At least these people (who are certainly being exploited, often in ways that violate labor laws) are getting some real work experience while they're at it.
Ok: one is fun, ~100h spread out over any period you want (e.g. a year: 2h per weekend), completely 100% beholden only to yourself, no strings attached. The other... well, I’ve never worked there, but I’ll quote someone who seems to know: “certainly being exploited, often in ways that violate labor laws.”
Are you honestly comparing what people are describing here to side projects? honestly: what side project have you ever worked on that treated you that way?
Of course more generally the exploitation of open source work by commercial entities is also ignored in this context, which is also amusing. The number of side-projects that are used for free by commercial entities profiting off them dwarfs the number used to generate income by consulting or as a business. But that's just fine because "open source."
It's this same late stage capitalism BS where some people are successful doing X, where X also involved working obscene hours, not planning things out the way they would have to in a large company, and doing other things that are either "trailblazing" or "cutting corners" depending on your perspective. And they get lucky and make a ton of cash.
And so a ton of other people try and follow this path, but the only lessosn they seemed to learn was "working long hours is awesome" and "you don't need to pay people fair wages, just let passion (and/or stock options) motivate them". And people who would have made a decent living 20 years ago doing something boring are conned into it because it seems like the only path left for them.
I am fine with you cracking up over 'normal programmers' like me vs would-be video game developers I get in at 8:45 and leave at 17:10, I go swimming with my baby daughter once a week from 9:00 to 10:00 and I work from home 2 days a week without a single minute in overtime.
If you are out there doing 80-100 hour workweeks (as described in the article) you are an idiot. I get it when there are no jobs in your industry and too many candidates (psychology here in the Netherlands), but if you can program for games you can program applications with minimal self-training and start working normal hours and working on your life. So if you can program and you choose to work like described in the article you are an idiot.