<i>my recommendation is to go quit your job as a programmer right now</i><p>Programmers can do stuff which is measurable, too, particularly when they're building systems that scale at startups which are smart enough to measure the effects of them.  See IMVU for this taken to a truly impressive degree.<p>I think the party is just getting started on this, too.  Ten years ago you had to be a quant will a billion dollar bankroll advanced by your favorite hedge fund to demonstrate that your individual programming prowess was causing measurable financial results.  Both the leverage and the measuring are now empirically within the capabilities of one-man firms with essentially no capital.<p>It is a great time to be alive.  Salesmanship helps, too, but it doesn't hurt to be selling "My my, look at this graph which shows how I made a previous client tens of thousands of dollars in a week."