[patio11]

Amy certainly has a bit of hustle to her, but it should't be an imposing amount of it. She'd tell you that she doesn't even work 40 hours a week, partly out of lack of desire to and partly for medical reasons.

I'm amazed by the "work equals money ergo lots of money equals lots of work" mental script. Do I have any credibility on this topic? I've said this for six years: you can make substantial amounts of money on product businesses without it being a life-consuming obsession. BCC is going to hit $10k this month and I will barely touch it. Life very much not sacrificed.

Also, psychologically, there's a bit of a defense mechanism there, right? Amy has a situation many people would like. I think, candidly, you'd not decline it if it were offered to you. But you don't have it. So rather than saying "Hmm, maybe I should take the actions that would predictably achieve that" you simultaneously say "I can't do that! She's 'Internet famous'!" (i.e. a technologist quite similar to you, from a background of no special distinction, who a few years ago started writing things that people enjoyed and just kept doing that) and "I could do that but I don't really want to make $30k a month writing software people genuinely love, no siree, that holds totally no appeal."

[Evbn]

Your last two sentences got interesting. Amy may be a great programmer with a great product, but her income was predicated from writing copy and marketing for that product (and I further note that some people, like the Rich Dad guy, skip the product stuff and just write copy to sell fluff).

Maybe I could make a product like freckle, but as you famously constantly argue, I don't make money writing software, the money comes from selling it, and all "selling" entails.

[adrianhoward]

Maybe I could make a product like freckle, but as you famously constantly argue, I don't make money writing software, the money comes from selling it, and all "selling" entails.

From my perspective what selling entails is finding people who have the pain/need that your product alleviates/ fulfil - and letting them know that your product does that.

This is a bad thing? We should expect products to succeed without doing that?

[ahoyhere]

"Amy may be a great programmer with a great product, but her income was predicated from writing copy and marketing for that product "

vs

"Amy may be a great programmer with a great skillet, but her income was predicated on creating a resume, going to a job interview, getting hired, and actually showing up at the office and doing the work her employer desired"

What's the difference here? The first paragraph is some kind of evidence of moral inadequacy, but the second, totally fine, normal, laudable?

Add "had a fantastic GitHub profile and contributed to OSS" and… don't these two sound exactly alike?

[infinite8s]

I think the problem is that the people who are attacking the original post would like to make lots of money with only programming skills. Unfortunately, as patio11 and others constantly repeat here, most people don't value code, they value results that solve a business problem, and this requires the ability to sell those results.