) that prevent me from throwing in extra hours, not that I feel much reason to based on past treatment when I used to do that.

Budget has always been very frugal. I make my own cheap beer/wine, make soap, grow food in a garden, almost never take vacations (honeymoon was the only expensive one), cook 99% of the time at home, etc.

You can't trust companies to keep their word. Working hard gets you no where. The greedy people at the top are the ones who get everything and will screw you over constantly. And I'm not even talking about success in terms of $200k+ salary and fancy titles like CTO etc. I'm just talking about success as making it to the natural progression of senior dev and techlead with a salary over $100k.

But I must be a loser who didn't work hard since other people made it.