Forum Moderators: coopster
1. We have very many projects, and are thinking an individual would be less expensive than a company - and we could pay them on a retainer basis once projects are completed. Is this common/recommendable?
As a programmer, I take a 50% deposit on a quoted job before I'll do any work (asside from the estimate). Perhaps you could call that a retainer.
2. Most European and US programmers quote per hour - whilst we would prefer to pay per day/month. Is the hourly rate the norm that we should be observing?
Yes. Much work is quoted on an estimate based on the number of hours a programmer feels it will take to complete a project. If you insist on a daily/monthly rate, you may be turning away qualified programmers who are unfamiliar with, or disinclined to work with, this type of quoting. Do yourself a favor and be flexible.
3. What range of rates should we be looking to pay?
I'd say rates of truly qualified programmers in the U.S. vary from between $50 - $150 an hour. You should be able to get substantially cheaper rates in developing countries, but you also must accept higher risks.
Many applicants bid around $500-$750 pm - but are on average 3 years out of University, with most knowing little about Linux.
I know some programmers who were not even out of university by the time they were excellent programmers who knew Linux backwards and forwards (it was, after all, written by a university student). Of course, they were at universities like CalTech and got hired by Microsoft as full-on (summer) programmers when they were 17. And no, they did not work for $750/month, unless that was their part-time wage for programming they did between school assignments.
The amount of education in and of itself tells you little about what a person knows and how smart he is (and I'm saying this from the position of someone with *lots* of education, so it's not sour grapes, just a fact). Some kids three years out of uni will be amazing, while some won't.
I would expect that someone *good* with a CS degree from a top school and three years of full-time experience would be near the top of Volitile's range if hired on a contract basis. Now, three years out of a mediocre institution with a degree in English will get you a much better rate ;-) People I know with lots of experience in the field, a developed client list and a solid education typically bill out at around $1000 per day plus expenses if the client requires travel.
I think the rates the OP mentioned are probably only available in India, China, and places like that with a newly developing software industry. I suspect that if you take bids from established Indian companies with solid client lists, that even they are more than $750/month these days. I was just reading an article that said that many of these companies now farm their work out to China in order to keep their prices at levels that US and European contractors consider in line with "Indian" prices.
