Are there rich programmers? [closed]

Question

Largely subjective, but do you think there are any programmers who get rich doing just that: programming? It is a career, but an advancing career?

Sure there are a few folks who make it big, but the % of full financial success programming I would venture is low. Is this a field of work for simply the love of it?

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Update: I should have specified further that yes indeed numerous named persons have become financially wealthy from some of their programming endeavors. I do not believe however that the rate of equal financial success is equal to that of--say--stock brokers (despite the last few years)

Answer 1

Programming is no different from any other profession in this regard, really. You certainly can become 'well off' or 'comfortable' working as an employee. But to really become wealthy you need some level of ownership over your work - either as an entrepreneur, a partner in a business, etc.

Answer 2

I have a wife and two kids, still healthy. My parents are both alive. I have a place to live and some great friends. Or do you mean the monetary variant?

Answer 3

Most people seem to be missing the most important point:

Monetary gain is proportional to risk, not effort.

Unlike what the designers of World of Warcraft would have you believe, you cannot become a billionaire simply by doing mindless repetitive tasks. Even if you're one of the top experts in your field, getting paid a $500k salary, that's still not going to make you genuinely "rich."

To become extremely financially wealthy, people have to take extreme financial risks. They have to invest in something, whether that be stocks, real estate, or their own business.

There's one loophole in programming, and that's to create some piece of software that's so sought-after that a major company like Yahoo or Google buys it from you (think YouTube). That takes very little risk (unless you count your personal time as an investment), but it also imposes a hard limit on the potential reward. These monoliths don't pay you royalties, they either buy it outright for an amount that's riches to you but chump change to them, or they make their own and put you out of business.

Problem is, there are so many people trying to access that loophole today that you have to have a really brilliant idea, otherwise chances are it's already been done (better).

Lots of programmers seem to be investing in the stock market these days, and the ones who are good at it probably get rich. And of course, you have a dozen examples here of programmers who started their own businesses; they get rich too. I can also point to many programmers and engineers who do expensive consulting and make quite a pile doing that - but in order to get there, they also had to take significant risks, quitting their full-time jobs and working for peanuts to establish reputations.

The common thread is that programmers do get rich, but not just from programming and sweating for the Man. Like any other profession, in order to really hit it big, they have to put their money and their credibility on the line.

Answer 4

Chris Sawyer, who created the original Roller Coaster Tycoon game, received $30 million in royalties from the game, and in 2005 was suing Atari for an additional $4.8 million according to this article. (He must have burned through the first 30 mil and needed some more spending money.)

Sawyer wrote RCT almost entirely in 80x86 assembly language, quite unusual for a game of such complexity.

Answer 5

John D. Carmack is a good example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Carmack

A game developer too

I mention him because he is very rich and still code intensively in his company.

Answer 6

Generally, you won't get rich of of spinning a propeller hat all day. Money comes from business, you need to do business. You can write software that fills a business/market need (like everyone at Y-Combinator), or you can dig yourself deep into a large organization like a bank and be the only person who knows how the COBOL running things works because you were one of the few people who wrote it 20 years ago, then you're just asking for a raise every year or something to sit around, but you'll hardly be stinking rich from that.

Money comes from business, not code.

Answer 7

I wouldn't say so much rich as well off. Good programmers are not a dime a dozen.

Answer 8

The only way to get "rich" in programming is to apply some aspect of business, e.g. entrepreneurship. Plenty of programmers advance into higher level positions, often involving some kind of leadership or management. It's not a track to being rich but it can you can live very comfortably, especially with a good bit of savings and investment.

Edit: See Aaronaught's answer for a much more in depth explanation of the essence I was trying to get at.

Answer 9

You wouldn't really say someone made millions being a 'carpenter' because they bought a huge section of land and hired a bunch of people to help them build houses and sold them at the height of the real estate bubble.

I think if you only consider the value of the contribution of the writing of code, my answer would be very few. Usually, you have to have some type of leverage where there are other's who are doing the marketting, supporting, selling, and managing a team of developers to get an app to the level of making millions. If you made a million dollars and writing software is half of what you contributed, you don't qualify.

Not sure there are any.

Answer 10

Yes. Some programmers have made themselves millionaires, mainly by writing a very useful piece of tech and getting themselves bought out.

Answer 11

In addition to the above answers, I've read that the guys building the stock trading software for some of the major investment houses are pulling in nice change.

Answer 12

If you are looking to get rich, try some other profession, especially sales position. I'm sure with your heavy power intellect you can earn more money from sales compare to if you stick in programming.

Programming as a profession is not going to optimize your monetary gain. Trust me. Unless you are going to become a boss or start a startup or something. But by then you are making money because of your business skill, not your programming skill.

Answer 13

Larry Ellison, of Oracle, one of the richest men in the world, in view of personal wealth; activelly programmed at the beginning of his career.

Answer 14

I think how much you will be rich is depended on what level of your developing skill ... and, of course, is related much more condition

Answer 15

The guy who writes Minecraft is going to be rich (as in he's already made about a million dollars from something he does in his spare time.) The group of young gentlemen who wrote Fieldrunners for the iPhone have pulled down several million dollars.

Find a niche, something new that hasn't been done, and fill it... If you build it, they will pay.

As an employee, though, there's really no chance of becoming rich doing much of anything (except professional sports.)

Answer 16

Paul Graham and lots of others

Answer 17

I do not believe however that the rate of equal financial success is equal to that of--say--stock brokers (despite the last few years)

This belief may mean you have may have a problem with selection bias. You probably aren't interacting with brokers, lawyers, and bankers much, so you only know about the ones that are in the news. Stock brokers, bankers, lawyers, and entrepreneurs don't get in the news when they are middle class, and are only in the news briefly when they go broke. Therefore you get the impression they are all rich, when in fact only a very small fraction get to be rich.

In the United States at least, census data indicates that the median income of software engineers is higher then the income of 80% of the population. It is less then that of doctors and lawyers, but on a par or higher then most other engineering careers. See for example the May 2009 National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates

As far as other programmers actually becoming rich, it is rare (just as it is for other fields), but thousands of programmers at Microsoft and Google became millionaires during the last three decades. It's mostly likely to happen when a major shift in technology it taking place.

Answer 18

From this BBC article about salaries in the UK we can see that in the middle of 2009 earning £118027 will put you in the top 1% of UK earners (excluding self-employed, which the update to the question indicates should be excluded anyway). I think that would qualify as "rich".

Now, looking at my favourite UK job stats site IT JobsWatch we can see that there were at least 50 permanent positions where the average salary for that sort of position is that much. If we include jobs which weren't advertised through the sources where they gather their stats from, jobs with a significant bonus culture and contract positions then the number will be higher again. OK, so most of those are management - but take a look at the salary histogram for something like C# and again you'll see that there have been jobs offered in that very high salary range.

So, I think the answer is, yes, there are rich programmers - but as in most professions the number is a small percentage of the total.

Answer 19

I think the most crucial thing about about programming is that you can get a good salary off of a BS from a state school, at the age of 21. That means you can start saving 20-25% of your income from a very young age. This is how you get rich, and retire at 50 (after saving for 30 years).

Answer 20

Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz from Facebook are another example of people getting rich as programmers.

Answer 21

Robert Woodhead and Charles H. Ferguson are interesting because they used the money they made writing software to invest in other successful businesses. Robert Woodhead is the author of Wizardry, and he used the royalties to start a company called Animeigo. Charles H. Ferguson started a film production company, and its launch product was the documentary called No End In Sight.