The big secret is that programmers make more money when they stop pitching themselves as programmers and start pitching themselves as skilled professionals who make their firms millions using a variety of tools, including code (when appropriate). OK, it isn't much of a secret.

I wince every time I hear someone describe himself as a "PHP coder" in mixed company (i.e. in front of folks with hiring authority rather than "just us geeks"). Buy a box of cereal and you get two of those for free.

How would you suggest he present himself?

(Not sure about devs coming with cereal boxes just yet, btw... The want ads I see still ask for "PHP Coder" and offer six figure salaries for good ones)

So here's what he says about being a PHP coder:

PHP is installed on just about every server on the planet and a lot of really good companies use PHP simply because it’s so easy to get developers who know PHP. The other benefit to PHP is that it’s so simple and ridiculous that any programmer who doesn’t know PHP could master the basics in a day and be building pretty decent applications within a week or two. So, PHP certainly makes good financial sense all around.

I suggest he not present himself as having a skill which there are millions of alternatives for and which can be mastered in two days.

Instead, I would focus more on him as a package deal of domain expertise, soft skills, engineering expertise, and programming ability (including PHP) which has previously achieved successes for businesses such as brag brag brag focusing on business benefits and is ready to pitch pitch pitch focusing on business benefits for you.

(I don't mean to be argumentative, I think it's a question many developers wrestle with) When I wrote "he", I meant the fictional guy saying "I'm a PHP coder". Obviously it would be better and more true to say something like "software developer" instead of locking to a particular technology, but I'm not sure how he could further convey his value in a job description.

("Founder" is actually a good example - it can apply to Steve Jobs as well as a lot of HN users, the value each is creating is wildly different)

Soooo what's your job title? It sounds like you've sugar coated the hell out of it.

It's not sugar coating. That has the implication that he's lying; but programmers (at least good ones) do all of that. We create an incredible amount of value, and it's a disservice to ourselves to forget that.

His job title is "Founder."

I believe it's "The Boss"

It depends, PHP does have the reputation for being the language of choice for low paid outsource quality jobs. Knowing it well can land you a lot more but I think you'd be on the right track with saying enterprise type Java/ c# stuff would on average get you more.

I would say that more outsourced jobs are done in Java/C# because they are "Enterprise" languages. In much of the tech world, PHP is viewed as a toy.