In reply to Simon Dickson.

Thanks Simon, some food for thought as well, although it covers another aspect of the problem.

Whilst you are right that code can't or shouldn't sell itself, we are talking about technical skills and final product here. Every decent software engineer could easily switch to any other technical web platform out there and produce a final web application. Most of the time the technical stack doesn't matter (or at least there are numerous proper ways to build a product), so WordPress is one of those toolkits, too.

Unlike all the other platforms though WordPress is the only place where developers should pay so much attention and spend a significant amount of their time on marketing and sales. Soft skills and advertisement don't come natural to most technical people and there is a gap if you are just a technical ninja in our community.

I'm also covering the same thing above by saying that the customers in WordPress are a completely different group of people, but essentially they need the very same end result as with any other technology. The question is that other communities support their contributors by rewarding them without further advertisement which helps for the global progress of said platform. The other gap is for growing a company due to the range of very small 5-page websites or a few VIP solutions usually handled by you guys on the VIP page :)