> If you're in a creative industry - and I consider software a creative industry - giving away your creations for a wage is psychically harmful. If you're genuinely creating something of value, you want to own some fraction of its value - its revenue-generating value, its future cash flow.

If you work as a freelancer or partner in a small agency that does software development for non-technical clients, then keeping ownership and reselling your work is often possible. You can negotiate to sell the client a non-exclusive license.

But it's not realistically possible for an individual contributor at a medium to large tech company. There are too many people involved with each project or product, and no part of it is individually useful. You can't resell a git patch that fixes a bug in an existing codebase.