On 3/05/2012 17:38, Raphael wrote: > I agree very much with Daniel. > And Cal is right £1700/month (which is approximately ~2100EUR and ~2750USD) > really is a good starting goal for a (web) developer (AFTER tax!!!). > The problem is a lot of us (developers) - we are very poor business > economics. And why? Well this is simple: > we spend our day-time and night-time MO-FR and weekend SA-SU (even holiday) > with IT-subjects, > new programming techniques, operating systems, new high tech trends etc... > Don't get me wrong, this is really good. There is only missing one single > point - we should investigate a minimum of our time in business > economics and stop underselling ourselves. > > This should be at least a 4hours talk on every single Tech-University or > Engineering-School before the final exams. A lot of highly > qualified engineers graduate from Tech-Schools and Universities worldwide > with no idea > how much the hourly rate is in their business sector. And this is what really > brings wages down. I don't want to be them experts, just to > know a minimum would be sufficient. I remember myself, its not far back in > time, I had no idea... ;-) > > Thanks for participating > http://develissimo.com/forum/topic/107887/ > > Raphael
Another problem is that a lot of people think they "know all about computers" and as a result, greatly undervalue the skills needed to do IT the right way. Yes, it's possible to quickly throw some code together, but what if you want to add a feature or solve a bug on that kind of code? Good luck, this is when one really starts to loose time and realize that it's better to work following certain standards. Bosses usually don't get that too. Documentation? Nah, who needs it. And so on. They don't understand that in a lot of IT jobs, you have to read a lot, learn new things every day. We can never go to our jobs and not face a new problem almost every day. This is what people don't see. These are the hidden costs and what makes our job difficult. And yes, I believe customers should be paying a certain percentage for this knowledge in the form of a higher, more realistic hour rate. The knowledge benefits their projects. I once told a customer that complained about an already very low rate, if he would paint my house at that rate. You can guess the answer. How come people who do manual labor, can ask for certain rates, but ICT staff can't ? How many times to they have to study new techniques or whatever? Sure, they do manual labor which takes a toll, but sitting in a chair all day also takes it's toll (neck and back) and we need to solve problems every day, and learn new technology very often. Can't post an hourly rate I used, as I only programmed and did IT in freelance after hours. I'm currently employed as ICT manager which luckily also involves some programming (Django and wxPython amongst others). However, I'm thinking about what might be possible going freelance again. Unfortunately Python and Django aren't widespread YET :) in Belgium. My 2 cents Regards, Benedict -- Benedict Verheyen Debian, Python and Django user GnuPG Public Key 0x712CBB8D Headcoach West-Flanders Tribes -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django users" group. To post to this group, send email to django-users@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to django-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/django-users?hl=en.
