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Comment by xboxnolifes | Hacker News Reader

One way I see it is: The software field is too lucrative of a day job for the majority of people to be motivated to work toward having a paying side project. The side project is going to be a hobby that maybe pays some small amount of money. Or the side project becomes a business. Or no side project at all.

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I’ve had approximately 52,000 side projects which have generated roughly $500 in total over 20 years. I could start posting for each of those projects to give a more accurate distribution ;)

The hyperbole in your statement is not obvious.

The median dev income in the US is about $110k. I'd hardly call that "too lucrative".

I make under $100k. Before getting married and having a kid I setup an LLC for my honey business and worked about 16-20hrs a week at Lowes. The honey business makes a couple hundred a year (plus honey for us), and $750/month from Lowes doesn't help too much. But many side projects don't make that much either.

> The median dev income in the US is about $110k. I'd hardly call that "too lucrative".

Outside of a select few excessively expensive areas, $110k a year makes for a great lifestyle. We're talking nearly 2.5-3x the median salary of an American worker here. I don't know if the deviation follows, but how is a 2-3x higher median not lucrative?

Yeah, it is about 3x. I don't see it as a great lifestyle in most places. For example, I'm in the Philly area. It's pretty average, probably even slightly above, for cost of living. $110k just barely supports a family with a chance at retirement. Cheap cars, average to small house, 50 minute commute for cheaper area, etc.

Now that can be different if living in a rural area, but the costs in just about any city suburbs will provide a decent lifestyle, but not great.

After all, I was incentivized to work a low paying job for extra income.

A median here is over the entire country. If you are being paid a median (national) salary, but live/work in a more expensive (national) area, you are likely not being paid median relative to your area. You are likely being paid below median. But you are still likely being paid more than other industries in the same area.

> $110k just barely supports a family with a chance at retirement.

This may or may not be true, but I was talking about individual earners here, and median household income averages >1 earner per household. In this example, a 110k household income is less than double the national median household income, so it will definitely feel less lucrative when raising a family.

That depends. You can't just look at the area, but also your job type. There are tons of factors. I know that many pharma people in my area make more than me. I know high school teachers that make about the same as me. There are tons of people that make more than I do. This argument about median is really a tangent, but the point was that $110k per year is not excessive.

The conversation was that software development is "too lucrative" to incentivize people to work on side projects. In my experience, that's simply not true.

I think the point is that it's enough for people to feel comfortable and not think that they need another income source. I've known many software developers and some who had side projects. I only know of one other person besides myself who made money from any of them.

I feel comfortable saying that most developers don't have side projects and of the small minority that do, an even smaller minority make any money at it.

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