^ Same. The last time I was out of work my wife was asking why I wasn't pounding the pavement sending out tons of cover letters and resumes and the like. I told her that in the 21 years I've been working, I've not gotten a single job via that route. It's always been networking. At some point about 10-15 years ago I just stopped even bothering with a resume at all. If I can't get in front of a decision maker, I don't consider it a viable opportunity. In contrast, About 75% of the time I've been able to speak directly to a department head, manager, or C-suite executive I've been hired on the back of a 30-45 minute conversation. I'll take a 3 out of 4 hit rate on a pair of conversations over sending out dozens of customized cover letters and resumes any day of the week.

What kind of companies are they? Small companies with less than 100 people?

I've never seen any medium-large company where any single person was able to take a decision. Large companies cut all hiring power from their middle managers, forcing to interview with a whole panel, this prevents manager from favoring friends and building a fiefdom.

Indeed, small companies. I don't have the right pedigree to make it through hiring hurdles at big companies. Despite industry name recognition and 11 years of experience I get filtered out because I never went to college. HR / People Ops / Recruiters tend to not know enough about the technical roles they are hiring for to gauge skill, so they go the lazy route and use college degrees or BigCo work history as a proxy. If you don't have a degree you can't get BigCo, so you fail on both fronts. Department heads and small company founders can tell if you know your stuff or not with a simple conversation. So that's what I've optimized for when looking for work. Routes to those people and around normal hiring filters.

You did not answer the question which was not if there ever was any case at all, but how many. An individual example is useless when the question is about if something works at (even minor) scale.

nobody is claiming that my experience is extrapolatable ad infinitum. However, if it was such a rare thing, what are the odds that someone like me would exist?

> An individual example is useless when the question is about if something works at (even minor) scale

That is incorrect. The plural of anecdote is data.

> However, if it was such a rare thing, what are the odds that someone like me would exist?

Someone wins the lottery every week. What are the odds of winning the lottery? Is playing the lottery a good strategy to make money?

Did you not see the "n=5" bit?

Do you understand the concept of correlation?

"Usain bolt won the olypmic gold medal many times (n=8).

If winning the gold medal was so rare, what are the odds that people like Usain Bolt exist?"

It's the rare thing. I bet that if you go to any big tech companies, you will find that pretty much none of the engineers got hired by impressing a CEO

Not all CEOs are CEOs of big companies. I went to a middle class high school in the US and no less than 5 of the students in my class of 70 are or have been CEOs.