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by Evbn 4996 days ago
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.

2 comments

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?

"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?

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.