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Re: HN statistics

#51

Post by bigiain »

huhtenberg wrote: post #44
devcpp wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$80-100/hour? Is this feasible?

Let's not get carried away here. A quick poll: If you are in a position to hire devs (with a proper budget for it), would you hire this gentleman for $80/h knowing that he is a 2nd year EE student in Australia? Given the circumstances, I'd have hard time justifying $40/h. Not because $80 is too high, but because of the inherent performance risks associated with this particular type of hire.

For "hiring as a dev", $40/hr seems in the right ballpark.

For freelance work, I've paid well over $100/hr to people with similar age/experience based on nothing more than portfolios similar to his and a plausible sounding phone-screen.

I've contracted students for work, and while I'm more likely to propose payment terms based on estimated hours with payment on milestone delivery rather than just hourly rates, I'll still assume a similar overall "hourly rate".

(That's in Sydney, Australia.)

Re: HN statistics

#52

Post by true_religion »

bigiain wrote: post #50
true_religion wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thoughts.... He's just a second year student and the only project I've seen is something that any competent student at my almma matter could produce. Now look at the marketplace. For $40/hour you can currently get an experienced developer living anywhere that isn't San Francisco or NYC. $100/hour is $4000 a week and $16,000 a month. Now certainly someone, somewhere can command this price but lets not pretend that…

What're you suggesting you can get for $40/hour? You might get an "experienced developer" for $40/hr on a fulltime employed basis where that means "$80k/year". You certainly won't get the same level of talent on a contract or freelance basis at that rate. For a freelancer, "$100/hr" is much more likely to mean $2000/week than $4000/week. Even consultants at the top consulting firms can't (legitimately) bill 100% of a…

I think we're using different definitions for experienced.

Junior developers are still very much more experienced than a student, and won't be making 80k/year anywhere except DC/NYC/LA.

But I find that salary comparisons quickly go downhill on HN because of the bubble that we live in here, so I'm just going to let this conversation go.

Re: HN statistics

#53

Post by mehulkar »

csomar wrote: post #10

Your labs.im pitch is probably going to send you the worst freelance jobs you'll ever have. Nobody gives a shit about your situation, and your University tuition fees. Actually, this signals a red flag for serious clients: You might drop their project as soon as you get some financing. Promote yourself as a young, intelligent and enthusiast developer with coding and design skills. Price your hourly rate at $80-100/ho…

I wouldn't have assumed OP was a broke college student if the home page hadn't told me. There's something about broke college students that just makes you want to make them work for free. And there's something about them that they do it without much persuasion.

Re: HN statistics

#54

Post by csomar »

true_religion wrote: post #52
bigiain wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What're you suggesting you can get for $40/hour? You might get an "experienced developer" for $40/hr on a fulltime employed basis where that means "$80k/year". You certainly won't get the same level of talent on a contract or freelance basis at that rate. For a freelancer, "$100/hr" is much more likely to mean $2000/week than $4000/week. Even consultants at the top consulting firms can't (legitimately) bill 100% of a…

I think we're using different definitions for experienced. Junior developers are still very much more experienced than a student, and won't be making 80k/year anywhere except DC/NYC/LA. But I find that salary comparisons quickly go downhill on HN because of the bubble that we live in here, so I'm just going to let this conversation go.

Huh, so you measured his skills by his level of education? Even worse, he's an EE student; so Web Dev is really not his game.

Re: HN statistics

#55

Post by e12e »

btilly wrote: post #46
e12e wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Easily? I've yet to see anyone willing to hire someone to do off site work with a US company, in the Valley or elsewhere. At least not development work, or anything in the range of 100 USD/hour. I've always found that a bit strange, but maybe you know something I don't? For the record I'm based in Norway, and English is my second, not first language -- but even if it was just to recommend friends and acquaint…

$100/hour is indeed very doable. Stop and think. Suppose that you have have a $120k full-time dev. (This is by no means the top of the dev market.) Once you get through benefits, office space, HR, etc, at a typical company you cost 2x your salary, so that dev is costing you $240k/year. If that person works 50 weeks a year, 5 days a week, 6 hours a day (just because a person is present 8 hours does not mean that they…

This is exactly why I've thought it was so strange so few companies seemed interested in this kind of collaboration, in practice.

But just a brief look at the August HN hiring thread makes me a little more hopeful :-)

Re: HN statistics

#57

Post by e12e »

e12e wrote: post #19
DavidChouinard wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, this is top-notch work. I would drop the beatup negative attitude, it's a big turnoff. You could easily get a remote part-time job in the Valley for 100+$/hour — think of it, that's only 40 hours of work to pay off your tuition.

