Brimming with arrogance and a complete lack of self awareness. There are a lot of programmers in the top 25% that are willing to work for a lot less than 1 million a year. Why would anyone hire this guy who has no social skills, is arrogant and expects to be paid more than everyone else who brings the same value as him? There isn't some magic set of decisions you can make which will circumvent the rules of supply and demand, and if there is I don't think you're going to find it in an Ask HN post.
> Why would anyone hire this guy who has no social skills, is arrogant and expects to be paid more than everyone else who brings the same value as him?
I think OP is asking how to add enough value as a top 25% programmer to justify getting paid this amount. That strikes me as a very fair question.
OP isn't quite asking that imo. If you want to add enough value to justify that salary there's an obvious answer: get better at your job. I.e. don't be in the top 25% of programmers, be in the top 1% or .1%. If OP was asking how do I get good enough at programming to justify this high of a salary then that would be a fair question. If you're asking how do I get more money without getting better at my core competency then you're essentially asking "how do I beat the system," which isn't a particularly fair question at all.
I guess I'm just not convinced that going from a 25% programmer to a top 0.1% programmer is an efficient way of making $1 million per year.
I think you are far better off working on your social and business skills.
Maybe that's "beating the system", but an incredible amount of money has been made by people whose technical abilities did not go beyond mediocre PHP skills.
Were those people who made incredible amounts of money without technical abilities beyond mediocre PHP skills making their money as salaried software engineers? OP specifically asked about making a $1MM/year while still working as a programmer without social skills.
