Programmer, Developer or Architect? They're very different paradigms. I'd bet your 200k range is mostly Architects. The Developers and Engineers in the middle, with "Programmers" at the bottom.
Those are labels with barely any fixed meaning. I will always call myself a programmer since programming is what I do. Architect as a named position mostly exists in companies that embrace Moses-from-the-mountain software development with a musty smell of IBM from the 1960s. Fortunately there are plenty of ways to make good money as a programmer without working at places like that.
Architects design systems of systems, developers build systems, programmers write code. While it may be true that the former can do the job of all their successors, it is not true in the reverse. I won't disagree that programming is what we do, but every time I see a position for a "Programmer" there is a distinct lack of respect for the trade behind it.
Now, I have to ask, why the down votes? This is supposed to be a place for constructive commentary. This has been happening more and more lately.
