What first drew me to programming was the novelty of creating something out of nothing. The idea that I could write a few lines of code and have it turn into a website as simply as you would stack legos as a kid. It felt like play.
But as I grew into my profession, I realized that the code is not the hard part. The hard part is deciding what to build, how to sell it, and who to market it to. The difficult part is building the business, not the programming.
To stay employed solely as a programmer, taking a salary dictated by office politics, an arbitrary title, or location is to trade your potential for a small slice of certainty. It’s a promise of safety without the possibility of non-linear outcomes — work that ends when you stop working.
The real gift of software is leverage. Code is a modern daemon, quietly compounding your effort without fatigue or complaint. It scales beyond your time and energy. You can build it once, and it can serve millions while you sleep. That’s where the real power of programming lies.
The problem with a traditional job is simple: it doesn’t scale. Your income is limited to the time you have available. Your hours become your ceiling. Without ownership, without equity, you are simply renting out your most limited resource.
Worse still, you could code features at work that generate millions, but the spoils aren’t yours. The incentive is to do just enough to meet expectations, but not to exceed them. Why give your best when the upside belongs to someone else?
The real shift happens when you realize that leverage is no longer reserved for the elite. In the past, you needed capital, connections, or factories. Today, you only need a laptop and an internet connection. Code is permissionless leverage. No one needs to give you authority. You can simply build.
The toughest obstacle isn’t learning to code, it’s having the courage to use it for yourself. Most will choose the familiar path: salaries, titles, healthcare, “unlimited” PTO, and praise from bosses who own the real upside. But the few who step off that path and build for themselves unlock the possibility of asymmetric upside. They stop renting out time and start building equity in something that’s entirely theirs.
If you can code, you already hold the keys. The ability to create, automate, and scale is sitting in your hands. No one is stopping you. The only thing left is to act: to place the bet, to take the risk, to build something of your own.
Bet on yourself.