I'd parrot much of what had already been said with the following additions:
- If you go for the low end of the range, you're going to get someone who does simply what you tell them to do. If you're at a museum, I'm going to assert that you probably only partially know that answer, and whoever you you hire, you want them able to push back on your ideas and understanding to get a better end product. - The Boston market is a little unique in that you can more easily find people that are broad, technical generalists with exposure to a ton of different technologies and ideas. This is far better than getting a narrowly defined specialist unless you're already dead-certain that you need this-specific-programming-capability-and-no-more. - No matter where you are, you're going to pay for talent. Sometimes, it pays to be sneaky and while you may want a programmer, if they can also do some other function or add value elsewhere -- oh, I don't know, occasionally helping the IT department by doing active directory scripting, or something -- then you may be better able to support the multi-function position. Be careful with this path, however. You don't want to just end up bogging the person down with things that take them away from their core function. (Full disclosure: My Dir of IT used to work with me back in Boston. He's a programmer (and a good one at that (no, nobody better poach him from me (I'll come and haunt you unpleasantly (seriously)))) but I didn't have the resources to hire him outright as just a programmer. He's also a good IT person and things have been a bit hairy (because of split workloads) as we've done a ton of stuff in the last 2 years, but it got him here, and we've done some decent work. As we can grow the department, we'll move him over to a proper position. - In the private sector in Boston, starting programmers (just out of school) were around $40-50k. Lead programmers were $60-70k. -bw. -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Bruce Wyman, Director of New Technologies Denver Art Museum / 100 W 14th Ave. Pkwy, Denver, CO 80204 office: 720.913.0159 / fax: 720.913.0002 <bwyman at denverartmuseum.org>
