It's actually a great reason if you're optimising for the amount of money you make in a career in big business. Which is entirely the point of this thread.

If that's your only motivation, I'm guessing you're not going to do a great job. There are exceptions of course.

Although there are many people out there who do good jobs based only on their love of what they are doing I believe this number is dwarfed by the number of people doing good jobs for money.

I bet the number of people doing bad jobs based only on their lover of what they are doing is also dwarfed by the number of people doing bad jobs for money, but it would be nice to see stats on these things.

Still, since I only do jobs for money almost everyone I've ever interacted with that was doing a job good or bad was also doing it for money. I suppose the parent comment might do pretty good dependent on how well they are actually motivated by money and their skills.

There's a vast gulf between being motivated only by money and being motivated only by love of what you're doing. I enjoy my work, including speaking, most of the time. But if someone weren't paying me to do it I would be--at a minimum--much much more selective about what I took on.

sure I like programming also, but I realized some years ago when I got my first really big consultant paycheck that a lot of the stuff I used to hate about working just flew out the window.