Chiariglione: A crisis, the causes and a solution

Like "novelist", "codec developer" isn't necessarily something you get paid to do, let alone a primary source of income - it can be done by an interested lay person, and there's no particular reason that getting rich will make you any better at it, although it might free up more of your time if you manage not to spend it all in meetings with the people holding the purse strings.

This is quite different from, say, "brain surgeon", where there's just no practical way you could afford it as a hobby, with all the very necessary staffing and equipment needs or even "rocket scientist" (there are a rich people who own rocket companies, but all the rocket scientists so far as I can tell are _employees_ not owners of the company).