SA programmers and web coders too expensive

[twinscythe12332]

Quite true, we do refuse to get paid less. But last time I checked, we're still getting paid. I agree with you. the end user is the one who is eventually using my product, and who has down the line paid me. First of all, I guess I should say a tad about my work environment, and maybe reference my old job. my first programming salary was R3500. after the 3 month probation, I went up to 4. this was when I was in a solutions based IT company. My opinions viewed from this point onward, are mine alone. we had a small group of developers, normally working in teams of 2 to finish off the projects we were given. our deadlines, were normally about 2 weeks to finish a decent sized website. we had a "leave any comments you want" after an error screen was given. some of those that were given were quite livid in detail.

when we got phoned, there was less of this livid detail, and more "could you please." so yeah, I've been phoned by customers. I know exactly what they think of me. I dislike dealing with them for these reasons. My Customer relations is not perfect. this is why I feel an it desk can bridge the gap. unfortunately, this doesn't always do so. Alta, your ability to speak to a customer will outweigh mine by thousands. you've taught, amongst other things, so you know how to get a message across... why did you stop teaching by the way? Programmers are funny people. we respond differently.

we have our people out in the field who have people phoning them and giving them errors, and quite often they give some extremely nice detail on how they achieved that error. I get that. We aren't ignoring the end user. I could say that this is a good situation where we have an "IT desk" if you will, and that I get these errors without having to speak to the customer. win win.
I guess my specific job and company are a little different, since we offer a solution but are not solutions based. kinda like what you're doing, as far as I can see.


I too laugh now at the whole "extra" bit. still happens. people are out there to make a profit, so naturally they would like to chuck on additional extra costs. I doubt a ferrari takes 2.5 mil to produce... but people pay it anyway. I think that when people look at software, they're looking at the presentation layer. if you have some financial calculation program that took 2 years to write, and 5 minutes to execute... do you think most will truly appreciate the 2 years it took to research, craft, learn from the mistakes, get it into testing, find the bugs, do further testing, and so on... one thing I can definitely say is that the techniques that are being used, and the programs are helping move the development process along.

um, as weird as this sounds, what are some of the quoted rates to create a website that performs a fair amount of functionality that you have heard? I would be lying if I told you I knew =/

eh, moving on to why we cost so much I guess:
A) we have high self worth.
B) we know not everyone can program.
C) we get paid. (sad but true. we wouldn't be getting paid so high if there wasn't that willing person to do so)
D) we can code wherever. we're programmers, give us a good PC and a comfy environment, we'll code. I don't know, I guess we just don't mind job hopping. coding is coding. if I can get that extra few grand over the hill, what stops me from doing it?
E) Experience (was not intending to get the letters right =P). for some weird reason, experience costs a heck more. if you get a "newbie" straight out of college, you could probably initially pay him less. he could be a complete mastermind. just remember that D comes into effect.
F) supply. coupled with demand. plenty of people demand, how many people supply? why do you think Indian programmers cost less, or are easier to come by?

I protect my line of work, not the solutions. if the solutions are so high-priced, must be because someone will pay for them.

finally, don't worry, the conversion errors was just an example. not everybody out there will know what a string and an int are

EDIT:
forgot to add in, programming languages fall in and out of favour quite rapidly. legacy will often cost more due this.

[Dave A]

On this "who interfaces with the client" angle - I've got an observation on my own behaviour in this respect:

When I am interfacing with people (negotiating, counselling, influencing etc.), I seem to have reasonable social skills.
However, when I am working on coding issues I become seriously anti-social. As in stay away if you expect any kind of empathy at all.

Anyone else experience that?

[Alta Murray]

Hi Chatmaster,

Are you silly? I have read some of your replies, I am not going to disagree with you. Of course we are not overpaid, my fees in a company that can handle it, my Indian blood is showing as my husband so kindly put it, runs up to R 560.00 per hour or part thereof.

Seriously, yes, I think we are overpaid at the top end, who charges R 560.00 an hour? At our level, that's the going rate and yes the customer pays up. However, I always evaluate the company first, and sometimes take them on board for free without finding viable data that I can use for research. I help them grow that's the only satisfaction I get.

Our existing packages are dirt cheap though.

But your prices seem very reasonable, darn gosh it, (keeping it clean boys), if only I knew about you before we went through the whole schlepp of doing our web site.

I think this just means our advertising stinks! People can't find us readily, and I am very cautious getting software if advertised on the Internet. I think we find ourselves in a hard place. Let's brainstorm on this!!!

[Alta Murray]

Hi, I am so, so sorry for being so harsh with you Twinschyte(?) too lazy to check the spelling lol. From what you wrote I thought you were much older, and when I saw your picture, I felt like a complete louse, with my son laughing his head off at me!

