Here's your model programmer who makes a lot more, although you'll probably call it an unfair comparison:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markus_Persson

I have never met a programmer making 10x the average salary ($500k - $1mm depending) excluding liquidity events.

That says more about who you know than the real distribution of programmer salaries. It's not common, but those kinds of compensation scales definitely exist?