Why Programmers Teach: Understanding IT Education Logic

Every time I encounter the question, «Why do they teach others if they could be earning money programming themselves?» – I realize it harbors several misconceptions. The most significant among these is the belief that IT operates with a fixed «pie» divided among everyone, and the more professionals enter the field, the smaller each individual's slice becomes.

Let's approach this calmly, step by step, setting emotions aside – much like engineers methodically disassembling a system to understand its inner workings.

IT Does Not Have Traditional Competition

The Myth of Competition: Why It Doesn't Apply in IT

Imagine this: you've opened a ramen bar in Osaka, and there are fifteen similar establishments right next door. Customer numbers are finite. Every new competitor on the street directly threatens your revenue. This is a classic scenario of competition for a limited resource.

Now, consider the IT world. How many applications does the world truly need? How many websites? How many automation systems, integrations, dashboards, and mobile interfaces? The answer: more than currently exist. And tomorrow? Even more.

The demand for development is expanding at a pace that far outstrips the influx of new specialists. According to Japan's Ministry of Economy, by 2030, the country is projected to face a deficit of approximately 800,000 IT specialists. This isn't an isolated situation – similar figures are reported across Europe, the USA, and India. The market isn't saturated; it's starving for talent.

Therefore, the notion that someone is «breeding competitors» seems rather peculiar. It's akin to worrying about an overabundance of fishermen in an ocean that holds enough fish for another hundred years.

Why an IT Career Is Attractive: Key Facts

Why Working in IT Is Attractive: No Romance, Just Facts

Before we discuss teachers, it's crucial to understand what makes IT such an enticing career path. If it were just an ordinary profession with typical conditions, it wouldn't attract such widespread interest.

High Earning Potential

Let's begin with the undeniable: money. A Junior developer in Tokyo typically earns between 3.5 to 5 million yen per year, which translates to roughly 300,000 to 400,000 yen per month before taxes. A Mid-level specialist can expect 6–9 million. A Senior with 7–10 years of experience often reaches 10–15 million, and in major corporations or via freelance work, this can climb even higher.

For perspective: the national average salary in Japan is approximately 4.5 million yen annually. This means even a nascent programmer earns on par with a mid-level specialist in other fields, and the disparities only widen from there.

This isn't by chance. It's a direct result of supply and demand. Companies are eager to pay because, without skilled developers, their businesses simply cannot function.

Remote Work and Flexibility

Following the pandemic, many Japanese companies, which had staunchly adhered to office culture for decades, finally relented. Now, in the IT sector, it's common to find positions offering fully remote work or a hybrid model – perhaps two days in the office and three at home.

This significantly enhances quality of life. You reclaim two hours previously spent commuting. You gain the flexibility to relocate to a more affordable city. Or, you can remain in Osaka without enduring arduous train commutes during peak hours.

For freelancers and those collaborating with foreign companies, geographical boundaries virtually disappear. You could live in Kyoto, work for a San Francisco-based startup, and receive your compensation in dollars.

Low Entry Barrier – But a High Mastery Threshold

To embark on a programming career, you don't need to commit to five years of university study. A license isn't required. Neither are connections or endorsements from influential figures.

What you do need are a computer, internet access, and time. Everything else is cultivated through practice.

Indeed, becoming a proficient specialist demands more than just a year. But to start earning, 6–12 months of dedicated learning can suffice. This is an incredibly swift path when compared to professions like medicine, law, or architecture.

Continuous Growth and Absence of Routine

If you're someone who finds monotony unbearable, IT is an ideal fit. Technologies are constantly evolving, tasks rarely repeat, and each project presents a fresh challenge.

Some might view this as a drawback: «You constantly have to learn new things». However, for many, this constant flux is precisely what sustains their interest. You avoid stagnation. You aren't confined to performing the same procedures for two decades.

Why Programmers Choose to Teach

Why Those Who Could Program Choose to Teach

Now, let's address the central question. Why would an experienced developer, with a decade of coding experience under their belt, suddenly set aside their code to create online courses?

Reason One: Economies of Scale

Imagine you're a senior developer, charging 8,000 yen per hour for freelance projects. That's a strong rate. Yet, your time is finite: you can realistically bill a maximum of 160 hours per month if you work without weekends. This sets a ceiling – 1.28 million yen per month.

Now, envision this: you develop an online course. You dedicate three months to its creation, recording, and editing. The course is priced at 30,000 yen. You sell it to 500 individuals – bringing in 15 million yen. Over the course of a year, you sell another 1,500 copies – generating an additional 45 million yen. And this occurs without any further time investment after the initial creation.

Your income is no longer directly linear with your time expenditure. You've created a product that operates independently.

This isn't about greed; it's about rational decision-making. A teacher doesn't stop programming out of fear of competitors. Rather, they opt for a model that provides greater freedom and income with a more efficient allocation of resources.

Reason Two: Burnout

Programming is intensely demanding mental work. It involves eight hours of sustained concentration, debugging, hunting for errors, deciphering other people's code, and rewriting your own.

After 10–15 years, many experience a profound fatigue. Not with the core profession itself, but with its specific format. While they desire a change, they don't wish to abandon the field in which they possess expertise.

Teaching offers a shift in activity while maintaining context. You remain within IT, share your accumulated experience, and witness the direct impact of your work on individuals. This is often psychologically less taxing than repeatedly solving similar problems day after day.

Reason Three: Desire for Broader Impact

When you write code for a single startup, your influence is limited to one product. When you educate a thousand people, you impact a thousand careers, projects, and trajectories.

