Most programmers who make it there would have to be entrepreneurial so I'm guessing they may get filed under a different "hat" so to speak such as management. Also, I'm guessing this is just based off yearly income so if someone cashed out with stock from an IPO but either sold it all at once years ago (and made a ton of money) or hasn't sold the stock yet I'm guessing it wouldn't be reflected on here. I think the paths that programmers take to reaching the 1% aren't well reflected in a chart like this so its hard to tell how many of these people "have been programmers" at some point.
Exactly. In 1999 was Bill Gates a "programmer" or a "manager" or (arguably) "investor"? I would say primarily a programmer who delegated, thus in a linguistic sense being a manager, but really still being in the first category for the purposes of this diagram.
Right, but at some point soon after he would most likely no longer have his job title be programmer thus removing him from that category on this list. Basically what I'm saying is the only people on this list who would fall under "programmer" and be in the 1% are those who are highly paid consultants, etc as even if one started their own company as a programmer (other than a services company where they just work as a consultant), at some point that title is going to most likely be changed to manager or investor and they would no longer fall under the programmer category even though programming is what got them to where they are.
