How to Hire (and keep!) a Programmer

[Varius]

Just a little humor. I was in working on something about 2 weeks ago and had the usual reaction of "who wrote this shit?". Well, I wrote that shit about 8 years ago ;p It was a journey through what I had added to my knowledge base across the past decade to read through it and yes, I did a re-write.

I know exactly what you are talking about - happens to me every time I start work on a new personal project, which are usually spaced pretty far apart since they are mostly for my own fun and each time I build it much more efficiently than my previous work; a new trick here, a new class there.

Experience is definitely one of the best assets a programmer can have.

[brandonstills]

Excellent write up.

I can't stress the importance of proper thorough specifications enough. Back when I was freelancing full time I turned down 90% of the people who contacted me and the most common reason was because there weren't sufficient specs.

I've learned from experience it just isn't worth working on those types of projects.

Also, the more experienced programmers make use of meta-programming. It has been said that "Great programmers can write better programmers than they can hire". That is one of the primary reasons why some programmers can get done in 1 hour what would take another programmer 10-20 hours.

The great programmers know how to find the best solution to a problem. If you are a carpenter and all you know how to use is a hammer then you are going to have a very hard time trying to cut a board to a certain length. It is going to be a long and tedious process. Sure you can get it done, but with the right tools you can get it done faster. Which would you rather do, pay the $9/hr guy for 100 hours to cut boards with a hammer, or hire someone who actually knows what a saw is and get it done in 1 hour for $100?

A good question to ask programmers is what other languages they know and use. Even if the project only requires PHP, if they know 10 other languages they are most likely going to write better PHP code. The more styles of coding they have seen and worked with the more they can write efficient code.

The thing about programming is that you can create your own tools. So a programmer that knows about a tool in one language that doesn't exist in PHP can just create it. Versus the average joe PHP programmer who would just bang away on that board with the hammer until it is chipped down to the correct length.

[will76]

One thing to note. Make sure your programmer is good with documentation. If they leave, for what ever reason, poor or no documentation/commented code will make any future work much more difficult, and much more expensive.

documentation, documentation, documentation.... very important.


I lucked out and found a great programmer 8 years ago and he has been full time working ever since. I've used out source companies for over flow projects when we had a lot going on at different times and was never satisfied from my personal experiences.

[brandonstills]

Old school is admirable and all, but you're the first person I've heard of that develops/writes in vi/nano.

I use vi quite frequently. Vi has code completion just like an IDE has as well. Most people don't know about it though. I used GUI's before vi, I just found vi easier to work with once I went through the learning curve. Of course I also type on a dvorak keyboard for most English based text (emails and IM) ;)

Once you master vi you can get things done so much faster. The problem is it can take you a week to get to the proficiency level of notepad and another month before you start seeing any real benefit to using it. A lot of GUI's force you to switch between keyboard and mouse. I keep my hand on the keyboard the entire time and don't even move my hand to the arrow keys. Moving your hand from home row to the arrows takes away from thinking power.

vi doesn't really make you productive until you can edit code without using the arrow keys (h,j,k,l) and can jump around the file. In a GUI you would have to click at the spot or you'd have to hold down the key until you get to the correct cursor position. When you get good at vi you can literally jump to where you want in fractions of a second (even if it is 40 lines down and 8 tokens in).

Still GUI's have their uses. They are good if you need to jump between multiple files and be taken right to the function. Of course, vi does this a well but I haven't spent the time to learn that part of it yet.

I also use TextMate, Emacs (when working in interactive REPL-based languages), and occasionally GUI's. It all depends on the task and what I need to do at that moment. If I need a lot of keyboard macro's I'll use textmate. If I need to just do general coding or quick one off repetitions I'll use vi. If I need to jump around code a lot from file to file I'll use a GUI. It's all about the right tool at the right time. I'll edit the same file in multiple editors sometimes.

[KillerK]

I use nano and zend.

[Linguist]

Great post Keith, a lot of very useful nuggets for potential employers - and a reality check on salaries. Both adult and mainstream can be notorious for people trying to squeeze out quality out of a tiny budget.

