[kyt]

100% agree. It's always about how close you are to the money. The more direct value you provide, the more you get paid. This is why lawyers get paid so much, because firms know that for every hour they bill the firm makes $X dollars.

Programmers provide indirect value. If you architect a system that saves months and months of time later down the line, how do you value that?

[joshAg]

with hugely inflated numbers that assume the best case scenario for time-savings, fancy charts and graphs, and perhaps even a buzzword laden powerpoint presentation during your annual review.