NYCPHP Meetup

[Michael]

> Call me a cynic, but whenever I see something like :
>
> "Hey competition, please tell me your pricing and proposal ideas so I 
> can optimally underbid you" all sorts of red flags go up.
>
> If you are at a business maturity level such that you need to post a 
> question like that to an open PHP list, you would be wise to get a job 
> working for an established shop for a while longer - you need the 
> experience. NYPHP'ers would be serving the talk list well by only 
> responding to such posts offline.

How are people going to learn if they don't get any advice? I'm not 
trying to bid against anyone here so I have no interest in hiding 
anything from anyone. Posting off-list is even worse because it requires 
people ask the same question when they want an answer. Post your 
questions and answers where everyone can see them, archieving them 
somewhere Google can index them, and you help more people and require 
questions to be repeated less often.

The question itself is a bit naive as of course the cost depends largely 
on the time it takes to produce the product and the time needed depends 
on the individual features and the ability of the programmer. However, 
given responses by several different people it's possible to work out an 
average. If you take significantly longer than the average then you 
probably need the experience anyway so you may as well charge the lower 
rate per hour. I see no reason that programmers with less experience 
shouldn't do freelance work. Freelancing is a good way to work on a wide 
range of applications which you often wouldn't be exposed to while 
working for an individual shop. Besides, estimating development time can 
be difficult even for experienced pros. Anyone that's worked in the 
software development business knows how seldom projects actually run 
according to schedule.

-- 
Michael <mogmios at mlug.missouri.edu>
http://kavlon.org