How much for contract programming?

[DunM@]

I'm about to start work as a contract programmer, the specifics of the project are NDA'd, but I can tell you that I'm going to be manging and leading a small team of programmers to write real estate investment software, that will ultimately grow to a mission critical resource (if I do a good job that is). So how much should I ask for hourly? Also, how much should I pay my hirelings?

 

[fluxion]

$30/h for you, $20/h for your hirelings. just pulling that out of my ass though

 

[Earp]

20-30? way to low. Is this the only money exchanging hands? Do those working under you work for you or the company?

Given that you said "Contract programming" I'm going to assume that this is the only money exchanging hands and your hirelings work for you.

First of, given your location of Boulder, you should figure at least $30/h to pay wages, they you have to figure the overhead of taxes (umemployment tax, matching FICA and Medicare tax, etc), add another $10/h. Then you've got to pay benefits, like health insurance, which aren't cheap.

Then of course, there's hardware and software costs. Figure $5000 per developer per year. Of course, that greatly depends on exactly what software your working with. If you start working with a lot of third party components, you can easily reach that price. Or you could keep it under $2000 for certain projects.

Then you have to ask yourself, what are you going to do when the contract ends. You can't just stop paying your employees until you can find another contract.

$100-200 an hour isn't an unreasonable rate to consider for qualified-experienced contract programming labor. That last part is the real kicker. If your a good, well-educated, programmer with a few years of experience under your belt, you could expect that $200 an hour figure. On the otherhand, if you're a college student and this is some work lined up for a family friend's real-estate business, don't expect more than $50.

In short, it's not that simple of an answer.

 

[maw]

$100-200 an hour isn't an unreasonable rate to consider for qualified-experienced contract programming labor. That last part is the real kicker. If your a good, well-educated, programmer with a few years of experience under your belt, you could expect that $200 an hour figure. On the otherhand, if you're a college student and this is some work lined up for a family friend's real-estate business, don't expect more than $50.

true. back in 2000 i was a contractor for about 6 months. I got paid close to $75/hr and thought that was awesome. But when you start subtracting taxes, social security, health care, equipment costs, etc..etc..it turned out that of that $75/hr. i was taking home maybe $30. While this is still a very decent take home income, it was less than half of what i actually charged! There is no way you'll make a decent living as a contractor if you only charge $20-$30 per hour.

 

[fluxion]

20-30? way to low. Is this the only money exchanging hands? Do those working under you work for you or the company?

really? perhaps im lookin at this the wrong way, but $30/h at 40 hours a week works out to $4800 per month, which seems like a decent salary to me. well...$60k a year, i guess maybe that would be more along the lines of starting pay for non-managerial position. so i guess you're right. $100k per year is alot more out here in texas than it is to someone in say California, so i guess that's why it seems like i'm lowballing here. or maybe i just have low expectations having never made over $20k/year haha

in any case i have no experience whatsoever, i just thought i'd throw something out there to spark a reply.

 

[DunM@]

20-30? way to low. Is this the only money exchanging hands? Do those working under you work for you or the company?

Given that you said "Contract programming" I'm going to assume that this is the only money exchanging hands and your hirelings work for you.

You're right on the money, so to speak. As it's currently set up $20/hour is substancially more than I'm set to be making, and it is the only money changing hands.

First of, given your location of Boulder, you should figure at least $30/h to pay wages, they you have to figure the overhead of taxes (umemployment tax, matching FICA and Medicare tax, etc), add another $10/h. Then you've got to pay benefits, like health insurance, which aren't cheap.

Then of course, there's hardware and software costs. Figure $5000 per developer per year. Of course, that greatly depends on exactly what software your working with. If you start working with a lot of third party components, you can easily reach that price. Or you could keep it under $2000 for certain projects.

Then you have to ask yourself, what are you going to do when the contract ends. You can't just stop paying your employees until you can find another contract.

