Ok, this is a profession which will take at least a year of study to gain profincy enough to make it a job. Most likely you'll end up getting an associates degree (2yr), Bachelors Degree (4yr) or Masters Degree (5yr?). Some will just buy a "Teach yourself Visual Basic" book to pick up basics and go from there.
So how much would you think an educated profession would pay?
I know pet groomers who learn their trade in weeks (not master status, but being a master programmer could take years or even decades) and get paid $20+ an hour.
I know my friend who knows how to play the keyboard (amongst other things, he's a in a reagae group) and can charge $60 dollars an hour for keyboarding lessons.
But in my experience, a lot of people balk at computer programming, web design and just general computer prices.
I own my own lil buisiness. Its mostly a side gig which I handle all of my computer related transactions though.
I get people who want me to come to their house, set up a system, figure out what componants they need switched (got a USB scanner, but an old arse win98pc), etc.
Then I tell them that Its $50 an hour (on average) and quote them that thats an hours work. Now it could be more or less. I also have to travel there. These people either freak out "I thought it would be like $10 an hour!" or be like "But that only took 29 minutes, so I'll only pay half".
I'm sorry, I make $10 an hour at my day job. I don't think its worth a Value Meal at McDonalds to drive to someones house and deal with their 8 year old system.
As of now, I'm fed up with people who think that a job is worth an actual hourly wage. I won't even mention the word hour anymore. You get all of these wage slaves who get paid for their warm body filling a slot for a certain number of hours and they get numb to professions which don't charge by the hour.
The other day I'm at my day job and another employee sees me with my laptop. "Can you make a website?" he asks. "Sure I can. Its $50 a page as a basic rate. Maybe less if its really basic, maybe more if its complex. Adding in any programming will make it much more expensive" So he tells me that its not so bad. He tells me roughly what he wants, I open up dreamweaver and make a rough layout of what he described with ipso facto text.
"Thats it? I could do that! How can you charge $50 for that?"
Now I don't particularily like this guy and its looking like he's backing out and insulting my work/eductation.
"You can do it? Then do it. Go to school for 2 years, put in more than the average amount of work to be at the top of the class, pay 7000 for college and forget about a steady fulltime job, so cut an additional 8000 a year off your yearly income. Buy the software for close to a thousand dollars and a laptop for 1,500. Then you can design a basic web page for a customer in 15 minutes. But the customer won't know exactly what they want on the page and will take days to get their content to you and probbobly ask you to change things 2 or 3 times. Then you can discuss with them why they want to underpay you for all of your education and expenses."
He looked kind of dumbstruck for a second and decided that he could find someone cheaper to make a website for the product he's trying to sell. I'm not sure which part is scary, that he's trying to sell something and balking at 50 dollars for his advertising or that I"m sure someone out there will do it for less.
Thats one thing that has surprised me recently. I'm doing a programming project which would probobly take some of you guys like a few nights, but takes me much longer because I need to learn ado.net to do it. I'm getting some decent pay for this and learning things I need to learn anyways.
In my internet searching, I've found "Rent-a-coder" type services which frankly scare the hell out of me.
I'm seeing an ad looking for a programmer who is fully top notch and professional with experience doing werehouse database tracking AND with examples as a resume to do a fully custom programming job. Now it said the bid was 250 dollars. I don't know if they expected to pay someone "top notch" 250 dollars to do this or if someone actually agreed to do it for 250 dollars. I don't know which one is scarier. I don't know if I'd sell a program I'd written for warehouse tracking (non custom, already been written and finished) for 250.
I understand the concept of experienced programmers and work. You already have much of the work done and can probobly lift much of it into another project. Also experience is speed.
What has taken me almost two weeks to do, if I had to do it over again (or something similar) I could do in a single night.
But $250? If you can get done in like 4 or 5 hours... I can see how a project you think is easy turns into trouble - and time.
Anyone else have any positive or negative experience freelancing? Any good practices? Mistakes?
Does a programmer need to sell their soul to a corporation to make a solid living programming?
So how much would you think an educated profession would pay?
I know pet groomers who learn their trade in weeks (not master status, but being a master programmer could take years or even decades) and get paid $20+ an hour.
I know my friend who knows how to play the keyboard (amongst other things, he's a in a reagae group) and can charge $60 dollars an hour for keyboarding lessons.
But in my experience, a lot of people balk at computer programming, web design and just general computer prices.
I own my own lil buisiness. Its mostly a side gig which I handle all of my computer related transactions though.
I get people who want me to come to their house, set up a system, figure out what componants they need switched (got a USB scanner, but an old arse win98pc), etc.
Then I tell them that Its $50 an hour (on average) and quote them that thats an hours work. Now it could be more or less. I also have to travel there. These people either freak out "I thought it would be like $10 an hour!" or be like "But that only took 29 minutes, so I'll only pay half".
I'm sorry, I make $10 an hour at my day job. I don't think its worth a Value Meal at McDonalds to drive to someones house and deal with their 8 year old system.
As of now, I'm fed up with people who think that a job is worth an actual hourly wage. I won't even mention the word hour anymore. You get all of these wage slaves who get paid for their warm body filling a slot for a certain number of hours and they get numb to professions which don't charge by the hour.
The other day I'm at my day job and another employee sees me with my laptop. "Can you make a website?" he asks. "Sure I can. Its $50 a page as a basic rate. Maybe less if its really basic, maybe more if its complex. Adding in any programming will make it much more expensive" So he tells me that its not so bad. He tells me roughly what he wants, I open up dreamweaver and make a rough layout of what he described with ipso facto text.
"Thats it? I could do that! How can you charge $50 for that?"
Now I don't particularily like this guy and its looking like he's backing out and insulting my work/eductation.
"You can do it? Then do it. Go to school for 2 years, put in more than the average amount of work to be at the top of the class, pay 7000 for college and forget about a steady fulltime job, so cut an additional 8000 a year off your yearly income. Buy the software for close to a thousand dollars and a laptop for 1,500. Then you can design a basic web page for a customer in 15 minutes. But the customer won't know exactly what they want on the page and will take days to get their content to you and probbobly ask you to change things 2 or 3 times. Then you can discuss with them why they want to underpay you for all of your education and expenses."
He looked kind of dumbstruck for a second and decided that he could find someone cheaper to make a website for the product he's trying to sell. I'm not sure which part is scary, that he's trying to sell something and balking at 50 dollars for his advertising or that I"m sure someone out there will do it for less.
Thats one thing that has surprised me recently. I'm doing a programming project which would probobly take some of you guys like a few nights, but takes me much longer because I need to learn ado.net to do it. I'm getting some decent pay for this and learning things I need to learn anyways.
In my internet searching, I've found "Rent-a-coder" type services which frankly scare the hell out of me.
I'm seeing an ad looking for a programmer who is fully top notch and professional with experience doing werehouse database tracking AND with examples as a resume to do a fully custom programming job. Now it said the bid was 250 dollars. I don't know if they expected to pay someone "top notch" 250 dollars to do this or if someone actually agreed to do it for 250 dollars. I don't know which one is scarier. I don't know if I'd sell a program I'd written for warehouse tracking (non custom, already been written and finished) for 250.
I understand the concept of experienced programmers and work. You already have much of the work done and can probobly lift much of it into another project. Also experience is speed.
What has taken me almost two weeks to do, if I had to do it over again (or something similar) I could do in a single night.
But $250? If you can get done in like 4 or 5 hours... I can see how a project you think is easy turns into trouble - and time.
Anyone else have any positive or negative experience freelancing? Any good practices? Mistakes?
Does a programmer need to sell their soul to a corporation to make a solid living programming?