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Mike Lee on why he can charge $1,000/hr for iPhone development

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Re: Mike Lee on why he can charge $1,000/hr for iPhone development

#131

Post by guelo »

kevinpet wrote: post #11

If the best are 10x as productive as the mediocre, I don't see a problem with this. Of course, you might say that the $120 bulk of freelance programmers are already a notch above mediocre and maybe $500/hr is more reasonable, but whatever the market will bear. It's a good argument to cut top marginal tax rate so that he has an incentive to take more work than he's willing to at $500/hr after taxes (assuming he's in t…

You Laffer curve types never seem to be very good at math. Explain to me, using math, how much the 35% tax rate needs to be lowered to incentivize this guy to work at $500.

Once you figure out the math we can move on to psychology.

Re: Mike Lee on why he can charge $1,000/hr for iPhone development

#132

Post by Tichy »

mkramlich wrote: post #121
Tichy wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What part do you deem unethical? I am conflicted about the ethics of driving high speed sports cars myself :-)

I didn't say he was unethical. I said he did something that constitutes what I consider to be bad behavior. Publically announcing one's $1000/hr pay rate to the entire world, and writing a post using the particular language and attitude shown in it. That struck me as bad behavior, applying the same standards I'd expect out of anybody else. Is it like robbing a bank? Heck no. Obnoxious? In my book, yep. And look, I'm…

I've had a client once tell me that my rate was outrageously high (it was average, but anyway). Since then I have come to the conclusion that basically, it is impossible to have an outrageously high rate. My rate is not the value I assign to a particular task (ie solving the clients problem). My rate is the value I assign to my own time. How can anybody else besides me judge the "fair" value I assign to my own time?

There are exceptions, of course - I guess if I was a surgeon and I would refuse to operate on somebody because they can't afford me, the ethics would be very questionable.

Re: Mike Lee on why he can charge $1,000/hr for iPhone development

#133

Post by silencio »

dasil003 wrote: post #100
marciovm123 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you elaborate?

I'm not involved with Tapulous and therefore I'm not really at liberty to say. Actually I probably should have kept my mouth shut on this thread, because I despise when people do what I just did, but I just could not sit by while that credential got thrown out there as if Tap Tap Revenge was his brainchild or something.

I'm not going to contribute to the snowballing of this particular thread by adding what I know of what he did on some of those teams and companies he lists, but...exactly. It's his ego that rubs me the wrong way the most. The way he writes like he was instrumental in the creation, development and/or success of the apps he was involved in, when there's, oh, many other people that've worked with him that could list their credentials the way he does, except...wait. They don't. And there's more than one person on a team that makes things happen. sigh :(

Re: Mike Lee on why he can charge $1,000/hr for iPhone development

#134

Post by rortian »

xenophanes wrote: post #83
mikeklaas wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Spending money doesn't make us richer. Sure it does. If I buy good A for $X, I must value having good A a least _slightly_ more than having $X in my pocket. Similarly, the seller values $X in his pocket more than having good A in his inventory. Hence, we have completed a transaction where the wealth of both parties has increased. This is the essence of why capitalism works.

Trade makes us richer if it's motivated by both parties coming out ahead in their judgment. Spending for the sake of spending, or for the sake of "stimulating the economy", doesn't help anything. People who say "In this economy we need more money being spent" are not capitalists advocating efficient trade, they're Keynesians or something. If someone thought he would benefit from a purchase, he would do it without enc…

>not capitalists advocating efficient trade, they're Keynesians or something.

Keynesians are capitalists and I've never heard of them being opposed to efficient trade.

One thing that inspires people to spend money is feeling that they won't be laid off. People do not have that feeling right now. Should we just wait for that to happen? Producing while people aren't buying leads to inventory gluts which leads to deflation.