Someone should make another educational series post along the theme of 'My luck with designers/programmers sucks, they keep bailing on me. Those assholes. What I'm paying in this terrible economic climate is better than them not getting paid at all.'

[nation-x]

I agree with the people who spoke about specifications... the number one issue I have dealt with as a developer is that 9 times out of 10 the client changes the spec after the project is already under development... they see what was completed (based on the original spec) and decide they want something different or they hear about buzzword feature xyz and decide they want to add that but they typically don't want to pay more and they typically don't want to change the delivery date.

Secondly, about deadlines... even experienced developers will miss deadlines if the original spec has changed or if there has been a complication during the development process.

A perfect example of this would be a project where the developer is integrating a third party script that he/she is not intimately familiar with. I recently ran into this problem while integrating a script that has very little documentation for a developer. During the development, I identified 2 bugs in the third party script that had to be fixed before we could test the integration and a number of unexpected problems appeared as we developed the integration. I missed the deadline by 4 days...

Developers are not magicians... make sure your deadline accounts for unexpected delays if it's a major project and don't be pissed off at the developer for missing the deadline if he has communicated with you every step of the way. Sometimes deadlines are arbitrary... most developers view them as targets... if your project is large, you have a 90% chance of missing your deadline that was set arbitrarily... a deadline is always subject to missing data when the deadline was set.

[tranza]

wanna know how to do it

[myjah]

Yeah Fuze, I don't recall any girls screaming your name out on strange GFY bus rides in the middle of the night

HaHa! Sooo true! Wow, 5 years have flown right by...

[Varius]

HaHa! Sooo true! Wow, 5 years have flown right by...

Only 5? Wow it seems like so much longer

[Jennyfer]

A very useful post

[Brujah]

"Who wrote this shit?" ... hell with 8 years, I say this about some of my own code after a few weeks.

[Due]

I tend to tell the programmers what I want the system to do VERY rough (I have A, I need B, figure it out)
Then I ask them to write the specs, then I review it
Then I ask them to make the flow charts and the pseudo code.
Then I ask them to design the database structure.

After that I ask them to write the code.

This way I can weed out the people that can't come up with a solution fairly fast or can't work independent.

This may not be the best solution for everyone, but having a smaller company with only 4 programmers this appears to be the most efficient way for us

This probably wouldn't work on a freelance / project basis as they are usually dealt with on an agreed price rather than per hour and they are usually not in-house.

P.S. reason to ask developers to write specs is to show that they fully understand the assignment

[Varius]

I tend to tell the programmers what I want the system to do VERY rough (I have A, I need B, figure it out)
Then I ask them to write the specs, then I review it
Then I ask them to make the flow charts and the pseudo code.
Then I ask them to design the database structure.

After that I ask them to write the code.

This way I can weed out the people that can't come up with a solution fairly fast or can't work independent.

This may not be the best solution for everyone, but having a smaller company with only 4 programmers this appears to be the most efficient way for us

This probably wouldn't work on a freelance / project basis as they are usually dealt with on an agreed price rather than per hour and they are usually not in-house.

P.S. reason to ask developers to write specs is to show that they fully understand the assignment

You must have some technical knowledge yourself though, at least vaguely, to properly review their pseudo code logic and database structure. I think for many who are hiring, they are unfortunately without that knowledge, so it would be hard for them to do.

[Due]

You must have some technical knowledge yourself though, at least vaguely, to properly review their pseudo code logic and database structure. I think for many who are hiring, they are unfortunately without that knowledge, so it would be hard for them to do.

I can vaguely recognize codes, been programming for multiple years as well as taken classes, when other kids was out selling lemonade me and a buddy of mine made a sell lemonade game for the commodore computer instead

I pretty much stopped during any kind coding 6-7 years ago but the general principles still stick

[Varius]

I can vaguely recognize codes, been programming for multiple years as well as taken classes, when other kids was out selling lemonade me and a buddy of mine made a sell lemonade game for the commodore computer instead

I pretty much stopped during any kind coding 6-7 years ago but the general principles still stick

Ah, I remember the commodore where you had to program on cassette tape that was sold as an add-on (at least with the VIC 20)

[BestXXXPorn]

Could I please get a mod to move that post of mine in here? Lots of good info that thing

Thanks!

