programmers love - and i do mean love - to program, so it's not surprising that they're willing to give away their labors of love for free.
hell, most programmers would probably take a pay cut to work in a "cool" language. i'm willing to wager that C/C++/COBOL/java mean salaries are a standard deviation higher than haskell/elixir/clojure salaries. why? many reasons but i bet that companies know that they can use programmers' passion for mastery against them. leave your boring C++ slog job to "hack in Haskell!"
i'm guessing many of these guys are just clueless when it comes to how potentially valuable they are as individuals and what that's worth, while they put up a $10/mo patreon that 6 people use. i'm guessing most engineers are severely underpaid when it comes to value added, they consistently fall for the okie-doke's of "we get to type stuff into a computer and learn and oh wow, i ought to be so grateful for my six figure salary", yet they're putting entire swathes of the economy out of work for their corporate overlords.
it's tough to convince management you're worth a lot of money if you're willing to give away your precious time and resources freely.
According to the Stack Overflow Developer Survey[0] your intuition is wrong. C, C++, Java devs are paid less than average and F#, Clojure, Elixir devs above average. COBOL and Haskell didn't rank in the survey.
I 100% agree most engineers are severely underpaid. A lot of my colleagues get paid more than anyone in their family ever has (sometimes whole family put together) and just like to ride it out.
hell, most programmers would probably take a pay cut to work in a "cool" language. i'm willing to wager that C/C++/COBOL/java mean salaries are a standard deviation higher than haskell/elixir/clojure salaries. why? many reasons but i bet that companies know that they can use programmers' passion for mastery against them. leave your boring C++ slog job to "hack in Haskell!"
i'm guessing many of these guys are just clueless when it comes to how potentially valuable they are as individuals and what that's worth, while they put up a $10/mo patreon that 6 people use. i'm guessing most engineers are severely underpaid when it comes to value added, they consistently fall for the okie-doke's of "we get to type stuff into a computer and learn and oh wow, i ought to be so grateful for my six figure salary", yet they're putting entire swathes of the economy out of work for their corporate overlords.
it's tough to convince management you're worth a lot of money if you're willing to give away your precious time and resources freely.