Really? Easily? I've yet to see anyone willing to hire someone to do off site work with a US company, in the Valley or elsewhere. At least not development work, or anything in the range of 100 USD/hour. I've always found that a bit strange, but maybe you know something I don't? For the record I'm based in Norway, and English is my second, not first language -- but even if it was just to recommend friends and acquaint…

Let me clarify what I meant with "At least not development work, or anything in the range of 100 USD/hour".

I didn't want to imply that was a high rate, but rather that I wasn't aware of any serious US offers for serious work to telecommuters/off site workers.

I've seen what appeared to be serious companies looking for on-site full time employees, and I've seen companies wanting grunt workers that are off site -- but I hadn't seen anyone actually willing to accept working with someone off site in any kind of interesting/core role before.

I'm happy to see at least the workers wanted posts here on HN appear more reasonable and in line with what I would expect. I've been worrying that the entire outsourcing marked was dominated by short sighted dumping (both from buyers and sellers) -- and poor management founded on the myth of man hours/months as a way to scale/accelerate development.

(On a side note, 100 USD/hour is lower than what I charge my customers for freelance work. And, as others have mentioned, short term project pay, with a lot of risk, is different from employee with benefits, reduced risk and a predictable yearly income).

Re: HN statistics

#58

Post by nhoss2 »

DavidChouinard wrote: post #21
csomar wrote: post #10

Your labs.im pitch is probably going to send you the worst freelance jobs you'll ever have. Nobody gives a shit about your situation, and your University tuition fees. Actually, this signals a red flag for serious clients: You might drop their project as soon as you get some financing. Promote yourself as a young, intelligent and enthusiast developer with coding and design skills. Price your hourly rate at $80-100/ho…

I agree, I can't overstate how weak your labs.im pitch is, especially in regards to your clearly very impressive skills. That pitch easily cuts your market rate by half, probably more. And as csomar mentioned, it's going to get you the crappiest, bottom-of-the-barrel jobs. In all types of pitches — to employers, VCs, etc. — desperation is the absolute worst thing you should ever let transpire.

Hey, OP here. I realize now that it was a mistake to come off like that but there were a few reasons on why I did:

- I just felt like a piece of shit when I wrote it because I have no connections and have had a very hard time trying to get a normal job. I also had no confidence that any of this would work out so that did not help my ego when writing.

- When I submitted this to HN, it was fairly late and I went to sleep about half and hour later so basically I slept through the entire discussion going on here and it would have been a bit late to change anything after I woke up.

- There was a comment or two saying that maybe I should change the post of labs.im (before I went to sleep) but I did not know what I could write. I didn't just want to write something like "im smart and can do this well" because anyone could say that and I particularly dislike talking about myself like that.

Also, to anyone that has emailed me, I have not replied to any emails yet but I am starting now. And sorry for the late reply.

Re: HN statistics

#59

Post by bpatrianakos »

nhoss2 wrote: post #58
DavidChouinard wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, I can't overstate how weak your labs.im pitch is, especially in regards to your clearly very impressive skills. That pitch easily cuts your market rate by half, probably more. And as csomar mentioned, it's going to get you the crappiest, bottom-of-the-barrel jobs. In all types of pitches — to employers, VCs, etc. — desperation is the absolute worst thing you should ever let transpire.

Hey, OP here. I realize now that it was a mistake to come off like that but there were a few reasons on why I did: - I just felt like a piece of shit when I wrote it because I have no connections and have had a very hard time trying to get a normal job. I also had no confidence that any of this would work out so that did not help my ego when writing. - When I submitted this to HN, it was fairly late and I went to sle…

I can relate to not wanting to say you're smart and can't do something well. I was/am sometimes the same way. For me it was imposter syndrome plus the idea that since everyone says it how would anyone ever believe such trite, cliche pitches. Well, I've learned from experience that there's a reason so many people market themselves in such similar ways. It works. It's still unbelievable to me but it works. Plus, if it ends up being true it makes your life much easier and things just flow.

You are smart and talented though. So just say so, feel cheesy about it, and profit.

Re: HN statistics

#60

Post by zanny »

Just a bug I found: your svg "data_pointer" only points "straight" to the topmost listed week on the page, and if you select any other option, it points to the bottom of the div element of the week. Reading that, you might want to try using the tag instead of divs there, just to make it more html5-ey :P

It looks like it falls here:

  offset: $(this).offset().top - $('svg#data_pointer').offset().top + 18
I don't know exactly why the offsets are off for all except the topmost element of the list, but they seem to be off. I don't use firebug much so I don't know how to live edit the code to figure out the problem, but I just wanted to let you know!

Note: I am in a vbox of Arch running Firefox Aurora 16, so I also don't know if it is a browser bug.

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