<i>&gt; I can&#x27;t really find an explanation for it so far.</i><p>He basically hinted at that by saying: <i>&quot;because I get to do what I love (programming,...)&quot;</i><p>I believe you and gp (lemevi) are talking from 2 different perspectives.  Your perspective is more about &quot;don&#x27;t sell yourself short&quot; or &quot;don&#x27;t devalue your skills&quot;.<p>The gp&#x27;s perspective is more about the &quot;mystery of the universe&quot; as to why an enjoyable job could pay more than a boring one.  It&#x27;s a similar sentiment to the successful novelists, comedians, musicians saying, <i>&quot;I feel lucky that people pay me lots of money for doing what I love to do.&quot;</i>  (Yes, there are tons of programmers who suffer through boring CRUD coding and treat it as &quot;just a job&quot; but there are also many programmers who truly enjoy the activity.)<p>I experienced the gp&#x27;s perspective in my first job out of highschool.  I happened to be a decent typist so I got a job to transcribe audio to word processing documents.  One day, the business owner was looking at his screen in frustration trying to make something work.  I looked over his shoulder and saw things like &quot;DO WHILE&quot; and &quot;DEFINE PROCEDURE&quot; on the screen.  I just looked at it and then had one of those Jurassic Park moments[1].  I said, &quot;you need to set a variable here, and move that line there, etc etc.&quot;   He was totally surprised and said he&#x27;d pay me double the hourly rate if I could fix the computer program.  I couldn&#x27;t believe it.  I had programmed computers during middle school (age 11 to 13) and treated the whole coding activity as &quot;playing with a toy&quot;.  I stopped programming during high school and worked at a fast food joint for minimum wage.  I had no idea that <i>people paid money</i> for programming.  People will pay me more for typing &quot;DO WHILE&quot; than mopping floors and hauling out grease buckets?!?  That&#x27;s absurd!<p>Yes, on one level, one can do all sorts of economic analysis (supply-vs-demand, marginal utility, productivity multiplier of software) and conclude that it makes perfect sense that programmers are paid $X more than brick layers.  However, even with that logical rationalization, there can still be this &quot;mystery&quot; of why a person typing on a keyboard in a pleasant air conditioned office makes more than a brick layer sweating in 100 degree heat.  It seems unfair that a &quot;game&quot; from my childhood earns more than back-breaking labor.<p>[1]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=dFUlAQZB9Ng" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=dFUlAQZB9Ng</a>