Millions of people are in this situation, most of them not outstanding programmers.
But for an anecdote, Fabrice Bellard, one of the best known outstanding programmers (see for yourself here https://bellard.org/ ) is a graduate from Ecole Polytechnique, one of the best (if not the best) engineering school in France. It is a military school, and it starts with 3 weeks of soldier-style training. It is also state sponsored and students are paid, not the other around, and in counterpart, graduates are due for 10 years of work for the state, usually as a high ranking civil servant, though you can "escape" this by paying.
I guess my point is we don't have millions of outstanding programmers for this reason.
That Ecole school does not look as bad. What I am referring to common practice of working for virtually free in government assigned contracts that you can't even quit for 3 years, this is happening South Korea and CIS countries. And those places are far from elite French schools.
Lots of people so dragged down by bad work and government they can't fully flourish into Outstanding Programmers and make good projects.
That being said, there is something those individuals still can do, albeit little and low chances, to improve their odds and just have, like, physical time to survive and make some good stuff.
Russian joined Anti-Communist White Army during Russian Revolution at WWI, fought for two years, got wounded, escaped to Turkey, got into USA, become professor of chemistry at Harvard, become important member of team that built atomic bomb in WWII. Was leading USA mission to Soviet for military scientific exchange as asked by Roosevelt. When first atomic bomb went off, he was not in bunker, but outside for “better view”. After WWII served scientific adviser to USA president.
Some Russian guy out of nowhere in Tundra, in cold trip got told a story of a beautiful place, weather is always nice, and lots of opportunity — San Francisco. So he decided to move there. He made it to Shanghai. Then moved to San Francisco in 1927 and made company and equipment for audio recordings AMPEX in 1944 — his initials plus “x” for “excellence”. This company later created VR-1000 video-tape recorder.
not having unpaid oncall forcing you to wake up 3 times on Friday night for years
having enough savings and legal residence status to be able to take risks
not working for compulsory military substitution without option to quit for years
not having your government to kidnap males in broad daylight to be sent to die in trenches at war