"Uri Guttman" [EMAIL PROTECTED]>... > "The people we did hire have all written books on PERL that are > available at amazon.com and are willing to work between $15 and > $35 per hour [...] i find that hard to believe on all counts.
and "Randal L. Schwartz" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote... > $35/hr as a salaried employee ($70K/year plus benefits) probably *is* > a middle-class family-supporting wage [...] But $35/hr as a *contractor* > is pretty darn low. i think you've both fallen prey to a the same trap i recently fell face first into. MLB (Major League Baseball) posted a job here a while back, contract/on-site. i applied -- i was interviewed by three people, and i think all was going quite well. except that, you see, as a bit of background on me, i was self employed from 1997 - 2000 charging a rate of $70/hour for miscellaneous perl and web development jobs. then in 2000 i took a salaried position at 65K/yr (32.50/hr) and then took a better position in 2001 at 85K! (42.50/hour!). the bubble burst, and i was subsequently laid off, for months before interviewing at MLB. the manager at MLB said this was a full-time (40/hour per week) *contract* ...that was expected to last 4 months. in fact it was expected to last indefinitely but the mod_perl/mason group at MLB, vastly outnumbered by Java developers, had by then only secured funding approval for a 4-month contract. one of the developers i interviewed with mentioned that he himself was still a contractor, and had been hired under a similar short-term arrangement but was still there, well over a year later. so to make a long story short, they called about a week later to ask me when i could start and, as an afterthought, what my hourly rate was. my brain farted, and i answered $70. after all, i *was* contracting again, they were *only* offering a "contract", not a salary, and that was my hourly contract rate. he asked me if i was "flexible" on that? fart still wheezing, i said no, not really. looking back, i mostly had said no because i had recently discounted my rate to around $50 for a few new clients just to land their business, and now was stuck billing them at that rate forever, and had been kicking myself for this just that day. the guy politely said he'd talk to his manager and let me know. i never heard from them again :-( the moral of the story is that, yes $35/hour (even $25/hr!) *is* a decent rate, IF you're billing 40/hours per week, like clockwork! and just because it's a "contract" does not necessarily mean that it's *not* 40 hours/week -- most contract/onsite jobs posted here, probably are in full-time. companies are just contracting to fill positions that they might have hired someone for in the past, because they don't have to pay for employment taxes, and employee benefits. they don't have the same obligations to a contractor as they do to an employee, which makes contracting full-time, a great way to "try before you buy". in this economy, it allows them to contract 3 people for the same position, and in a couple of weeks decide who is best, and let the other two go with no muss, no fuss. it wasn't until after i didn't hear back from them, that i realized that they had made it quite clear that it was a Monday to Friday, 9-5 full-time onsite position, for which i'd just have to pay my own taxes (which is fine with me -- i just wouldn't get benefits, but hey, i pay my own taxes and insurance as a contractor anyway... and i don't have the reliable 40-hour/week billing!) but yet i had stupidly told them i wanted what amounts to $140,000/yr salary and would settle for no less! <smacks self in head> -- oh, well. we live, we learn, we cry, we learn. we lose, we learn. -dave (hoping MLB is listening, since he's now taken a "Real Job" with benefits, but paying Quite A Bit Less... actually only around twenty-cough-ahem-something-mumble per hour... )