I am very partial to the young bloods in the field, and I feel that for now, you should not interact with the end-user at all. Your job is on the screen right now, so that you can focus completely on developing your skills and to push yourself to the utmost in your discipline. Age has nothing to do with intelligence, don;t get me wrong, in fact you young bloods are awesome, seem to be born with it, and we guys had to study what was back then abstract concepts. So you tend to catch up very quickly, don't worry, and of course then overtake the old dogs!

I still give training, but teaching does not pay and is very time intensive. For every hour you teach, you put in two hours of prep, as I want the classes to be fun. And it was, laughed ourselves silly, so I do miss that type of interaction.

Ja, with sofware you are never done studying, just when you are in a comfort zone with coding, along comes the next new big thing, and you hit the books and the lovely words from your mouth again....

[Alta Murray]

Hi Dave,

It is because you function non-verbally when coding, and then have to switch to your verbal part of your brain when interacting. I found it very tough at the beginning to 'switch off' but I am a Vincent Norman Peale disciple, so I focused on the positive side and now see it as a welcome break.

Truth is that your brain keeps on working for you, even better when you are doing something else, as it is programmed to find solutions,so whilst you interact, just be aware of the fact that you are actually working with your brain. It's all in the attitude.

IF i get stuck with coding, I go and do something completely different, and I do come up with the solution then.

What I can not bridge, is that coding has done horrible things to my spelling!! I used to be such a good speller, I could just 'sense' a mistaken, but I am rotten at it now. I think I mis-spelled disciple?

[twinscythe12332]

Hi Dave,

It is because you function non-verbally when coding, and then have to switch to your verbal part of your brain when interacting. I found it very tough at the beginning to 'switch off' but I am a Vincent Norman Peale disciple, so I focused on the positive side and now see it as a welcome break.

Truth is that your brain keeps on working for you, even better when you are doing something else, as it is programmed to find solutions,so whilst you interact, just be aware of the fact that you are actually working with your brain. It's all in the attitude.

IF i get stuck with coding, I go and do something completely different, and I do come up with the solution then.

What I can not bridge, is that coding has done horrible things to my spelling!! I used to be such a good speller, I could just 'sense' a mistaken, but I am rotten at it now. I think I mis-spelled disciple?

I tend to just leave the problem, go to sleep and when I wake up, I normally have it solved. Even though it does kind of suck that you wake up thinking code

Twinschyte(?)

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt on that one(does look rather a dodge misinterpretation of my SN). scroll up or scroll down is not too hard.

From what you wrote I thought you were much older, and when I saw your picture, I felt like a complete louse, with my son laughing his head off at me!

don't know about that one either... either you just told me my use of the english language is at a more mature level (erm thanks if this is the case), or you automatically assumed I was a ballie(and probably owned a business) would be nice, but no, I'm a "young blood" programmer.

Ja, with sofware you are never done studying, just when you are in a comfort zone with coding, along comes the next new big thing, and you hit the books and the lovely words from your mouth again....

quite true, but at the same time, someone has to have a huge price tag for maintaining all those old systems

who charges R 560.00 an hour?

yeah... I'd answer the phone after 2 rings tops for that.

so anyway *coughs* back to the software is expensive topic...

I think the success with rent a coder is due to the fact that it is like having a whole load of developers all applying for a job. from everywhere on the internet. so you've got your high density programming countries mixing it up with your lower density. so even if some local guy turns his nose up at the money you're offering, there's always someone who will be there to say "hey, that's money"

when you're dealing with just the local guys, you've got that almost limited number of choices. and normally, you'll be dealing with a company, rather than the lone wolf developer. so, everything adds up.

[Chatmaster]

But your prices seem very reasonable, darn gosh it, (keeping it clean boys), if only I knew about you before we went through the whole schlepp of doing our web site.

To be honest, I only offer 2 packages and it is not that I am advertising it as you will not find it anywhere on my websites as I know the moment I go public I might not be able to handle the pressure once I do advertise. It is build on .net2 with SQL. It is designed on a CMS that we use inhouse. The costing is therefor structured to cover future development costs of the system as well as the existing time it takes to design at a fee of R150/h, I normally charge R450 an hour At this stage it offers free addons like a forum, blog, rss, news etc. It is part of a much bigger project that will hopefully be rolled out globally one day, so the fees I currently charge are based on a much bigger project and existing website owner will automatically also get the updates as development continue. Development are slow due to a lack of money atm but i am trying to keep things balanced.

