The point is that you should call yourself a consultant or businessperson, even if you want to be a programmer.

Patrick is not mainly a programmer. He does some programming, but he is mainly a n A/B testing consultant to companies with small tech teams. That's great, but consultant isn't the only tech job. There are tens of thousands of jobs where companies have highly leveraged programmers (called "engineers") that are well compensated for doing what they are good at -- programming.

That depends on who you want to be hired by. Some companies already know exactly what they need - they need some specific software written so they are looking for a programmer.

I mean, that’s sort of Patrick’s exact point - you should avoid being hired as a generic “programmer” as you’ll make far less income. Instead, if you frame yourself as an expert in a particular business problem (and have the data to back up your results), you’re far more valuable to the average manager at BigCo, or to any business in general.

A good example of this is the acquihire phenomenon. BigCos often acquire small startups purely to hire the people working there. Half of the time, they shut down the startup and throw away the code. The objective is to hire smart people whom are also domain experts in a particular problem.

You can as well argue that you are expert in programming that your expertise are not limited in a solving a particular business problem. This way you open up yourself to more company or any business in general.

For permanent roles sure. You might as well be a contractor at that point and contractors get paid more.

Even those companies who know exactly what they need don't only need programmers. They also need architects and solution providers. Who are mostly better-paid than the programmers themselves.