It is not the responsibility of the rest of society to pay you a handsome salary for a programming hobby. If your code isn't generating enough value that someone wants to pay for it, it's about as useful as model trains.
I never said it is. I responded to the question about "what's sad about it", and having idealistic ideas about the IT is common among newer/fresh programmers. And (almost?) nobody wants to feel like a replaceable money making pawn, most[1] people in IT value self-realisation at least a bit. And some successfully gaslight themselves into believing that their backend work on their ad-sponsored e-commerce CRUD is somehow making the world a better place.
Having said that, "value" doesn't have to be measured in euros. I personally work in a semi-governmental institution, and the main focus of my team is reducing the amount of cybercrime in my country. I still need to provide that value to earn good money, but I enjoy that more than working to make investors rich (there's nothing wrong with that though, and it usually pays better).
[1] anecdotal, among my social groups, I don't really have hard data about this.
