Why some people will never be 'successful'

When you're in school, people teach you that you can achieve anything you want if you try hard enough. It's complete bullshit. Once you get out of academia, you learn that simple hard work and studying don't secure the rewards that school did. School is a safe, supportive and nurturing environment, not at all a microcosm of the real world. You better have other skills too - people skills, sales, networking, stubborness and moral blinders, to name a few.

Here's a good article by Kelly Pate Dwyer on how to field around office politics. But what if you don't want to deal with office politics? Well, you can minimize your chances of encountering those really nasty people by a)staying in a small firm b)avoiding sales and management positions or c)starting your own company. Unfortunately, it doing so, you usually limit your earning capacity.