I just firmly believe that when you charge a fee it is because you are worth it and you never go down on your price unless it is for the right business reasons. People especially in the IT sector I know often mislead others with the true cost of their work, old source code suddenly becomes handy and if you have been coding correctly it is a simple process of just plugging in old code into new projects with minor changes. Although this potentially saves you time you should still charge what you are worth and experience certainly counts to your advantage.

With regards to a techie answering calls and talking to customers, I personally do not recommend it, exceptions can be made but in general, techies has a definite problem communicating from the end user's perspective and vice versa. I believe in having someone that can bridge the communications process to ensure that the issues are understood from both sides.

[Alta Murray]

Hi, Chatmaster(head),

I do agree with you to a certain extent about the techies, however a very interesting new post opened up in the IT industry in 2000. They realized that they need a liason between the customers and the develop.team that are actually presentable, are very good at system analysis and development, and are nice to look at! Do you know that people think anyone that can code must be ugly? I was offered R40 grand p.m excluding my wardrobe & grooming allowance + car and entertainment budget. And that was in 2000!

A resounding NO from my side, I refused to be window dressing, and am too much of a free spirit. SO here are to us who are presentable and doing it all on our own.

Yes, the fee is high because with experience you fix and blah-blah much quicker, so I guess it pans out in the end.

Also I was asked in as a special trainer by Armscor to train a lady who held 3 degrees and she had spend a year in training at the Naval Academy in America. The whole training plan was based with the end-goal in mind of gearing her up to judge the prices charged on out-going projects. Boy, they were overcharged in the past because it is so hard to judge whether you are being ripped off or not.

Not hopefully globally, when you go globally..... might I suggest that you perhaps start training people to help you out when you do hit it big? University students are always on the look-out for internships, which you of course don;t pay them a red cent for, as I had several calls last year from agencies stating that their clients refuse to hire the kids straight from uni. I can understand that as you need at least another year of investment in on-job training that is costly. but the students are willing to go at it for nothing as it is something they can add on to their CV which really helps them. It also gives you the oppurtunity to pick only the cream for your own business, so both sides win. I should just warn you that it is very time consuming and yet again should be viewed as a long-term investment. Saturdays work well, usually, it did for me, and I am glad I did it.

I know I shouldn't be so soft-hearted when it comes to my pricing structure, my husband is always on my case, but I only want to help. I love the huge grin on your hourly rate -- but let's look at it this way -- when your good you are good!!

I am also changing your name from this day forth -- You shall be known as global master.

... don;t even talk about money and development -- whilst you R&D you make not a red cent, but it is tax deductable, which reminds me the tax man is looking for my 2006 thingy. Hate admin!

[Alta Murray]

Made me laugh so much again! Naah, no need for benefit of the doubt, I am way too honest for that, just call it as I see it!

Your grammar? Your grammar?! Now that would never have made me figure you as much older. It was your argument, so forcefully put and well-thought out, which is only indicative of a high IQ. Also, your writing comes out in an absolute torrent, as if the words can not keep up with the thoughts, also indicative of intel. You can be glad you were never in my class, as I would have challenged you, always upping the bar.

You write in a torrent and I can only speed read, so we shall miss each other, prepare yourself for many a misunderstanding I guess, for which I apologise in advance.

Funny how intelligence quickly makes you lose the dreams and enthusiasm in this life, you are supposed to still be caught up in the stage of " Look-at-me-I've just lost my training wheels' being highly chuffed with yourself for making it into the industry. It is a hard industry to crack and your peers seem so happy to just be an insider, and here you are having discussions like an old dog. Good on you,(Wait let me scroll up) Twinscyte, okay very dodgy, is a schyte not something the angel of death carries?

Waking up with code? I have dreams where I am actually inside the code, and husband is the same, I do declare us all odd.

Agree with the rest, pick a new topic. Like do you find that developers on average are wild children who never could conform to society? Love to rate your grammar on that.

[twinscythe12332]

ha ha ha, wrong again on both accounts =/ twinscythe. a scythe is indeed the grim reaper's weapon of choice. I was destined to become one of the nerds ever since my father let me onto an old DOS machine and allowed me to play the few games on there. from a counseling lesson in which CTI(Computer Training Institute) came and gave a demonstration, I chose my original language (JAVA) and then did a half language in C# (bare essentials stuff, but nice and quick to pick up from the structure of JAVA).

I don't know about wild children... But yeah, we tend to be distant. We think on another level (which would also explain why we aren't good at answering phones), and often society can be less than simple to fit into. The complexities involved in social science are often lost to a programmer's logical thought.

but hey, that's my opinion on the matter. And I've already been deemed odd by my mother. Can be quite funny sometimes =P

[Norri]

Eish, I didn't read everything, so I'm mainly replying to the first page or so of posts

I'm on Rent A Coder and it's very different to how I do business locally. If you have a good reputation on RAC, as a coder, you can land $20,000 jobs which is great for people like me who don't like doing the whole corporate-meetings thing just to get good-paying work.

