It's very true that there are things at the office which are outside your control and which can hold you back. The same is true in entrepreneurialism, however, and if you have any amount of success, things like office politics and nepotism will likely come to exist in your own venture as well. The world is vast, and wherever you go, things will happen that you aren't prepared to handle and that can feel unfair.

In both cases — working for yourself, or working for someone else — how well you do is a combination of your own talent and luck. How big a factor each separately plays is hard to say, but since all you can control is your own efforts, I believe those should be your focus no matter what you do.

I went through several careers before I found one that was stable, rewarding, and in which I felt valued for my own contributions. To those who work hard but feel the deck is stacked against them, whether in entrepreneurship or in life, all you can do is roll the dice another time. The hardship of life is that sometimes you get "stuck," even when you did everything right; the beauty of life is that you can try again.