[boomshucka]

It depends how good he is... At a top company, a top "coding" engineer can make a lot of money. But, many people who are not even close to "top" think they are in fact, "top".

[totalgeek]

Perhaps it's the Dunning-Kruger effect?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect