There might be a selection bias - off all the people who take that roundabout route; few achieve Jobs’ level of success. We never hear about them.
I just mean it's interesting how there don't seem to be more young people trying to emulate his particular route. Many claim they want to be "the next Steve Jobs" or achieve the same level of success, but then just go the same route as every other ambitious person.
Ambition and independent thinking are pretty much orthogonal. Cultivating boatloads of both is rare, but can allow for great moonshots.
Success is something else, not about fame, not necessarily public.
> Job's level of success. We never hear about them.
Success != hearing about it.
You don't hear or know about most people success, or failure, for that matter; even huge ones. You know about a very small subset of these. That's fame.
And I'm just not sure that "being a found of a billion+ dollar company" was what Jobs considered his own success; but a consequence or aside part of it. Actually, no one knows but him.
You do hear about people making it big and creating profitable companies (one possible definition of "success")... But how many of these founders nowadays are hippie-like figures with a multidisciplinary education? Not that many, if any.
That was precisely my point in my initial response.