If I Help Won’t It Cost Less? 06-14-2004
The guys from 37Signals have an interesting post on their blog Signal vs. Noise about hourly rates for development work. It is obviously mostly in jest but it says a lot about the way developers feel about clients getting their hands in the nitty gritty of development. For wow factor I’ve listed the rates below:
- $150/hr Standard Rate
- $200/hr if you want it NOW
- $250/hr if you want to watch over my shoulder while I work
- $300/hr if you want to help
- $400/hr if you worked on it first
The most interesting aspect of this is the rate for if you worked on it first. I totally understand why it is the most expensive because many clients always feel that since they have already done some work on it they feel that it will be done quicker and that for the developer it will be easy. I saw this all too often when I worked with clients who were somewhat tech savvy. They would run a huge document through Microsoft Office’s Save as HTML feature and think they were doing us a favor.
It’s a funny list of rates but it it definitely makes me realize that everyone in the field runs into these same kinds of situations with clients.