Relating to the aside about opportunities in different countries: the comparison between potential programming career prospects between a poor American and middle class Pole feels reasonable for someone born around the same time as the OP (early ’80s I guess) but I suspect it’s since shifted in Poland’s failure.
I think the relative disadvantages of a poor American compared to their wealthier peers have increased as there’s more competition (as the degree is seen as more desirable by motivated wealthy parents) and the poor student likely won’t even have a non-phone computer at home where all their wealthier peers probably will. Possibly they could work around the competitiveness of computer science by going via some less well-trodden path (eg mathematics or physics) except that university admission isn’t by major. They may also be disadvantaged by later classism in hiring. Meanwhile a middle class Pole will have access to a computer and, provided they live sufficiently near one of the big cities, access to technical schools which can give them a head start on programming skills (and on competitive programming which is a useful skill for passing the current kind of programming interview questions). To get the kind of good outcome described in the OP, they then need to get hired somewhere like Google in Zurich (somewhat similar difficulty to in the US except the earlier stages were easier (in the sense of being more probable) for the hypothetical Pole) and progress from there (maybe impeded by initially not being at the headquarters / fewer other employment opportunities to get career advancement by changing jobs). Class will be less of a problem as the hypothetical middle class pole isn’t so different in wealth from other middle class Europeans and you get much less strong class-selection than when (e.g.) Americans are hiring Americans.
I think the relative disadvantages of a poor American compared to their wealthier peers have increased as there’s more competition (as the degree is seen as more desirable by motivated wealthy parents) and the poor student likely won’t even have a non-phone computer at home where all their wealthier peers probably will. Possibly they could work around the competitiveness of computer science by going via some less well-trodden path (eg mathematics or physics) except that university admission isn’t by major. They may also be disadvantaged by later classism in hiring. Meanwhile a middle class Pole will have access to a computer and, provided they live sufficiently near one of the big cities, access to technical schools which can give them a head start on programming skills (and on competitive programming which is a useful skill for passing the current kind of programming interview questions). To get the kind of good outcome described in the OP, they then need to get hired somewhere like Google in Zurich (somewhat similar difficulty to in the US except the earlier stages were easier (in the sense of being more probable) for the hypothetical Pole) and progress from there (maybe impeded by initially not being at the headquarters / fewer other employment opportunities to get career advancement by changing jobs). Class will be less of a problem as the hypothetical middle class pole isn’t so different in wealth from other middle class Europeans and you get much less strong class-selection than when (e.g.) Americans are hiring Americans.