Re: Mike Lee on why he can charge $1,000/hr for iPhone development

#135

Post by corin_ »

mkramlich wrote: post #84
alanthonyc wrote: post #3

tldr: Mike Lee is the Brad Pitt of programmers. :/

Not to diss your comment, because I don't intend that, but it got me to thinking. I hereby propose we all stop using this "tldr" or "TL;DR" meme that keeps popping up on every other web posting lately because it's an unnecessarily opaque code, and not very readable, in my opinion. Instead, how about instead we start doing something like this: summary:

tldr: stop using tldr

Re: Mike Lee on why he can charge $1,000/hr for iPhone development

#136

Post by elliottkember »

sjs wrote: post #119
mpk wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't get why it's generally assumed that Zed is an asshole. I exchanged a few technical emails with him when he was just getting started on Mongrel (v1) and his replies were always friendly (as well as being relevant). He's put a lot of code out there and the parts that I have used have been great. Remember when Bear Stearns fell? He was leading some Rails project there at the time (IIRC) and he used his ha…

Because most of us don't know him and his online persona is pure asshole. It's that simple. I've read that he's a nice guy in person all over the place and that's great, good for him. He writes like a spoiled, attention-grabbing 15 year old, and he's very insulting and arrogant. Then we have to read about it on news.yc and reddit for a week after every rant. I mean look at this thread, one mention of the guy and all…

From memory, I think it says somewhere on his blog that the whole tone is just an act. It gets him a lot of publicity, and sometimes he says some interesting things. I'd be willing to bet he's a really nice guy. In my book, it takes a lot of nice to take yourself so lightly.

Re: Mike Lee on why he can charge $1,000/hr for iPhone development

#137

Post by silencio »

danudey wrote: post #107
sharpn wrote: post #61

There are no testimonials on his website. Just saying.

He worked for Delicious Monster and Tapulous, well-known names in the Mac/iPhone dev community. Also, Apple hired him to build their Mobile Store app, which is pretty significant because I'm sure they have a lot of talented developers already.

He was already working for Apple before moving teams internally, probably because his DTS job wasn't working out or the perks of switching were too great, i.e. he started at DTS a year ago, and before that year was up he switched teams and then presumably quit altogether. He wasn't hired by Apple expressly to come impart his wisdom onto the team working on the app.

Re: Mike Lee on why he can charge $1,000/hr for iPhone development

#138

Post by nir »

Seems to me the promise here isn't just "I'll build you a great app" but "I'll get your app in the Apple Store" (hence mentions of the author's positive record and connections with Apple) - in essence, it's a combination of a lobbyist/developer, and lobbyists do charge $1000/hr.

Apple has an approval process reminiscent of a third world beaurocracy, decisions are unpredictable, timelines unknown and the entire process is completely opaque to the outsider. Around such systems you often find people with good connections offering their services in ensuring proper treatment, for a handsome fee.

Re: Mike Lee on why he can charge $1,000/hr for iPhone development

#139

Post by drdew »

marknutter wrote: post #115
mkramlich wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Writing things on the Internet is part of human behavior. What a person says reveals aspects of who they are. The Internet is not some special place that is exempt from all normal expectations of conduct that otherwise hold in meatspace. Just as simply being part of a business enterprise does not exempt one from being judged as a human based on your behavior. Also note I said "suspect" not "knew for certain" or anyth…

What a person says reveals aspects of who they are. Indeed

Indeed

Re: Mike Lee on why he can charge $1,000/hr for iPhone development

#140

Post by pmcginn »

petercooper wrote: post #53

Even if he doesn't get $1000/hr in the end, his statement is likely to be already doing some work in the form of anchoring . That is, $1000/hr seems ridiculous but you might now, as a client, feel like $250/hr isn't ridiculous.. yet if he'd said $250/hr at the start, that would have also seemed as crazy as $1000. This effect of price anchoring has been demonstrated a lot and it works, sadly.

That's a great point, and makes even more sense when you consider the examples he provides for why someone should contact him for an hour of his time. If he can really do everything he listed in one hour per task, he deserves the $1,000. On the other hand, if he spends 2-4 hours on it but "only" bills the client for 1, he seems like both a rockstar and a value.
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