>> Getting a benefit from building a network is not lottery odds. It's certainly benefitted my career multiple times.

I have never been one to deliberately "build my network" and even I have had several beneficial things come about via my network.

I find a lot of people conflate building and maintaining relationships with people with going to "networking" events and other artificial faux network building.

I've also never thought of myself as deliberately building a network but the (few) jobs I've landed over the past 25 years have been directly through people I knew.