Tom developed his audience back in 2016-2019. Back then it was all high-fives and productivity. He made his fortune by being the first person to offer courses on how to Medium. Sometime just after I arrived (2018) - medium pivoted away from productivity porn and happy clappy ‘you got this, champ!’ style pieces. It changed the algorithm reward from number of claps to ‘read time’ - and that began the decline of the medium advice for money era. Tom is a good writer, he has his own style - but he rarely has anything interesting to say.

Having followers is no longer correlating to earning high sums, that change was April last year - this saw off the most egregious tub-thumpers for all the ‘isms’ - and Medium is now a better place with better writers on all sides of the political and social spectrum.

We do still have an issue with the ersatz Kueglers all offering advice, and we aren’t free of all the tub-thumpers on some issues - but it’s an exciting time to be on the platform and the quality of work is so much higher these days. :o)