[BestXXXPorn]

I use vi quite frequently. Vi has code completion just like an IDE has as well. Most people don't know about it though. I used GUI's before vi, I just found vi easier to work with once I went through the learning curve. Of course I also type on a dvorak keyboard for most English based text (emails and IM) ;)

Once you master vi you can get things done so much faster. The problem is it can take you a week to get to the proficiency level of notepad and another month before you start seeing any real benefit to using it. A lot of GUI's force you to switch between keyboard and mouse. I keep my hand on the keyboard the entire time and don't even move my hand to the arrow keys. Moving your hand from home row to the arrows takes away from thinking power.

vi doesn't really make you productive until you can edit code without using the arrow keys (h,j,k,l) and can jump around the file. In a GUI you would have to click at the spot or you'd have to hold down the key until you get to the correct cursor position. When you get good at vi you can literally jump to where you want in fractions of a second (even if it is 40 lines down and 8 tokens in).

Still GUI's have their uses. They are good if you need to jump between multiple files and be taken right to the function. Of course, vi does this a well but I haven't spent the time to learn that part of it yet.

I also use TextMate, Emacs (when working in interactive REPL-based languages), and occasionally GUI's. It all depends on the task and what I need to do at that moment. If I need a lot of keyboard macro's I'll use textmate. If I need to just do general coding or quick one off repetitions I'll use vi. If I need to jump around code a lot from file to file I'll use a GUI. It's all about the right tool at the right time. I'll edit the same file in multiple editors sometimes.

I used to be more like that until I started using UltraEdit... There's so much functionality packed into that thing that it's hard to stop using it once you've adopted it. The additions over just an editor are fantastic... Just starting from simple things like projects, being able to grep within a project, and switching projects easily to more advanced stuff like setting up macros for git or svn commands, piping script output back into a new file, opening files from ftp and having the event save a local backup copy, hotkeys to launch external apps and scripts, etc...

Once you start integrating all of that into your routine it becomes so nice to have it all available to you in single application. I see you wrote TextMate so I'm guessing you're an os x guy. I believe UltraEdit is coming out with an OS X version very soon. Another thing that's so fantastic about UltraEdit is their development speed. They're releasing version 16 and they do about 3 - 5 minor revisions inbetween majors. They just keep making additions... Don't even get me started on the lack of updates for TextMate ;)

[fatfoo]

The going rate for an experienced freelance programmer will fall in the $100 USD+ per hour range. Prices of $150 USD or even $200 USD per hour are not uncommon.

That is a lot of money.

[LA Crew]

useful article

[bufferover]

Great post Varius

[LoveSandra]

Great post!

[jay23]

As a developer In the 90's i worked for main stream companies, a lot of money thanks to Dotcoms, then when that died in early 2000 i moved to Adult. Very good living until about late 2008. Now 70% of the work i do is mainstream and 30% adult.

I think by end of 2010 it will be all mainstream, their is more money on the other side.

[AcidMax]

I am glad to see someone took the time to write this up. My beef with the adult industry was that they always wanted something for nothing. Most programmers like myself, who can churn out quality work, were being offered $10 an hour or so for years. Its just not worth it. Good write-up and clear documentation always helps, a good programmer though can also take most people's ideas and expand on them to make them even better for the client.

Its too bad the adult industry is still mostly stuck with using PHP when there are so many better languages and ways to build things faster out there.

As far as development, Emacs and/or TextMate are the best imho.

[Relentless]

Thanks for the write up, it was an interesting read.

One thing I'd add is that I don't understand why anyone would pay a non-employee at an hourly rate. When I have code work done I always pay 'pre project' not 'per hour.' I think it's a much better way to go for several reasons:

1) If you pay per project you have cost certainty. You know exactly what the code work will cost before any work is started and can decide if the investment is worth it based on your projected ROI before any money is spent.

2) If I find a coder who can complete their work much faster than 'normal' they should not be penalized for being quick. When you pay per hour for anything, you create an incentive for the person to take their time with it because they fear sending you the completed job quickly and being asked to reduce the price. I want the work done right and I want it done as soon as possible... being done ahead of schedule is a good thing not a bad thing.

