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The thing that shocked me from the article was when they said: you’re talking a hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty dollars an hour Do "rockstar progra

by 300bps 12y ago

The thing that shocked me from the article was when they said: you’re talking a hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty dollars an hour Do "rockstar programmers" really work so cheaply? Crappy attorneys make that much and good attorneys generally start their billing around $350 per hour. I don't have an agent and even though I work full time at an investment bank, I find all the side programming work I want @ $150-$200 per hour. In the past four years I've averaged 18 hours per week from side work. Even I'm moving away from hourly pricing to value based pricing though. I would think this is where an agent would provide the most value. Evaluate the project, determine a the project's NPV and then base the pricing on a percentage of the NPV. Envisioning agents like outlined in the article - they seem little different than high-end technology shops that provide bodies.

dasil003 12y ago
> Do "rockstar programmers" really work so cheaply? Absolutely. You can find amazing programmers even in San Francisco for < $150/hr. But the thing is that software development is a market for lemons in the worst sense. In fact I can't think of a hiring market that is more opaque. You have clients who are technologically illiterate, and then you have massive Dunning-Kruger effect from the fact that knowing how to FTP a file to a Linux server made everyone worship them as a computer "genius" from a young age. Then you have the fact that the quality of the deliverable is inherently hard to measure. If the expert software craftsman builds something that is rock solid and scalable for 10 years, it might not be appreciated as much as the spaghetti-code time bomb that a whiz kid drops on their plate in half the time but ends up requiring a complete rewrite. Heck, even after being a professional web developer for 15 years, all I can say about myself is that I am better than average, but only because I've worked with hundreds of developers and seen that the average is not great. I have no idea really how much less valuable I am than the elites. I even suspect that context plays a big role in the relative merits of different developers. It sounds like you're moving up the food chain in terms of being able to deliver value. Expert programmers who also understand business are thin on the ground and exponentially more valuable than either one of those skillsets in isolation. However the thing to remember is that most businesses aren't throwing the kind of cash that they can pay a programmer $250/hr. Lawyers can make that much because of the nature of the work (ie. time-limited, risk mitigation), but software people? Investment banking is one of the few places where people won't balk at those rates. There are many other profitable businesses that could afford it, if you can prove your ROI to them, but those industries (manufacturing, etc) are much further behind on the curve than ones where the competitive advantage of good software is already well understood (finance, tech).
- 300bps 12y ago
  However the thing to remember is that most businesses aren't throwing the kind of cash that they can pay a programmer $250/hr. I disagree with this. In fact, one of my largest side job customers is a trash company and I can give you an example of one of the projects I worked on. For every job he does, there is a variable charge both from his supplier (another trash company) and his customer. Original state was that he had a bookkeeper that he paid $70,000 per year that calculated, recorded, charged and followed-up on the revenue and expense of this variable charge for every job. I came in and modified his dispatching system to do all this work in a fully automated way. This did two things: 1) Eliminated a $70,000 per year (salary) bookkeeper that all in was probably costing $100,000 per year with benefits, 401k, medicare taxes, social security taxes, etc. 2) Increased net revenue for these variable charges by $100,000 per year. With the bookkeeper formerly doing this all manually, she was only catching a small percentage of the revenue but paying all the expenses. (Because guess who was the squeaky wheel in this transaction?) What is a $200,000 per year bottom line improvement worth to the average small business? There are many ways to evaluate this. Small businesses often look at payback period. A good payback period for a project is typically considered one year or two years. If that is the case, then the project is worth $200,000 to $400,000 to the customer. Now consider that the whole project actually took me 45 hours that I billed him at $200 per hour for a total cost of $9,000. His payback period is now SIXTEEEN DAYS. More sophisticated small businesses as well as almost all larger U.S. businesses will consider the time value of money and actually calculate an NPV and IRR for the project. In any way that you measure the profitability of this project or similar ones, the reality is you could charge $1,000 per hour and still make it a "no brainer" for the client. There are plenty of unique need transaction-based companies that are in the same boat. And honestly that's why I'm moving to value based pricing. Hourly based pricing is asinine. I should get paid based on the value I bring to a company, not the amount of time I spend sitting in a chair typing.
- antjanus 12y ago
  I think the reason why rates fluctuate so much is that developers don't know their worth (positively or negatively). It's nothing you can truly measure. There are shoddy developers with $150 rate and great developers with a $70 rate. In all kinds of different cities and situations. Sure, you can throw in a collection of achievements, but then you could just as easily end up with that whiz kid and spaghetti code while your best developer works under NDAs and has nothing to show for it. So how do you even value yourself? You say that you're better than average but how do you know that? Are you faster? Better at architecting apps? Is it the business side or communications? I honestly don't know about myself but balk at the idea of trying to find out and push my rate at that range. Either I'd be positively surprised (and subsequently depressed because high-paying full-time work is difficult to find) or negatively surprised...which would just suck.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
dminor 12y ago
> I find all the side programming work I want @ $150-$200 per hour. That's pretty impressive. I find that people paying a reasonable wage inevitably want someone who is available during typical working hours. Is this for a particular niche?
- rhizome 12y ago
  A client who tries to control your time of availability or location (requiring on-site, for example) may (may) be committing a 1099 violation.
  - peteretep 12y ago
    And in the UK, is endangering your IR35 status...
clueless123 12y ago
Just get into SAP, PeopleSoft, Oracle or any of other enterprise software, be half good at it and make $200+ per hour.. Be ready to sell your engineer soul & any resemblance of quality principles in the process..
- charlieflowers 12y ago
  Is this still true? These gigs don't appear to be nearly as common as they were a few years ago.
chrishynes 12y ago
Curious here, willing to share how you're able to source part time work at $200/hr? I've been doing the same sort of thing, but: a) have only been able to find people through personal contacts (limiting the pool) b) most want full time, not part time c) max I've been able to find is $100/hr Are you doing very specialized stuff that commands more? Or maybe have a pool of contacts or location where people are willing to pay for the value you deliver? I'm not asking you to give away all the secrets, but I'm wondering what I can do better. Better sales, better way to find clients?