Yeah, I hadn't considered that, I was still psyched to have a real programming job.

$100-200 an hour isn't an unreasonable rate to consider for qualified-experienced contract programming labor. That last part is the real kicker. If your a good, well-educated, programmer with a few years of experience under your belt, you could expect that $200 an hour figure. On the otherhand, if you're a college student and this is some work lined up for a family friend's real-estate business, don't expect more than $50.

The latter is far closer to the case, but it's most definately a step in the right direction. What about joint ownership of the results? In the initial concept meeting the idea what brought up, but I don't expect to see it happen, if it were to, what % should I ask for?

Thanks guys, this has been a real eye-opener for me.

 

[ameoba]

As as contractor, you should probably be bringing in significantly more per hour than you would as a 'regular' employee - numbers at 2-3x the normal rate are pretty normal.

I'm about to start work as a contract programmer, the specifics of the project are NDA'd, but I can tell you that I'm going to be manging and leading a small team of programmers to write real estate investment software, that will ultimately grow to a mission critical resource (if I do a good job that is). So how much should I ask for hourly? Also, how much should I pay my hirelings?
...
You're right on the money, so to speak. As it's currently set up $20/hour is substancially more than I'm set to be making, and it is the only money changing hands.
...
Yeah, I hadn't considered that, I was still psyched to have a real programming job

So what you're saying is that you're going into managing a team of programmers with no experience & planning on writing some large 'mission critical' application?

...just make sure that you've got your own lawyer to handle the contract so you don't get completely fucked when things fail.

 

[MikeF98765]

As as contractor, you should probably be bringing in significantly more per hour than you would as a 'regular' employee - numbers at 2-3x the normal rate are pretty normal.



So what you're saying is that you're going into managing a team of programmers with no experience & planning on writing some large 'mission critical' application?

...just make sure that you've got your own lawyer to handle the contract so you don't get completely fucked when things fail.

QFT

 

[DunM@]

So what you're saying is that you're going into managing a team of programmers with no experience & planning on writing some large 'mission critical' application?

The very long term goal for the project is mission critical, I make no bones that I and my team are going to start out as anything but noobies... and it's not zero experience, I've been programming for 6 months now (professionally, I've been screwing around with code for 3-4 years now), but this is my first time doing it on a contract basis.

 

[Stupendous]

The very long term goal for the project is mission critical, I make no bones that I and my team are going to start out as anything but noobies... and it's not zero experience, I've been programming for 6 months now (professionally, I've been screwing around with code for 3-4 years now), but this is my first time doing it on a contract basis.

Yeah, but what is the largest app you've ever written? Not having an experienced individual is going to hurt development big time. Do you even know some important principles like LSP, ISP, or OCP?

 

[DunM@]

Largest app: not all that impressive. I've written a few games for gits and shiggles and at my last job I was suckered into writing their invoice tracking system (but it was in PHP ), I would say less than five thousand lines of code total for any one project, but I never actually counted.

Yes I am familiar with Open-Closed and whatisname substitution. So, in your more experienced than me opinion, given that we (I've been working for the company I now have a contract with for a number of years) can't afford someone with more experience given the rates that I've heard experienced people would look for, are there any specific pits to jump over or aligators that need swinging that I could look out for (as a person who tends to jump in and think my way out)?

 

[The Resident]

Largest app: not all that impressive. I've written a few games for gits and shiggles and at my last job I was suckered into writing their invoice tracking system (but it was in PHP ), I would say less than five thousand lines of code total for any one project, but I never actually counted.

Yes I am familiar with Open-Closed and whatisname substitution. So, in your more experienced than me opinion, given that we (I've been working for the company I now have a contract with for a number of years) can't afford someone with more experience given the rates that I've heard experienced people would look for, are there any specific pits to jump over or aligators that need swinging that I could look out for (as a person who tends to jump in and think my way out)?