3) I agree very much with what others have said about creating very specific terms for the project. If you find a coder who is not willing to give you a project price it usually means you failed to make a specific enough set of instructions for the project. If your specs are clear, a good coder can tell you how much it will cost to build... so while a per hour rate allows you to hire someone willing to take their time and fumble their way through a murky set of instructions... a per project price requires you to be much more specific and gives the coder good incentive to think things through and ask questions for clarification BEFORE they begin their work.

Incidentally, I price text work per project rather than per word or per hour for many of the same reasons...

[yourpussy]

thanks a lot

[GrouchyAdmin]

I like pie.

[NextBigTube]

I wanna be a programmer.

[Varius]

Thanks for the write up, it was an interesting read.

One thing I'd add is that I don't understand why anyone would pay a non-employee at an hourly rate. When I have code work done I always pay 'pre project' not 'per hour.' I think it's a much better way to go for several reasons:

1) If you pay per project you have cost certainty. You know exactly what the code work will cost before any work is started and can decide if the investment is worth it based on your projected ROI before any money is spent.

2) If I find a coder who can complete their work much faster than 'normal' they should not be penalized for being quick. When you pay per hour for anything, you create an incentive for the person to take their time with it because they fear sending you the completed job quickly and being asked to reduce the price. I want the work done right and I want it done as soon as possible... being done ahead of schedule is a good thing not a bad thing.

3) I agree very much with what others have said about creating very specific terms for the project. If you find a coder who is not willing to give you a project price it usually means you failed to make a specific enough set of instructions for the project. If your specs are clear, a good coder can tell you how much it will cost to build... so while a per hour rate allows you to hire someone willing to take their time and fumble their way through a murky set of instructions... a per project price requires you to be much more specific and gives the coder good incentive to think things through and ask questions for clarification BEFORE they begin their work.

Incidentally, I price text work per project rather than per word or per hour for many of the same reasons...

You have some very good points and I agree, per project is a great way to do business, for all parties involved. Setting milestones for payment is important though, so large amounts of work do not go on without being compensated and it allows one part to be approved before proceeding, possibly continuing in a wrong manner.

I think the only time per-hour should apply for freelancing, is when a task estimate is fairly impossible. Let's take the case where you have a MySQL problem where under certain circumstances, queries are very slow, mysql crashes, or some other form of undesired behaviour yet you cannot manage to pinpoint the cause. It would be very hard for a programmer to estimate exactly how long it would take.

In such circumstances, I think the best approach is for the client to say something like "I am willing to spend $500 on solving this problem. If you are unable to solve it in that timeframe - say at $125/hour that's 4 hours work - let's see what you have found out and if it's worth putting more time into it or not. Debugging is usually hard to estimate and thus, usually, is a per-hour task.

[Relentless]

Yes, I agree completely.

[Tickler]

Interesting post to read. With a lot of useful information for folks on both sides

Myself I wrote my first programs in 1969, and started working as a programmer in '75. Multiple titles from senior to manager to director up to 1986. And then to full time consulting work after that.

From a hiring prospective I do take a close look at the type of projects that they have worked on. An OOPs game programmer might work OK in a graphics enviroment, not so much in a business enviroment.

And in Canada the educational tracks between university & college tend to be pretty different.
Case study - college - Inventory DB system
Case study - university - Towers of Hanoi

Wow

Generally speaking, a quality in-house programmer should start somewhere in the range of $70,000 USD per annum. Anything less and you face a number of obstacles:

Do mainstream programmers even make that much?

Some of us make a lot more. Actually I was making about that in the mid 1980s.
And even though I've been in the management levels a few times I much prefer cranking code to trying to figure out how much I have to budget for pencils for the next year. Doing CBAs & ROIs for systems specs is about as close as I like.

I agree, but as long as the code is clean, well-structured, standardized, modular, functions well named and there are project specifications, actual documentation (while always appreciated) isn't as necessary. Most programmers, even great ones, hate to document. Of course, you may argue they do that for their own job security heh.

