Ok, beautifully written article, I enjoyed reading it. But you really are downplaying and underestimating the kind of reward and benefit that one gets from writing articles and code. For example, I have written a number of articles and library tools on and in C++. Over time, these things received lots of links from places like stackoverflow. As a consequence, my stuff is #1 on the search engines for terms like "C++ rvalue references". That gets me an enormous amount of attention and exposure. And if someone, like a prospective employer, hasn't found me yet that way, I just tell them, "Hey, search for 'C++ rvalue references', you'll see." Now if someone were to say, "Ok, that's all fine and well, but you don't have a lot of Karma points on HN," then screw them, I don't want to work for them anyway.