Where's the mystery? Someone looks at what this guy did for his business card and, to paraphrase, says "Wow, look at this guy's skills. He must charge a very, very non-average amount of money for them."
Your response to this is "But actually, according to payscale.com, an average embedded software engineer only makes X."
1. Nobody likes but-actually posts.
2. Quoting average salary when someone is commenting on how non-average a guy's skillset is isn't really relevant.
I get the "but actually" thing, but I don't think it was that.
The OP said the skills are "mindbogglingly expensive". From personal experience they aren't (I worked in a team with embedded engineers with similar skills to those required for this).
I thought this was well understood - it's been discussed here a number of times.
I added the average salaries after getting voted down to -2 and that turned around the voting.
While there are a number of issues with average salaries I think it's notable that no one is claiming the opposite.
Your response to this is "But actually, according to payscale.com, an average embedded software engineer only makes X."
1. Nobody likes but-actually posts.
2. Quoting average salary when someone is commenting on how non-average a guy's skillset is isn't really relevant.