Question: do you see your income being suitable to live a decent lifestyle in the USA when supporting a family(1-2 kids) - paying for their healthcare insurance, other misc bills?
Rationale: if a career line can't sustain supporting a family, I usually think it's a gigantic waste of time (as a a full-time career) for the average person (who will want to have a family and pay for their medical care).
Maybe? It depends on how well Sourcehut does. Or, if I focused on consulting, I could probably make a very good living. If I were able to secure full-time contracts (i.e. 40 hours a week) at my usual consulting rates, I would be a wealthy man.
However, at the moment raising a family isn't a goal I have in mind. And I wouldn't characterize a desire to have kids as "average" - the birth rate is in freefall in the entire developed world and fewer people are planning on having children today than at any other point in history.
Normal people already can't have a family or pay for medical care. I can't fault anyone for wanting to code open source in order to barely survive, versus working several precariat jobs to survive and having no time to think.
My biggest luxury isn't money, but time and freedom from commercial pressures on my work. That's a quality-of-life issue making my subsistence WAY better than I'd experience working other subsistence jobs.
Rationale: if a career line can't sustain supporting a family, I usually think it's a gigantic waste of time (as a a full-time career) for the average person (who will want to have a family and pay for their medical care).