Other people have already answered about budgeting reasons, but there's also other possible reasons. Regardless how good you are at coding, if your personality

Other people have already answered about budgeting reasons, but there's also other possible reasons. Regardless how good you are at coding, if your personality doesn't mesh with your manager, if other people think you're an asshole, well, management would rather someone who knows how to talk pretty and sugar-coat things but can only code okay over someone who's an asshole and confronts them, but is a superstar coder. I obviously can't really know, I don't know you, but the fact that you're getting "frustrated and confused" over this, your boss isn't trying to placate you, and you use hacker news really makes it sound like you're not super mature, and not exactly a people person. I don't actually know your situation, but from how you write it's at least possible soft-skills are a factor.