Tim Ferriss Promised Freedom. Indie Hackers Are Selling Shovels

the 4hww was such a damaging read for me. I wasted YEARS squeaking pennies out of shitty, poorly-realized side hustles trying to solo that shit when the real ROI would have been to focus on leetcode in my 20's and track down a role paying 10x the salary.

When I first read it, I was probably making about $60-65k and scrambling for $2.5k raises with a shitty meat-grinder employer while burning the midnight oil and acting as a "weekend warrior" trying to come up with something that would allow me the freedom that ferris spoke of.

Problem is, all of his techniques presumed you already had some sort of business that you could automate yourself out of.

If you're a wage-earner none of the shit he talks about is realistic. Sure, you can do the research to become a drop shipper or to place tiny ads in the back of soldier-of-fortune for brain pills.

For the typical computer programmer - your ROI will be 100x higher if you just get good enough at algorithms and system design to land a role at a company with Tier3 compensation.