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.
As I gained more experience writing code professionally, I realized that the only thing preventing me from earning more money was my ability to think of my own SaaS product, market it, and manage the business. Coding is the easy part. To have stayed on that path and accepted a salary determined by an arbitrary job title, slimy office politics, and IP address geolocation would have been to spurn greater ambitions for the “safer” path.
The ability to code is liberating because the software you write is a manifestation of your will that can be automated and scaled. It is the force multiplier that allows you to amplify your impact in the world. Code is leverage that allows you build something once and have it work for you in perpetuity.
The biggest limitation of a full-time job in which you essentially trade your time for money is that it does not scale. Unless you have sizeable equity in the company, your ability to earn is simply limited by the number of hours in a day.
If you can code and you believe in yourself, then take a damn risk.
Bet on yourself.