What I suspect is that it’s a case of “all of the above”. Yes, gates got lucky, but he was also talented, and he worked hard. To be an outlier you have to defy the odds, and luck, talent and grit are different ways of defying.
There are plenty of examples, even in this thread. Nobody is saying PG and other various influencers didn't work hard - but the virtue signaling of scale is usually way off. "We worked 100 hours a week at hour desks to launch ___", when in reality they "worked" maybe a half of that, extremely hard, and spent the remaining half thinking about work and/or stressing and/or recovering. If everyone was able to count "Thinking or stressing about work" as "work", I don't think this would be a problem, but people usually omit those parts.
People lie all the time and in the direction that can make them virtuous and a bit contrarian. How come that they all love their wife and family is important thing they have (although work is important along with their sacred responsibility of producing jobs and wealth) and then we find out they either treat their partners as inferiors in the relationship, have affairs, have been living in separate houses for years if not decades? To me it is all fine since except in case of abuse, people can all choose how to live our life as they please. But isn't all of that taking advantage of credulous people, like entrepreneurial wannabes when the gospel is not "love your kids", but "work hard"?
Looking back I worked quite hard, as I see it, or very hard, as others might see it, at various stages of my life, but I would not write a propagandistic essay about "working hard". And you know why? Because I see life as full of ambiguities, because I have nothing to sell and I have not a public persona that I am trying to build, defend or that I use to generate views.
When I hear or read "work hard", "hard work", "work ethic", "never give up" and similar memorabilia, I immediately judge the speaker and writer negatively. Maybe it is just me, but I don't like to be sold personas.
It shows a broken system and should not be celebrated, if for no other reason than the opportunity cost of elevating such a small percentage of humanity to such wealthy heights while letting 1/3 of humanity live crippled lives with no access to clean water.