Mike, Bubbles, Bunny, Omar, Hauk, etc are not employees or get out and they win or at least get out to live their own lives as they want.
Independent Entrepreneurship is the only way out. It may not work, but you have a chance,
Entrepreneurs are systematic slaves too - that is one point of The Wire.
Everyone is embedded in a society, a system, and our choices take us down paths that control the rulesets that apply to us. You can escape certain rules, but you get other rules in exchange (in my experience).
Wage slaves usually work harder to survive. You could go out and live in a van and not hustle at all.
Not all survive, and those that do do not particularly thrive.
The article that OP posted, for example, is a shallow application of the Wire's insight onto software engineering. The solution it recommend is to try to be more aware about gaming metrics, which is as useful in the long run as the phrase "don't be evil". It's telling that most of the comments here don't invoke the article and instead are talking about their own interpretations of the Wire.
These are not successful lives.