For some, this broader sense of contribution is more valuable than monetary gain. It provides a sense of purpose that a senior developer's salary at a large corporation simply cannot buy.

I'm not romanticizing this; I'm merely acknowledging that people are wired differently. Some are driven to build systems. Others are driven to build the people who will build those systems.

Reason Four: Stability

A freelance developer's income fluctuates with the flow of client orders. Employment in a company is contingent on management decisions, reorganizations, and potential layoffs.

An educational platform or your own school, however, represents a business that can be actively managed. You cultivate an audience, develop a product, and establish a sales funnel. You are constructing an asset, rather than solely selling your time.

This isn't an escape from programming. This is career evolution.

Why Fears of Competition Are Irrational

Why the Fear of Competition Is Irrational

Let's assume a teacher has trained 10,000 students. Of those, a realistic 30% actually enter the profession – that's an optimistic figure. The remainder either tried and realized it wasn't for them, or they stalled at the beginner level.

In total, that's 3,000 new developers. Does that sound like a significant number?

Now, observe the market. In Japan alone, over 50,000 IT vacancies open annually. Globally, that number runs into the millions. Three thousand is merely a drop in the ocean.

Furthermore, most course graduates typically pursue junior positions. A teacher with 10–15 years of experience operates at an entirely different level. They don't compete with these new entrants because they're solving distinct problems for different compensation.

Competition arises when resources are scarce. In IT, the critical resource – opportunities and projects – is not limited. There are more projects requiring completion than there are hands available to do them.

Test Your Logic Through a Simple Exercise

Exercise: Test Your Logic

If you find yourself questioning what I've presented, undertake a brief experiment. It will take approximately 15 minutes.

Open any popular job board – LinkedIn, Indeed, or local Japanese platforms like Wantedly or Green. Search for «programmer» or «developer». Tally the number of vacancies in your city.

Now, navigate to the resume section. Count the number of active developer resumes.

Compare these two figures.

In most instances, the number of vacancies will significantly outnumber the available resumes. This indicates a market where demand consistently surpasses supply. In such an environment, there's no need to fear competition. The true concern should be not advancing quickly enough to a level where opportunities proactively seek you out, often without the need for a resume.

Second Step: Calculate the Value of Time

Consider the hourly rate of a skilled programmer in your region. Let's assume it's 6,000 yen.

Now, imagine a teacher developed a course over 200 hours of work. This represents a hypothetical time cost of 1.2 million yen.

The course sells for 25,000 yen. To simply recoup the initial investment, 48 copies need to be sold. This is readily achievable within the first month, even with a modest audience.

From that point onward, every subsequent sale represents pure profit. After a year, if 800 copies were sold, that's 20 million yen – earned from time that has already been invested.

This illustrates why teaching can be more lucrative than traditional coding projects. It's not driven by a fear of competitors, but by a fundamentally different and more scalable business model.

What This Means for Students and Learners

What This Means for You If You Are Learning

If you are currently enrolled in a course, consuming articles, or watching educational videos – here's a crucial insight:

Those who teach you are not adversaries. While they aren't engaged in pure charity, neither are they manipulating you. They offer a clear exchange: your time and financial investment for their expertise and a structured learning pathway.

A well-designed course can save you months of undirected effort. A poorly constructed one is a waste of resources. Your task is to develop the discernment to differentiate between the two.

How to Assess if a Platform Is Worth Your Investment

• Does the instructor possess genuine, practical work experience, not merely teaching credentials?
• Do they demonstrate actual code, rather than solely relying on theoretical slides?
• Do they provide practical exercises that allow for verifiable progress?
• Do they elucidate not only the «how» but also the profound «why» behind concepts?
• Is the course structured logically, progressing from foundational to advanced topics, incorporating repetition and reinforcement?

If you can answer yes to most of these questions, the course is likely a valuable investment. If not, you may be paying for the illusion of true learning.

Method to Solidify Your Understanding

A Method to Solidify Your Understanding

Grab a piece of paper. Jot down three professions you're interested in, or those that have piqued your curiosity in the past.

For each profession, answer this question: «Why might someone with extensive experience in this field choose to teach others, rather than continuing to practice their specialty»?

Strive to identify economic reasons (like income scaling), psychological drivers (such as burnout or a search for deeper meaning), and social impulses (the desire to influence or build a community).

You will discover that, in most scenarios, the transition to teaching is a rational and logical choice, not an anomaly or an act motivated by fear.

Once you grasp the underlying logic of others' decisions, you'll stop searching for hidden agendas. Instead, you'll simply see individuals optimizing their lives, much like you are.

Why This Understanding Is Crucial Today

Why It Is Important to Understand This Right Now

We live in an era where education is no longer the exclusive domain of universities. Any expert can package their accumulated experience and offer it directly to learners.

This presents a significant advantage for those seeking knowledge: access has become more affordable and quicker. However, it also poses a challenge: the need to effectively filter, verify, and select credible sources.

Fear of «competitors» or suspicion directed towards teachers is unproductive noise. It merely obstructs the learning process.

Instead, focus on what truly yields results: consistent practice, diligent repetition, constructive feedback, and hands-on projects. Everything else is simply background distraction.

IT continues to be one of the most rapidly expanding and accessible industries. You can enter this field. You can flourish within it. The key is to avoid expending energy on illusory fears, and instead channel that energy into tangible actions.

A skill is an action repeatedly performed with understanding. Comprehending why people choose to teach, rather than solely program, is itself a part of a larger skill: the ability to perceive the underlying system, beyond just the surface.

When you learn to discern the logic behind other people's decisions, you will begin to make more precise and effective decisions in your own life. That is the ultimate objective.