About the author
In his blog, Nick Bradbury blog about how old farts know how to code. I can't agree with him more. It's frustrating looking at newbies figure their way, when one can see what the obvious solution is. Besides knowing how to code, it's best to know how to hack, and how to reverse engineer code as well.
I recently referred an ArcSight SME in the US who's been at it for 7 years, and he confessed that he "just left the IRS to make $135 /hr as a ArcSight SME (7 years now)".
The takeaway is, if you're skilled at something you're good at, you're gonna earn more for that.