I'm in the same boat. The way some people here talk about making $200/hour makes me think how out of touch some HN'ers are with the average worker.
Software engineering and development field is extremely difficult. There are many opportunities in this field, because there are so few candidates that can do the work. HN is self selected group of people with experience in the field. But they are actually very few in number.
The average worker does not have in demand skills in tech sector.
Its not so much that the skills themselves are in demand, its the enormous experience that someone who can command that kind of fee has. The skill set you're talking about can be learned probably in a year or two of 8-5, M-F self-guided learning from Udemy / Coursera / YouTube, but its the experience of using those skills to build something of value that is driving that hourly rate, not so much the skills themselves.
If you feel I'm missing something here, please go into more depth, because I find this all quite fascinating. :)
$200/hr in the UK would put you in the top 1% of earners.
That roughly equates to $400,000 a year. Which may seem like a lot, until people actually see what the market rates are in west coast tech hubs.
Also, Mark Zuckerberg is worth $100 Billion, for creating basically a CRUD app in php.