Re: hour rate for a contract Mumps programmer

I'm going to have to buy Denver one of these:

http://despair.com/consulting.html

Seriously, I think that rate breaks down into 2 main categories:

1) Is this your main gig and are you expected to be putting in 40 hours
a week for some period of time?

and

2) What does the tail-end look like?

If this is a full-time gig for you I'd add on an extra 25% to what
you'd probably underbid if this was a one-time 4 to 12 hour job. For
some reason consultants (myself included) tend to underbid the "easy"
jobs. If you're being expected to cover all your expenses (ie, quit
the day job), make sure you bid a little high the first time.

The tail-end question is harder to quantify. If this is something
you're going to do one time, like a conversion, then the work has a
clear end date and so does your income. If this is something you'll be
expected to support, or at least field questions about, you'll have
steady billing coming in for a while and can go a little lower.

To give you some perspective, I've done VBA scripting for Healthcare
organizations where I've bid $50/hour for remote contracts that I know
will be continuing for many months/years. I look at these almost like
maintenance contracts, where the customer will never have the resources
in-house to take over from me. If the scope is more like 120 hours of
work, which will fill a one-time need and they'll never see me again,
and I'll need to be on-site in Orlando in August, with a team of
programmers who know just enough to make my life difficult, and the
code needs to be bullet-proof with a level of complexity that will make
my head essplode...I'm bidding $95/hour.

M programmers are an even harder to find resource, so the $150/hour
doesn't sound too out of line to me.

Good luck,
~Peter

Cyl wrote:
Hi,

I've never had to work for an hourly rate. What would be an expected
hourly rate for somebody who's had more than 7 years of Mumps
experience?

Thanks,

CO

.

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