how much are we worth?

barbarian · 01-14-2001, 12:57 AM

what is the hourly rate for contractors or annual salary for full-timers for PHP/MySQL developers? Are we really hot or not? Can anyone tell me about this and what city you are from because rates or salaries always depend on the location. Thanks.
[This message has been edited by barbarian (edited 01-14-01@01:01 am)]

Brian · 01-14-2001, 01:29 AM

You might want to search around @ Monster.com to see what some of the companies are willing to pay..

This should give you some ideas/directions..

-Brian

*PaulKroll* · 01-14-2001, 02:07 AM

Talking amongst your peers about how much you charge seems logical. Except... anti-trust laws call that price fixing. I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice, but my understanding (from both lawyers and from the web) is that it is an honest-to-goodness federal offense. See http://www.antitrust.org/aei/Guidelines.htm, and for far more than you probably want to read, see http://www.ftc.gov/bc/guidelin.htm

*Rich* · 01-14-2001, 03:17 AM

For free-lance developers for PHP, Perl, and similar languages I have seen the typical rates vary between $50-$200. For comparison, typical fees for HTML Web page development (not graphic content) ranges from $20-$80 per hour or there-abouts.

The actual fees charged/paid depend mostly on the EXPERIENCE of the developer, the QUALITY of the work performed, and the CUSTOMER SERVICE level offered.

If you are new and just getting started with no references, I would highly recommend you take on your first (small) project pro-bono with the client giving you a report or review at the end. You can use this to get further business and use the review as a reference.

Although the three components listed above--experience, quality, and service--drive higher fees, I find most (free-lance) developers increase rates over time based on "load". When you have more work than time, increasing rates tends to restrict the incoming projects while also leading to more interesting and challenging projects.

Rich

*jbroder* · 01-15-2001, 12:19 AM

I have been looking for work this week in the San Francisco bay area, which is generally a strong tech job market.

I have gotten a lot of calls from contractor agencies, offering jobs at $60/hour for Perl, $50 for PHP. The agencies charge the company more than that. I don't know how much more, but I recently got a call from a company offering $60 for simple HTML work, which led me to believe that the agencies are charging the companies $90-$120/hour for Perl work and then giving me $50-60. So, it seems the key is finding the job yourself, without the help of the agency.

In general, it seems Perl pays better than PHP. Very few projects are using MySQL, so it is better to talk about SQL in general than emphasize the specific database.

I have seen a lot of ways to bid on a PHP project on the internet (elance.com, guru.com, etc.) but those expect a programmer to bid a flat fee for the whole job. I have no experience with sizing a job and wonder if anyone out there can give us some ideas or point to a good tutorial?

Hope this info helps. For hourly rate info, I usually search on dice.com.

Jon
[This message has been edited by jbroder (edited 01-14-01@3:39 pm)]

Brian · 01-14-2001, 01:49 PM

If you are looking to provide your services check out:
http://www.elance.com

-Brian

mike_w · 01-14-2001, 02:28 PM

I have to agree with Rich, do alot of work for free when you are just starting out. It can still go on your resume.

But as far as salaries go, here in NYC -
perl/html/JavaScript - 60k - 110k
perl/sybase - 70k - 150k

Sybase is hot, especially on Wall Street. If you have alot of perl and Sybase on your resume you'll never run out of work. Day rates seem to start at 600 and go up from there.

For php/MySQL, well I haven't seen any jobs that just need that. You should really have some perl, Apache and unix skills to go along with that. And, html and JavaScript.

During the past three years that I have been working in NYC, I've only worked on 2 php projects (for money). MySQL is much more popular, I can't remember all of the projects that I've worked on that used MySQL, but always with perl.

barbarian · 01-16-2001, 10:49 PM

yeah I realize there are only a few PHP jobs. PHP has so much buzz but no one seems doing it. What could be the reason? Do you think PHP will gain popularity in the future, or it will just disappear and be used only by obscure sites?

dank · 01-16-2001, 11:26 PM

I would guess PHP will grow rapidly and steadily in both popuplarity and application. However, it appears to be viewed as Perl's poor cousin ("anyone can do it, how good can it be?&quot

, and as such, may take some time to gain general acceptance in the corporate community. People working on "personal" sites couldn't care less what the perception of their chosen programming language is, so long as it works as desired.

Dan

bturner · 01-17-2001, 02:53 PM

PHP just isn't viewed as an "enterprise" class programming platform/language.

ColdFusion is above PHP in importance, but the true leader in server-side scripting/programming languages has got to be M$'s ASP + MS SQL Server. That's all I code in all day, every day, but I find it nice to experiment with other things like PHP and mySQL on my personal websites. You just won't find many serious job offers asking for development on that combination.

Learn ASP if you can, and with mySQL you're getting at least the basics of the Transact-SQL language, but there is sooo much more to SQL than what mySQL supports.

I think, unless it can get some major corporate backing, that PHP will never rise above personal homepage building, and smaller online communities. I'm honestly not trying to talk down PHP, which I think can do great things, but it just doesn't have the support it needs to get much bigger.