"either you make it, or your hard earned skills are useless on the job market"

I think uncommon focus, discipline, physical and mental dexterity along with the ability to perform under pressure are being undervalued here.

I've been out of work for close to 6 months now, actively searching, interviewing every week, and finding that what the job market seems to value is that you have done the exact same thing as what they are hiring for.

I've discovered breakthrough algos and delivered solutions which personalize medical care, sometimes with life and death outcomes.

Yet somehow that doesn't count when the company wants someone who has done personalization for consumer products.

I have other examples from other common DS roles/tasks, where I have done the equivalent thing to that role in a different context. And somehow that never seems to count.

So no, I don't have strong evidence that the job market values generic skills. Perhaps your experience has been different?

I can also hear someone saying "with the attitude that the poster is taking, I'm not surprised"-- so let me point out how difficult it is to extract attitude from text, and that the context here (presenting evidence to refute a claim) is very different from an interview context.

It'd seem to me that a society that values art would find a way to keep artists secure economically while letting as many people as possible enjoy their work. I tend to think of piracy as a scapegoat for the draining of the working and middle class's purchasing power. Napster and Spotify came along as people were beginning to find it prohibitively expensive to drop $20 on an album. People would pay if they could (some do, if vinyl sales are anything to go by).

For. The. Love. Of. The. Game.

Your skills are cause you wanted to do it, not because you wanted to be famous. That's the by-product.