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Comment by WCSTombs | Hacker News Reader

> 6) P = "I want to make lots of money."

> Quit programming. Become a rock star, actor, or corrupt politician. The odds of getting rich in these fields, however slight, are probably better than in programming.

Well, this one is pretty debatable at best.

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The article was written right after dotcom bubble busted, I suppose.

Yeah, what would you define as "lots of money"? Here in the midwest, I'd say that >$50k/year would be making more than my entire family combined, so it seems like all software developers do make lots of money to me.

If you stay one place longer than 5 years you are lucky. Every 3-6 years you have to network well or ace the LeetCode for a bunch of strangers. All that stuff gets more tedious once you have kids and a home life.

That’s not to say that it isn’t a good career, but you could do far better with less effort in other fields.

I guess it depends what you would define as rich. If you do not come up with some new hot thing and only count your pay. Then the article is quite right. People really rarely get rich from wage.

I do have to disagree, with remote work it's very possible to be employed, earn a very high salary and simultaneously live in a low CoL area.

Now, I'm not saying you'll be a millionaire, but definitely have somewhere in the ballpark of 100k in the bank after 2-3 years.

I know quite a few developers who are in fact multi-millionaires just from doing exactly that for 10+ years. If you're netting 150k and living on 50k, that's a million in ten years not even counting growth in the market.

It is also quite easy to lose the job to offshoring countries.

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