After so long, I now automatically document within the code as I go. I've even looked at code that was +10 years old & then realized that I wrote it originally.

However, I remember years ago when I worked on someone's code where every variable was named after their girlfriend, their pet's names, what they were watching on tv at the time, etc... What a mess!

One of my first projects was working with a system that had been developed in France. Try figuring out what those shorten french field names mean.

And then there are those programmers that insist on doing everything with single character field names like $f = $x + $a. Really time for a Gibbs.

What I have found is it's difficult to find a skilled reliable programmer who can also add suggestions to improve your application or site and bring up things you might have overlooked based on their own past experiences. Find someone like that and indeed do what you can to keep them happy!

Joe

That is another reason why an experienced programmer is so valuable. Been there, done that. eg. "This payroll app. that you spec'd also needs some mandatory government reporting for their labour market analysis."

Or one time the xVP explaining to somebody that he only has to tell me he needs "something", and I wander off for a few days and it's done, or a team has all the specs and are working on it.

I think the only time per-hour should apply for freelancing, is when a task estimate is fairly impossible. Let's take the case where you have a MySQL problem where under certain circumstances, queries are very slow, mysql crashes, or some other form of undesired behaviour yet you cannot manage to pinpoint the cause. It would be very hard for a programmer to estimate exactly how long it would take.

Strangely, most of the work I do nowadays is on a per hour basis.

But then I'm in the process of retiring, and only taking on a few projects for long term clients. There are a whole bunch of other areas that have started to catch my attention.

Also partly because I'll be working on critical projects and likely to do 20hr days & +120hr weeks. I remember one project where I put in about 80 hour over 4 days. It was worth about $20 million a year extra profit to the company.

Or maybe I'll just be demolishing a bunch of smaller projects that aren't worth the time to spec individually.

Plus, quite often I'll fly half way across the country. So I charge an hourly rate based on $100hr + whatever expenses like hotels, meals, plane, etc. that I have to pay directly.

[kush]

I've heard the "why php" from programmers before. My question is "why not?" So many of the common scripts are written in it, and it works great, and it's something that most of us who know anything about programming at least partially understand. It's this familiarity that I want on my web server. Now if it's some stand-alone app then it's not such a big deal, but if it's on my server or my money-making sites, I want to be able to understand it and possibly change small variables or whatnot.

Also this has been touched on, but I think having well designed databases with optimized queries and efficient code is very important. Otherwise your $XXX-X,XXX month lightning fast server could crawl. Learning about a programmer's ability to optimize code/db's is important. "Just working" isn't always good enough.

[wizzart]

Great post

[myjah]

Could I please get a mod to move that post of mine in here? Lots of good info that thing

Thanks!

I provided you with the copy from that thread so feel free to use it to post in this thread.

[Varius]

I've heard the "why php" from programmers before. My question is "why not?" So many of the common scripts are written in it, and it works great, and it's something that most of us who know anything about programming at least partially understand. It's this familiarity that I want on my web server. Now if it's some stand-alone app then it's not such a big deal, but if it's on my server or my money-making sites, I want to be able to understand it and possibly change small variables or whatnot.

Also this has been touched on, but I think having well designed databases with optimized queries and efficient code is very important. Otherwise your $XXX-X,XXX month lightning fast server could crawl. Learning about a programmer's ability to optimize code/db's is important. "Just working" isn't always good enough.

On PHP I agree, rare are the circumstances I find when it won't do the job; normally in those cases, I opt for Python. An example of this is a bounce mail management module I once made to work with Qmail. At the time, doing it with PHP would have been a mess and not very efficient. Python, on the other hand, was better supported by Qmail and fit the goal nicely. PHP vs. ASP vs. Coldfusion on the other hand, I have yet to see a solid argument that ASP/CF were better than PHP.

I think PHP gets a bad reputation because it is so easy to learn and very lax on structure (ie. you don't need to declare variables and types among other things) that it amounts to a huge number of unqualified programmers using it without actually knowing the fundamentals first.

