Engineering video
0:51 · 27 July 2025
The speaker argues that earning a developer salary from solo projects takes substantial work. Large companies benefit from specialized teams and economies of scale: small features delivered to a large user base can create substantial value.
Hear it at 0:00 →the financial reality of a solo developer is very far away from, you know, having branches and and surfing and then working four hours a week. Because most projects don't make any money. Keep in mind that the salary before taxes of a US based mid-level developer, it's already at around 10k, maybe 11. So it would take you a lot of work just to replicate the income you get from a mid-level developer job.
And and the main economic reason for this is that big companies who have specialized people for different functions, are able to take advantage of economies of scale. So if you're a developer working for a big software company, the little feature that you built and it took you a few hours, this will be rolled out to hundreds of users and the company it's able with small changes to deliver immense amounts of value because of economies of scale.
