I disagree with the article, or at least, I think it's overly simplistic. As a contracting developer I earn very well and I'm pretty sure most of my freinds would call me rich. I certainly earn more money than just about all my freinds by a factor of 3 to 4 times. I think that's probably pretty common in this industry.

It would be easy for me to sit here and smugly pat myself on the back and tell myself it's all down to my hard work. I decided to do a degree to imporve my life and worked hard when I was doing it. I had a student loan but didn't get any support from my parents (well, not much anyway - I got money for birthdays and christmas) so I can surely say I stood on my own two feet. I've worked hard in all the jobs I've had since and have generally impressed my way up the greasy ladder. I was brave and fearless when I decided to give up my permanent position and risk the potential unemployment of the contracting lifestyle. I've always got my on on the way technology's progressing and I frequently self train on a new tech. Yep, I can safely puff my chest out and portray myself as a paragon of hard working success.

Except that when I read the above I'm forced to admit that it doesn't actually describe me at all. Actually, my life has been a sequence happy co-incidences and snap decisions that just happened to turn out right for me despite my own self destructive tendancies. I did that degree because I'd been sacked under "dubious circumstances" from my previous job (don't ask, I was young and they assured me it would all be in good taste) and couldn't get a reference. I figured that students got more in grants than I was going to get on benefits so I might as well sign up for something. Once I was there I found I quite enjoyed programming so the hard work didn't feel like work at all. I didn't need the support of my parents because a couple of years previously I'd managed to blag free rent from a landlord if I helped him get tenants for the house I was living in and acted as a sort of "on the spot" agent for him (which was really no effort at all). I didn't really work that hard in most of the jobs I've had, I just had a nack for development and knew how to make my stuff look good. And I wasn't being brave when I decided to become contractor, I was just sick to the eye-teeth of the management politics I was increasingly finding myself embroiled in as I moved up the chain. Yes, I self train... but only on the stuff that looks fun and interesting.

Meanwhile most of my freinds have worked just as hard as me if not harder but the rewards just didn't fall right for them. They're mostly talented and intelligent people who have every bit as much right to success as I do. It's just that folks don't want to pay them as much for the things they're talented at as folks do for developers. Or they just never worked out how to monetize them, I'm not sure. In truth, the fact that I'm doing so much better than my freinds comes down to a buch of small co-incidences and three big ones:-

1. I found the think I enjoy

2. It turns out I'm pretty good at that thing

3. It turns out people are happy to pay for that thing

I can't claim credit for any of that... I just got lucky.