As for database / query optimization, I think that is EXTREMELY important. I have seen code from many people even here on GFY, who others recommend as good coders, who had no idea what an index was or how to use them. They have never heard of InnoDB or the EXPLAIN command (talking MySQL here). They didn't see a problem because their code worked with a 5000-row table, but once that table grew say to 50,000 rows and began to crawl, their answer was "most people will never have that many rows".

Read a lot of case studies about database structures and sql queries, performance tuning and ask people more experienced than yourself for help/advice. It doesn't matter how good your code is if your database is the bottleneck.

[Tickler]

As for database / query optimization, I think that is EXTREMELY important.

One little thing that I've seen many times because the programmers don't understand the data.

You quite often see coding that looks something like this with test arranged in order:

switch ($someField) {
case "A": 
 do_A(); 
 break;
case "B": 
 do_B(); 
 break;
case "C": 
 do_C(); 
 break;
default:
 doOtherThing();
}

But if condition "C" equals 90% of the time, you should do the test for "C" first.

Very simple concept, that has major performance issues when dealing with high volumes. I've even written code that modifies this testing code based on current data being used.

[Varius]

One little thing that I've seen many times because the programmers don't understand the data.

You quite often see coding that looks something like this with test arranged in order:

switch ($someField) {
case "A": 
 do_A(); 
 break;
case "B": 
 do_B(); 
 break;
case "C": 
 do_C(); 
 break;
default:
 doOtherThing();
}

But if condition "C" equals 90% of the time, you should do the test for "C" first.

Very simple concept, that has major performance issues when dealing with high volumes. I've even written code that modifies this testing code based on current data being used.

That's a good point. I've seen many programmers reply to that with simply "a fraction of a second isn't going to make a difference". How wrong they are if they work on anything large scale.

It's the same with database fields, a lot of people use the field default size. For a simple example, I've seen people who know the maximum character length of a username on a site is say 20 characters. They create field as varchar(255). Or they know they use 2-letter country codes, but instead of char(2) they use varchar(255). That starts to add up once you are talking a large site with heavy traffic and millions of records.

[goodsites]

I'll outline some flaws in this article


70k per year? Did you just look this up on MonsterJobs for the avg going rate of some entry level PHP programmer or something? I believe so.

You talk about the low cost programmers and high cost programmers, try to explain the difference.. I'll point out more real bits of information below but then you say to hire them and give the GOOD programmer some $70k after saying its okay to pay someone $150/h

If they are $150/h, you for one are not going to hire them.. that is $250k/year 50 weeks in a year (2 weeks vacation unpaid) 5 days a week 8 hours a day... Seems you are already underpaying your great programmer...

The fact is, everyone wants a great programmer or cant pay for one.. This is why the business is bad... Because, if you needed to hire an electrician, you are STUCK paying what they charge.. you have no real choice.. but for some reason when it comes to programming, you want the best of everything for the lowest of cost (Manilla Phillipines wages)...

You end up getting what you pay for.... in the cases where you get a functioning script.. you end up down the road with massive security problems and no exception handling becase they dont work for quality.. they work to get the job done as fast as possible, doing only the bare essentials of the code.. which is the reason noone wants to work on other peoples code, and you will rarely ever find a good programmer who will accept you're fix up crap.. they dont need your $50_$150 crap projects. They like anyone else care about their future.

Which brings in the next problem,, Any good programmer has learned... They are the valuable part of the company, without them nothing good gets accomplished... What do they see?? They see sales people who do nothing but sit on their asses and get a few phone calls going, making 3 times the pay... And guess what, when the programmer is done with the automation the company and everything is running great,.. The programmer is thrown out the back door because he is now expendable. Who wants to pay him the bucks when the job is complete to hang around and manage it.. we can get some minimum age punk to do the task

So no programmers just work for anyone..

If things are well done and programmer is doing work and appreciated comes the next problem. MUST DO EVERYTHING HIMSELF AND EVERY LITTLE PART OF IT AND EVERY BIT OF TESTING AND THEN HE BLOWS HIS HEAD OFF

See what happens is mr manager, calls the shots and starts getting projects completed with programmer... They work together and do some great stuff.. Manager now starts getting lazy and doing other stupid stuff, no longer wanting to sit down and get stuff done... Instead starts giving programmer all the tasks.. Every bit of all tasks.. do this, ok ddo that.. i dont want to do this so do that... Programmer says.. yeah i see whats going on here.. I do all the work, manager gets all the glory and programmer says no thanks bye bye and company falls to shit when they dont realzie progammer made job
secure for himself and not going to answer how does this work when he leaves..

