[throwaway0asd]

Things that have to do with code, but not product, that uniquely qualify your existence are your 6 figure ideas. Examples:

* Architecture - Most people writing code cannot plan, write, or envision an original solution to something wildly ambitious. This takes practice and with enough practice it gets comfortable and easy, but most people writing code will never get to that point. A mastery of architecture is possibly the only way to produce a superior product compared to the competition provided that business requirements remain unchanged.

* Performance - Astonishingly most people never measure anything unless they are forced to. Learning to measure things (everything) is a cognitive skill and the result is the difference between a 2 hour work day and an 8 hour work day. Measuring things is also the only way to write fast software, because everything else is guessing (and probably guessing wrong by several orders of magnitude). At the end of the day performance is not about how fast something this, but how much faster it is than something else.

* Writing, especially bridging the gap between technical writing and narrative writing for common people.