by 300bps 12y ago

dasil003 12y ago

> Do "rockstar programmers" really work so cheaply? Absolutely. You can find amazing programmers even in San Francisco for < $150/hr. But the thing is that software development is a market for lemons in the worst sense. In fact I can't think of a hiring market that is more opaque. You have clients who are technologically illiterate, and then you have massive Dunning-Kruger effect from the fact that knowing how to FTP a file to a Linux server made everyone worship them as a computer "genius" from a young age. Then you have the fact that the quality of the deliverable is inherently hard to measure. If the expert software craftsman builds something that is rock solid and scalable for 10 years, it might not be appreciated as much as the spaghetti-code time bomb that a whiz kid drops on their plate in half the time but ends up requiring a complete rewrite. Heck, even after being a professional web developer for 15 years, all I can say about myself is that I am better than average, but only because I've worked with hundreds of developers and seen that the average is not great. I have no idea really how much less valuable I am than the elites. I even suspect that context plays a big role in the relative merits of different developers. It sounds like you're moving up the food chain in terms of being able to deliver value. Expert programmers who also understand business are thin on the ground and exponentially more valuable than either one of those skillsets in isolation. However the thing to remember is that most businesses aren't throwing the kind of cash that they can pay a programmer $250/hr. Lawyers can make that much because of the nature of the work (ie. time-limited, risk mitigation), but software people? Investment banking is one of the few places where people won't balk at those rates. There are many other profitable businesses that could afford it, if you can prove your ROI to them, but those industries (manufacturing, etc) are much further behind on the curve than ones where the competitive advantage of good software is already well understood (finance, tech).

300bps 12y ago
However the thing to remember is that most businesses aren't throwing the kind of cash that they can pay a programmer $250/hr. I disagree with this. In fact, one of my largest side job customers is a trash company and I can give you an example of one of the projects I worked on. For every job he does, there is a variable charge both from his supplier (another trash company) and his customer. Original state was that he had a bookkeeper that he paid $70,000 per year that calculated, recorded, charged and followed-up on the revenue and expense of this variable charge for every job. I came in and modified his dispatching system to do all this work in a fully automated way. This did two things: 1) Eliminated a $70,000 per year (salary) bookkeeper that all in was probably costing $100,000 per year with benefits, 401k, medicare taxes, social security taxes, etc. 2) Increased net revenue for these variable charges by $100,000 per year. With the bookkeeper formerly doing this all manually, she was only catching a small percentage of the revenue but paying all the expenses. (Because guess who was the squeaky wheel in this transaction?) What is a $200,000 per year bottom line improvement worth to the average small business? There are many ways to evaluate this. Small businesses often look at payback period. A good payback period for a project is typically considered one year or two years. If that is the case, then the project is worth $200,000 to $400,000 to the customer. Now consider that the whole project actually took me 45 hours that I billed him at $200 per hour for a total cost of $9,000. His payback period is now SIXTEEEN DAYS. More sophisticated small businesses as well as almost all larger U.S. businesses will consider the time value of money and actually calculate an NPV and IRR for the project. In any way that you measure the profitability of this project or similar ones, the reality is you could charge $1,000 per hour and still make it a "no brainer" for the client. There are plenty of unique need transaction-based companies that are in the same boat. And honestly that's why I'm moving to value based pricing. Hourly based pricing is asinine. I should get paid based on the value I bring to a company, not the amount of time I spend sitting in a chair typing.
antjanus 12y ago
I think the reason why rates fluctuate so much is that developers don't know their worth (positively or negatively). It's nothing you can truly measure. There are shoddy developers with $150 rate and great developers with a $70 rate. In all kinds of different cities and situations. Sure, you can throw in a collection of achievements, but then you could just as easily end up with that whiz kid and spaghetti code while your best developer works under NDAs and has nothing to show for it. So how do you even value yourself? You say that you're better than average but how do you know that? Are you faster? Better at architecting apps? Is it the business side or communications? I honestly don't know about myself but balk at the idea of trying to find out and push my rate at that range. Either I'd be positively surprised (and subsequently depressed because high-paying full-time work is difficult to find) or negatively surprised...which would just suck.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

dminor 12y ago

> I find all the side programming work I want @ $150-$200 per hour. That's pretty impressive. I find that people paying a reasonable wage inevitably want someone who is available during typical working hours. Is this for a particular niche?

rhizome 12y ago
A client who tries to control your time of availability or location (requiring on-site, for example) may (may) be committing a 1099 violation.
- peteretep 12y ago
  And in the UK, is endangering your IR35 status...

clueless123 12y ago

Just get into SAP, PeopleSoft, Oracle or any of other enterprise software, be half good at it and make $200+ per hour.. Be ready to sell your engineer soul & any resemblance of quality principles in the process..

charlieflowers 12y ago
Is this still true? These gigs don't appear to be nearly as common as they were a few years ago.

chrishynes 12y ago

Curious here, willing to share how you're able to source part time work at $200/hr? I've been doing the same sort of thing, but: a) have only been able to find people through personal contacts (limiting the pool) b) most want full time, not part time c) max I've been able to find is $100/hr Are you doing very specialized stuff that commands more? Or maybe have a pool of contacts or location where people are willing to pay for the value you deliver? I'm not asking you to give away all the secrets, but I'm wondering what I can do better. Better sales, better way to find clients?