NYCPHP Meetup

[Hans Zaunere]

> I'm going to chime in here because this is a topic that I find
> upsetting.
> 
> I recently had a guy offer me 20 CD/hour to work as contractor
> doing professional PHP programming work. After the exchange
> rate, paying my own taxes and other expenses, etc., that boiled
> down to doing professional programming work for minimum
> wage. Which is ludicrous.
> 
> I'm no expert on these things, but I think there are two things
> going on here. Kids, with no experience or education, that are
> willing to work for peanuts or just for the "fun" of it, and the
> overseas contingent. How is an American supposed to
> compete with that and still have a decent quality of life?
> Especially in a major city like NY, or on the west coast where
> housing costs alone are to the moon.
> 
> I keep telling people that approach me with projects, and are
> expecting to be able to get away with a rate similar to what
> I've just described, you get what you pay for. Because I
> don't know about the rest of this group, but I have not only
> seen the quality of the code and database designs from
> folks that are willing to work on the cheap, I've also had to
> throw a lot of it in the trash and start over. I have even
> considered registering domain names and selling myself
> on this very idea: we-clean-up-after-[insert slur here].com.

Much of this is right on... there needs to be a tone set about the professionalism of PHP developers.  While the actually act of writing code is being commoditized, there are added values any of use can give customers that add value.  I hope that everyone on this list stands fast on a real rate for real work.

"I'm Good Enough, I'm Smart Enough and Doggone It, People Like Me"
Daily Affirmations By Stuart Smalley


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Hans Zaunere
President, Founder

New York PHP
http://www.nyphp.org

AMP Technology
Supporting Apache, MySQL and PHP