You perhaps miss the point of 'then start your own thing'. It is not meant as a realistic suggestion of where to take your career. It is meant to point out that

You perhaps miss the point of 'then start your own thing'. It is not meant as a realistic suggestion of where to take your career. It is meant to point out that the employer/employee relationship is one-directional for relative profit because it's the other direction in relative stability and investment. You are correct in your analysis that developers don't have access to the kind of capital necessary to start a company. That's the point - you can't predicate an argument on 'the actual workers only get a small fraction' when minus a stable job you would only be able to output a small fraction. Plus the development abstraction layer influences public perception as much as it does developer perception. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/04/11/the-development-abstraction-layer-2/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/04/11/the-development-ab...