wishful

Of course there is. First, there is your biology. You might simply not be intelligent enough to become a great engineer. If you set the cut-off for greatness at "published a widely influential paper" or "designed a large distributed system from ground up" this becomes even more the case. You might not have the health and the endurance to work on demanding high-end projects long enough to get really good at those kinds of projects.

Then, there are the social factors. Your other obligations, like raising children, can get in the way, though you might say they are more manageable than intelligence and health.

Growth mindset, beyond the "bloody obvious" [1] interpretation of it, is not something you can state as self-evident, and evidence to support the stronger interpretations is quite scarce.

[1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/10/i-will-never-have-the-a...