You're right that the solution is to move into a field that was out-of-reach to beginners. That was actually my entire purpose for going and getting a CS degree. I discovered data mining/machine learning in and figured that the crazy math required would keep it somewhat exclusive.

It didn't. Anaconda or Tensorflow + a book is all you need anymore.

I think the author is exploiting a fundamental fact of programming: smart people make hard things easy. So you're either in the top X% of smart CS people that make these awesome tools that allow everyone to do complex things, or you're on the other side competing against smart people like the author who just leverage these tools to build cool products.

It's like being in a fish tank with sharks and piranhas, no matter what side you go to, somebody's going to eat you up.