Things I learned on the way from Walmart cashier to 6-figure web developer

Before people start jumping on Mr. Rad and getting hung up on whether or not you should freelance first, work at a startup, big company, etc, I want to make a meta-comment.

Too often I see high expectations from posts like these or biographies or whatever. Like Charlie Munger recommends to study Benjamin Franklin's life, so people read Franklin's auto-biography expecting some magical key to making their life memorable.

I think the trick to biographies, and even posts like these, is to read a lot of them. Your brain is really good at processing and structuring loads of information (and more-so for what I'm guessing is a greater than average IQ crowd at HN). You will start to pull out the principles at work and focus less on the specifics. Your brain will begin to differentiate between strategies and tactics.

I think it's Tim Ferris' book / podcast that confuses me because of the minutia he seems obsessed with, like whether Marc Andreesen pees or makes coffee first in the morning (I made this example up). The more I read about successful (and even unsuccessful) people, the more I realize that this kinda stuff does not matter. It's like thinking a black turtleneck will make you like Steve Jobs. We recognize that this is ridiculous, but then people push a 100 year-old book into the best-seller list because Warren Buffett read it when he was 13 ("1000 ways to get rich" or something like that).

There are successful people who wake up at 5am, but also those who sleep until 10 and do their work at night. If you read only about the former, you might think that is the key to everything. But if you read far and wide you see its just noise.

By the way, this is also an effective way to do a deep dive on a topic of interest. Don't worry about what book is The Best, but read a lot back-to-back and think about it. Your brain will start to make sense of it.

This is just an ad with a lot of very general and non actionable advice.

I also believe that having 'normal' jobs provides greater business insight when developing.

I'm not really a fan of these types of posts. You can earn 6 figures in San Francisco or other expensive cities pretty easily as an entry-level employee, so this is just exaggerating people's expectations of the earning power of becoming a developer. Which will increase the rate of labor market saturation as people think they can earn a six figure salary as a developer in cities with modest costs of living.