Programmers are underpaid, underappreciated, 10 times more intelligent then your best worker..... start paying them or continue with the headches and failed businesses.

[Varius]

I'll outline some flaws in this article

70k per year? Did you just look this up on MonsterJobs for the avg going rate of some entry level PHP programmer or something? I believe so.

You talk about the low cost programmers and high cost programmers, try to explain the difference.. I'll point out more real bits of information below but then you say to hire them and give the GOOD programmer some $70k after saying its okay to pay someone $150/h

If they are $150/h, you for one are not going to hire them.. that is $250k/year 50 weeks in a year (2 weeks vacation unpaid) 5 days a week 8 hours a day... Seems you are already underpaying your great programmer...

If you re-read the initial post, you'll notice that the starting salary was for in-house workers and the hourly rate was for outsourcing. It's my experience that outsourcers do charge typically more, as they lose out in other ways (security, benefits, stock plans, company outings...)

The fact is, everyone wants a great programmer or cant pay for one.. This is why the business is bad... Because, if you needed to hire an electrician, you are STUCK paying what they charge.. you have no real choice.. but for some reason when it comes to programming, you want the best of everything for the lowest of cost (Manilla Phillipines wages)...

You end up getting what you pay for.... in the cases where you get a functioning script.. you end up down the road with massive security problems and no exception handling becase they dont work for quality.. they work to get the job done as fast as possible, doing only the bare essentials of the code.. which is the reason noone wants to work on other peoples code, and you will rarely ever find a good programmer who will accept you're fix up crap.. they dont need your $50_$150 crap projects. They like anyone else care about their future.

Which brings in the next problem,, Any good programmer has learned... They are the valuable part of the company, without them nothing good gets accomplished... What do they see?? They see sales people who do nothing but sit on their asses and get a few phone calls going, making 3 times the pay... And guess what, when the programmer is done with the automation the company and everything is running great,.. The programmer is thrown out the back door because he is now expendable. Who wants to pay him the bucks when the job is complete to hang around and manage it.. we can get some minimum age punk to do the task

So no programmers just work for anyone..

If things are well done and programmer is doing work and appreciated comes the next problem. MUST DO EVERYTHING HIMSELF AND EVERY LITTLE PART OF IT AND EVERY BIT OF TESTING AND THEN HE BLOWS HIS HEAD OFF

See what happens is mr manager, calls the shots and starts getting projects completed with programmer... They work together and do some great stuff.. Manager now starts getting lazy and doing other stupid stuff, no longer wanting to sit down and get stuff done... Instead starts giving programmer all the tasks.. Every bit of all tasks.. do this, ok ddo that.. i dont want to do this so do that... Programmer says.. yeah i see whats going on here.. I do all the work, manager gets all the glory and programmer says no thanks bye bye and company falls to shit when they dont realzie progammer made job
secure for himself and not going to answer how does this work when he leaves..

Programmers are underpaid, underappreciated, 10 times more intelligent then your best worker..... start paying them or continue with the headches and failed businesses.

You are entitled to your opinions, but this rant sounds bitter based on personal experiences. What you described certainly occurs, but I don't think you can generalize that ALL companies treat their programmers as you describe.

[goodsites]

If you re-read the initial post, you'll notice that the starting salary was for in-house workers and the hourly rate was for outsourcing. It's my experience that outsourcers do charge typically more, as they lose out in other ways (security, benefits, stock plans, company outings...)



You are entitled to your opinions, but this rant sounds bitter based on personal experiences. What you described certainly occurs, but I don't think you can generalize that ALL companies treat their programmers as you describe.