Think your way in, and think your way out. Seriously. "Jumping in and thinking your way out" is a huge pitfall that has killed many a project. The project that you're taking on is going to require a software engineer's discipline and patience for the entire software lifecycle. Hacking something together by the seat of your pants will kill your project very quickly from a variety of angles.

You need at least one person that will seriously take the reigns and strategically think their way through the problem, all the way through requirements, design, code, test, and maintenance. It doesn't have to be a single, dedicated person, but whoever it is should produce a software development plan that describes the development strategy behind the project.

To answer your question, I recommend picking up a book or two on software engineering and studying carefully - there's not just a list of pitfalls and alligators to look out for, but it's an overall philosophy that keeps you from encountering the "pitfalls and alligators" at all, because (to extend the metaphor) proper software engineering will keep the forest from becoming a swamp in the first place.

This is typically the level of effort that goes into software that comes anywhere close to mission-critical. Your inexperienced devs may complain that it's too much overhead to develop under, but trust me, if the software is properly engineered, you will save yourself so much grief, politically, in lifecycle costs, and grey hairs.

 

[DunM@]

Thanks for the info, I'll definately pick up a book. You have raised another question though, and this may or may not be covered in the book I don't yet have; is it better to have one strategically thinking person, or should I make a group endeavor out of the plan-making process?

It's nice to know I'm not the only one who still has a working atari.

 

[ameoba]

How centralized decision planning is is going to depend on the process. IMHO, it's always best to have everyone give input but you need one person that can make the final decision if the group can't reach agreement or else you could end up arguing a minor point forever.

 

[Stupendous]

all the way through requirements, design, code, test, and maintenance.

IMO the waterfall process is not the way to go. It's too strict and does not accomodate change. And you end up delivering the system way after it was conceived. And you generally over-design. I'd look into the Agile/XP approach. It is a much better process for designing software that goes with a business. As time progresses you'll find that generally a business WILL change. With Agile development you can change the system when those changes occur.

I work with many developers who used to do the waterfall process. They won't go back. Agile is the way to go.

One of the things I like about Agile/XP is test driven development. Awesome stuff.

 

[The Resident]

IMO the waterfall process is not the way to go. It's too strict and does not accomodate change. And you end up delivering the system way after it was conceived. And you generally over-design. I'd look into the Agile/XP approach. It is a much better process for designing software that goes with a business. As time progresses you'll find that generally a business WILL change. With Agile development you can change the system when those changes occur.

I work with many developers who used to do the waterfall process. They won't go back. Agile is the way to go.

One of the things I like about Agile/XP is test driven development. Awesome stuff.

Agile / XP has its place, for sure. For simple, fire-and-forget projects, and anything up to medium-size that doesn't need much (if any) management, XP can be a godsend, especially for experienced developers.

For something going into a mission-critical environment, though? Determinism and reproducibilty (read: documentation) are key for critical, production software, especially if you have a really inexperienced staff. Granted, vanilla waterfall is inflexible and takes enormous amounts of time needlessly, but that's why I would recommend the spiral model instead. Or at least something plan-based.

<soapbox>
If I'm expected to maintain a piece of software that a whole business relies on, there had better be a set of customer-approved specifications in place that clearly describes what the software must do. I've been in projects where there were basically no specifications, only a few of the original developers, code that had been written WAY too hastily, and customers whose actual needs differed from their perceived needs. The project was ultimately accepted by the customer, but they CRUCIFIED us with rework throughout the whole thing. If the OP's software is developed using Agile/XP (by totally inexperienced developers at that), is a success, and is promoted to mission-critical status, god help the poor fool that has to go maintain it.
</soapbox>

 

[LBFlashWiz]

as a Flash programmer in SoCal doing HTML, Actionscript, and ASP.NET - I pull in between $45-$75 an hour.

I am under an LLC so I have lots of write-offs and I pay myself a low salary from that LLC to avoid more taxes than I should.