However, to get to that point, you have to compete with coders from 3rd-world countries who can quite easily afford to charge $65 for a $1,500 project (by 1st-world standards).

Thing is, you can get cheap labour from India to work in just about any sector where physical presence isn't required. Does that make local guys expensive? No, not at all.

The cost of living in India is nothing compared to the cost of living here. Add to that fact that South Africans are used to "the good life" and you can quickly see why you won't get me for less than $50 an hour while you can get an Indian chap for about $5 an hour quite easily.

The point I'm trying to make is that I like being married, having a car, living in a 3-bedroom townhouse and having 3 cats, a dog and a rat. Also, those things are much more expensive here than in India.

So my cost of living is greater.
So I charge more.

I hardly see it as a problem, merely a different choice in lifestyle.

That same Indian coder living here, would probably charge my rates.

The question is, are you getting more or less value for your money? Well, I use RAC for designs and code too and sometimes I get more value, other times I get less. The risk involved in finding the right coder for the job is too great for me to absorb so I do prefer to use local guys.

Add to that how much easier it is to communicate with someone in my timezone who speaks the same language as me and who I can kick up the arse if he stuffs up and you'll understand the difference between local coders and coders from India.

Make no mistake, I use both depending on the size of the project and so on but I'll stick to my local guys when I really need results and can't be bothered testing the waters with a few RAC peeps.

I hope I've added some light to the conversation

[Alta Murray]

Giggles galore, okay I give up on your name and shall use it as a case in point that my spelling is not so hot -- and I did actually scroll up tsk... what I typed the second time round is closer to a rude afrikaans word.

Please pick an easier name or one shall be allocated to you.

Your mother deems you odd and my son deems me odd. As I have been struck by lightning on 3 seperate occassions, my son is now convinced I shall only go down by silver bullet.

Society is all about insincerity and there is no true interaction -- society calls it manners,which to us will not make a lot of sense, and that is okay.

I started off with Pascal, way back in the day when I could not work a mouse -- I kid you not! Then moved onto Delphi, then C, C++ and Visual C, and Java. I find C the true poetry of coding, but in my opinion it is best suited to scientifical coding, whilst Delphi is hot for commercial coding, well, if you know what you are doing anyway. You do have to push delphi beyond its limits to get what you need out of it, but it is the language that was used to let the first man vote from outerspace, it remains a hottie with NASA, so perhaps, just perhaps, they know better than me. Naah!

As to Java being a superset of C, i can't see it at all. Yes, the native language is similar to a certain degree, but I am not a Java fan.

Whilst the rest of the country are off to a long-weekend, let me work, I don;t do weekends sigh

[Alta Murray]

Hi Norri,

Off the cuff, we are living in a 3rd world country, so you can not claim 1st world standards here. Naah, I get what you are saying. By the way I couldn;t wait to see a first world country and I was sorely disappointed.

The point is just that we should find a balance between our fees and affordability. Every business needs software, if you check out business trends and the speed of business it stands to reason that availability & affordability remain key. Our economy is solely dependant on it's small & medium enterprises, did you know that? If we come in with a high fee we exclude the very entities that we need to make our own businesses grow.

Yes, I like my limited edition Audi very much too :-) and my Victorian House, but I have to make it a win-win situation for all concerned.

Software is of it's very nature an evolving entity, so the software we develop grows with the company, I don't think an Indian can provide the services that we do,which eliminates the question of competition from that side.

My pebble in the shoe is this -- you get a hardware guy that charges R 250.00 just to look at a PC, so how much should we charge then? The gap between hardware and coding & developing is so,so big, where does it leave our pricing structure and the client?

[Seagyn Davis]

Hi there,

It will be interesting to see how long and how much the end result comes to.

Site design/development, SEO, add ons and time, when you are entirely happy with the end result then we could compare.

I have heard of companies that do CMS websites for R3000, thats crazy from my side, but a case in point that there are many companies/freelancers out there that would do it for a great price which includes everything.

You also got to keep in mind that costs to live oversees are much lower than they are hear - especially if you compare South Africa's and India's IT infrastructure. They are so far ahead of us they are running a cable to us to give us a fighting chance.

Then lastly onto you site, to be purely honest with you, it looks as if he/she has taken a template and slapped it together for you but for the price you payed and the time it took I must admit that it was a good deal even if you must just get a good web designer to make it look really nice.

Seagyn

[Dave A]

Then lastly onto you site,

Which site are you talking about, Seagyn?