I am entitled to more than my opinion.. I have worked for 3 companies on this board and 120 companies worldwide in the past 30 years... So let me tell you a few things. Bitter experiences? lol... I never flaked on one job and never lost a employer in 30 years... I have quit many. Everyone still wanting me back. I guess that makes me superior, not bitter. Learn the difference.

You call my post a rant.. I call you a joke, Hows that? Lemme guess you can't take what you dish out. Fuck with the best, you will lose. You best be ready to be schooled by the experienced when you enter the deep waters.

[goodsites]

Real programmers wouldn't even consider working for places such as being hired on this board... It's high stress, high demand, LOW PAY.. and being shit on... dealing with usually morons.

The real programmers are working for the retail firms.. For example

Leapfrog makes children games, some you may have played with.. You get a job in this company you get 3 times the pay.... You get a super relaxed working environment, which everything is done in complete specs and outlined A-Z before a line of code is written, You then you have like 3 months to complete the work, compared to here, something they want in like 48 hours..

Then you analyze it properly another 3 moths of testing... It works, the units are made and the money comes back for a job well done......

But here, you guys want shit written overnight, with no docs, no info given,
I want a back end to do this... (OH OK MAAM) And you allow no research time paid for, You expect it to work perfectly out of the box as you imagined like we can see that.. The shit you never even thought of has to be made and included, at no extra cost of course.. and on top of it, if there is a technical problem from a 3rd party plugin,module, or server or operating system found (which happens about 2 times a day in web development) usually leads to 8-16 hours of debugging test, unpaid for of course...


No real programmer takes these jobs.. quit fooling the world. Kids take these jobs.. They are not programmers, and they give us real programmers a bad name.

[webboy21]

very nice article and a good read varius...my compliments!

[Varius]

I am entitled to more than my opinion.. I have worked for 3 companies on this board and 120 companies worldwide in the past 30 years... So let me tell you a few things. Bitter experiences? lol... I never flaked on one job and never lost a employer in 30 years... I have quit many. Everyone still wanting me back. I guess that makes me superior, not bitter. Learn the difference.

You call my post a rant.. I call you a joke, Hows that? Lemme guess you can't take what you dish out. Fuck with the best, you will lose. You best be ready to be schooled by the experienced when you enter the deep waters.

Firstly, it's "fuck with the best, die like the rest". And you call yourself Zero Cool

Secondly, while I'd love to engage you and trade witty banter back and forth, it is obvious you don't have the vocabulary for such repartee and I shall try and keep the thread on topic; some people have found this discussion helpful, other such as yourself will not. Feel free to troll elsewhere so that the discussion here can continue in a POSITIVE manner

[goodsites]

I tend to tell the programmers what I want the system to do VERY rough (I have A, I need B, figure it out)
Then I ask them to write the specs, then I review it
Then I ask them to make the flow charts and the pseudo code.
Then I ask them to design the database structure.

After that I ask them to write the code.

This way I can weed out the people that can't come up with a solution fairly fast or can't work independent.

This may not be the best solution for everyone, but having a smaller company with only 4 programmers this appears to be the most efficient way for us

This probably wouldn't work on a freelance / project basis as they are usually dealt with on an agreed price rather than per hour and they are usually not in-house.

P.S. reason to ask developers to write specs is to show that they fully understand the assignment

Seriously? You want a programmer to write and show you the specs of your desired project that you must relate to him, and then possibly not get the job so you can take the specs to someone else? Heh.... I call fiddle faddle here.. No programmer is going to write specs for you to win a bid

[djtomcat]

Very good post will.

[margarita]

Seriously? You want a programmer to write and show you the specs of your desired project that you must relate to him, and then possibly not get the job so you can take the specs to someone else? Heh.... I call fiddle faddle here.. No programmer is going to write specs for you to win a bid

Exactly I'd charge for writing the spec to be ok even when you choose another programmer. Writing the spec is also the work, sometimes harder than the programming

[Veggetto]

Nice info maybe I can get discounts like this.

[Nodtveidt]

Even an old dog like me could learn from this thread... been a programmer 26 years and still going strong. Good info, imo. I've never worked for anyone on this forum, but perhaps someday.

[taken300]

Nice thread!!

[Slambino]

Very informative, wish I read it months ago.