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I am a contractor and I would expect to be paid the market rate for my skillset. The market rate for a .NET developer in the UK is about £350-400 a day (outside

I am a contractor and I would expect to be paid the market rate for my skillset. The market rate for a .NET developer in the UK is about £350-400 a day (outside of London) in the UK. An Angular JS developer gets between £450 and £500. Thus at the moment (despite not being fond of it) I am (re-)learning Angular JS in my spare time so I can go for these higher paid roles. The same is generally true for the salaried market. I appreciate there is a bit of a difference with a team of people. But generally how else are you going to gauge the compensation of any individual reliably other than market rate?

fsloth 7y ago
"But generally how else are you going to gauge the compensation of any individual reliably other than market rate?" If you were a business owner, what would be the correct referral market rate if the people whose compensation you are gauging is a tight knit team with years of experience on your specific business and customer needs?
- Xylakant 7y ago
  Another thing that often gets forgotten is the cost of (long term) employees leaving. They take so much institutional knowledge with them. I'm currently watching a case unfold at a client where all people with intimate knowledge of a crucial component left - the cost of training up new people on that component will eclipse any reasonable increase in wage that they could have given to the team, not even accounting for the increase in bug-rate while the new folks figure out all the pitfalls that software tends to accumulate over time. Documentation helps, but people knowing their way around the code is better.
  - uk_programmer 7y ago
    I think us developer overstate how important we think this is. Unless time to market is a consideration then they will probably just accept throwing people at it and then get some poor souls to clean up afterwards.
    - kqr 7y ago
      That probably costs more, though. Software engineering is mainly knowledge work. This means the majority of work consists not of building stuff, but acquiring and organising knowledge. I've read somewhere that about 50% of the job is gathering information. When a person leaves after having spent two years at a company, it might look like you get to keep everything they've been working on, but this is far from true. If the 50% assumption is correct, a person leaving after two years means you throw a full year of work into the dump. This is a huge cost, but it's hidden.
      - uk_programmer 7y ago
        This is exactly what I am talking about. You are overestimating how important it is. The code is there and (presumably) in source control. It really isn't that difficult for someone to get the source, compile it and fire up the debugger and carry on where the previous person left off.
        Xylakant 7y ago
        I’ve seen very few projects of more than moderate complexity where “check out code and compile it” is the complex part. Who’s consuming the code? Who are the stakeholders? How does this component integrate into the full picture of the application? How do I need to talk to that person that I really need to change something?
        uk_programmer 7y ago
        I think you are missing the overall point that you are overestimating how important knowing that is.
        kqr 7y ago
        And I'm saying that if you have only, or mainly, worked at projects where all information (including about failed historical approaches and why they failed) is encoded in the source code, you have been very lucky to the point where I have a hard time imagining that to be true. There is so much implicit knowledge that goes into the finals source artifact that is not spelled out.
- uk_programmer 7y ago
  Probably more than whatever your competitor in the same market would be offering them i.e. above whatever the market rate is.
Xylakant 7y ago
I’m a (sort-of) contractor. My rates and selection of projects strongly takes the team dynamic at the clients place into account. Sure, I do have a rate that I aim for, but as long as a certain minimum is met, I’m likely to choose a place with a sane team and healthy social interactions over a dysfunctional hell hole. And places that pay everyone a reasonable wage at least tend to have that more often than other places. This approach has shown to substantially improve my quality of life.
- uk_programmer 7y ago
  That is fine, I am mostly the same. > And places that pay everyone a reasonable wage at least tend to have that more often than other places. I've seen almost no evidence of this other than at the real extremes. Maybe it is differences in the UK market vs elsewhere but typically you won't find a big difference in rate between one contract and another in roughly the same locale with everything else being equal.
ptr 7y ago
Market rate for .NET contractors here in Stockholm is ~£570 a day (~£71/h). I wonder why market rates are higher here, despite standing still for many years.
- uk_programmer 7y ago
  Interesting that is above London pay rates even though having a look at the price of living it is only 20% more expensive. Probably just less .NET devs over there. Might have to apply for roles in Stockholm :)

fsloth 7y ago

"But generally how else are you going to gauge the compensation of any individual reliably other than market rate?" If you were a business owner, what would be the correct referral market rate if the people whose compensation you are gauging is a tight knit team with years of experience on your specific business and customer needs?

Xylakant 7y ago
Another thing that often gets forgotten is the cost of (long term) employees leaving. They take so much institutional knowledge with them. I'm currently watching a case unfold at a client where all people with intimate knowledge of a crucial component left - the cost of training up new people on that component will eclipse any reasonable increase in wage that they could have given to the team, not even accounting for the increase in bug-rate while the new folks figure out all the pitfalls that software tends to accumulate over time. Documentation helps, but people knowing their way around the code is better.
- uk_programmer 7y ago
  I think us developer overstate how important we think this is. Unless time to market is a consideration then they will probably just accept throwing people at it and then get some poor souls to clean up afterwards.
  - kqr 7y ago
    That probably costs more, though. Software engineering is mainly knowledge work. This means the majority of work consists not of building stuff, but acquiring and organising knowledge. I've read somewhere that about 50% of the job is gathering information. When a person leaves after having spent two years at a company, it might look like you get to keep everything they've been working on, but this is far from true. If the 50% assumption is correct, a person leaving after two years means you throw a full year of work into the dump. This is a huge cost, but it's hidden.
    - uk_programmer 7y ago
      This is exactly what I am talking about. You are overestimating how important it is. The code is there and (presumably) in source control. It really isn't that difficult for someone to get the source, compile it and fire up the debugger and carry on where the previous person left off.
      - Xylakant 7y ago
        I’ve seen very few projects of more than moderate complexity where “check out code and compile it” is the complex part. Who’s consuming the code? Who are the stakeholders? How does this component integrate into the full picture of the application? How do I need to talk to that person that I really need to change something?
        uk_programmer 7y ago
        I think you are missing the overall point that you are overestimating how important knowing that is.
      - kqr 7y ago
        And I'm saying that if you have only, or mainly, worked at projects where all information (including about failed historical approaches and why they failed) is encoded in the source code, you have been very lucky to the point where I have a hard time imagining that to be true. There is so much implicit knowledge that goes into the finals source artifact that is not spelled out.
uk_programmer 7y ago
Probably more than whatever your competitor in the same market would be offering them i.e. above whatever the market rate is.

Xylakant 7y ago

I’m a (sort-of) contractor. My rates and selection of projects strongly takes the team dynamic at the clients place into account. Sure, I do have a rate that I aim for, but as long as a certain minimum is met, I’m likely to choose a place with a sane team and healthy social interactions over a dysfunctional hell hole. And places that pay everyone a reasonable wage at least tend to have that more often than other places. This approach has shown to substantially improve my quality of life.

uk_programmer 7y ago
That is fine, I am mostly the same. > And places that pay everyone a reasonable wage at least tend to have that more often than other places. I've seen almost no evidence of this other than at the real extremes. Maybe it is differences in the UK market vs elsewhere but typically you won't find a big difference in rate between one contract and another in roughly the same locale with everything else being equal.

ptr 7y ago

Market rate for .NET contractors here in Stockholm is ~£570 a day (~£71/h). I wonder why market rates are higher here, despite standing still for many years.

uk_programmer 7y ago
Interesting that is above London pay rates even though having a look at the price of living it is only 20% more expensive. Probably just less .NET devs over there. Might have to apply for roles in Stockholm :)