Average wages for programmers
An interesting study shows that the average wage of a C# programmer - $45.77 / hour - is higher than the one of a senior scientist: $43.76.
Information Technology is a profitable career, programmers and system administrators are neither overpaid, nor underpaid, I consider the wages to be fair. The wage comparison with that of a senior scientist doesn’t mean programmers are overpaid; It means scientists should be paid better.
As some of you probably know, I also do so called freelance work. I work on a short-term contract basis for different companies, and I’m also planning to build my own team of programmers, since I sometimes get overwhelmed with work from my clients. Most of the time I deal with clients that pay a fair amount for the projects that they want developed, and thus they receive quality work.
However, browsing RentACoder.com from time to time, I’m shocked when I see some coders and designers that are willing to work over 9 hours for $20. Furthermore, the project is marked as urgent and the work must be continously. Maximum allowed bid is $20, yet I see 5 bids were posted.
Even though some may disagree, $20 for 9 hours of urgent work (and sometimes it takes even longer than originally anticipated) is not normal in any country I know of, and I come from an Eastern European country. It’s normal for outsourcers to have lower prices, but that shouldn’t be the main advantage of outsourcing; other advantages of outsourcing is efficiency over what you would get if you hired a full-time employee inside your company. That’s why I believe $20 to $40 / hour should be what most freelance programmers and designers should charge. It’s still less than half over what the buyer would pay for a full-time employee, and the quality of the work is normally better.
Others for example, are willing to develop websites as complex as Amazon for $100.
Obviously, both the buyer and the seller will not be satisfied in the end, the work will be overwhelming for the seller, and the buyer will definitely not get Amazon.com for $100, and not even close. On RentACoder.com they usually end up in arbitration.
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October 6th, 2006 at 5:49 am
I’m a programmer too. I’ve worked as a freelance also in some projects. I guess the real problem starts from the sites where projects are posted. As we know the politics of those sites is that the freelances must propose a smaller price to win, and some fl are so desperate to win a project. I believe it’s a general thing, always the buyers will earn something, not the freelancers.
The possible reasons for so small prices could be:
- some of us think that they learn something and same time they earn some cash (may look absurd but also true).
- different freelancers, different countries, different economies, different $ currency
- some want so much to earn some money
I believe that those kind of sites and those kind of reasons will always influence the low prices/project. It’s not a good thing…but don’t know how can be stoped cause we’re talking about a so big number of freelancers.
January 22nd, 2007 at 5:05 am
I think most people in the s/w development field who sit on the management posts doing marketting s/w and managing resources(developers) undermine the time and effort factors that the developers have to face or go through during the development course. So developers are generally underpaid at most places. Developers can compromise only by consoling themselves by saying they are learning, gaining experience, and so on. But the fact is till and until the develoment process, rule and market trend are not going to improve, programmers will always be paid less than what they deserve. It’s the same story of a cunning monkey and a poor cat where the monkey eats all the bread loaf which the cat has brought from somewhere.