Two reasons: 1. The average developer is bad. Really bad. You can easily work 4 times as fast and produce code that's much shorter and more maintainable. 2. T

Two reasons: 1. The average developer is bad. Really bad. You can easily work 4 times as fast and produce code that's much shorter and more maintainable. 2. The $200/hr developer gets paid according to the value he provides. It's not hard to provide that value if you work on the right stuff, even for an average developer. Remember that Apple has $460000 in profits per employee per year (and that includes all employees), which already translates into $200+/hr. When you provide a service that costs $200 but makes the company $1000, they'll happily accept that. If you frame it without that reference $1000 then you just sound like a very expensive code monkey.