[Laakeri]

But he made a good living out of it, so in the end it was a good idea?

[prisenco]

It certainly puts a ceiling on a career. And I'd argue it probably gave him a pretty rough shelf life. At some point he has to understand what he's doing.

Unless he's so good at selling his services he can consistently find new clients. And if that's the case, he'd probably kill it in sales.

[dazzawazza]

I'll bet the ceiling is CTO.

[fragmede]

sales engineer is quite a lucrative career. don't have to be really good at it, just enough to be useful.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

Most people never reach the theoretical ceiling of their careers, so he probably did quite well.

[efilife]

Cope. People often make money on things they know nothing about

[thephyber]

He may have made a good living, but his customer / employer bought low quality code with lots of tech debt.

That business model only works until customers are sophisticated enough to understand tech debt. In the future, more customers will be less willing to pay the same good wages for low quality code.

[throwaway2037]

    > but his customer / employer bought low quality code with lots of tech debt.

Sarcastic reply: Isn't that most tech? Even good (above average) developer produce lots of tech debt and sometimes low quality code.