Based on my experience it's more about being able to recognize an opportunity when it shows up and being good enough at your craft to take it. But no one can tell you what that chance will look like. Maybe it's a smart question to the right person during a hackathon, or maybe it's being really into graph theory and applying to a small newcomer company called Google.

For a concrete example: in his book "On writing" Stephen King details his life up until the point he hit it big with "Carrie". You could say he was lucky for the book to sell as good as it did, but that would require ignoring that he had been writing (and getting rejected!) non-stop for roughly 20 years.