Annoying Salary Question...

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darryladie
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Post by darryladie »

That's daylight robbery, I charge from $25 p/h and I'm 18 and I've only been doing it 18 months.

I would be straight in the bosses office to have a word. Unless they're completely ignorant then they probably know you're grossly underpaid and as long as they're not completely unreasonable you should be able to negotiate quite a lot more than that!

Good Luck.
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Chris Corbyn
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Post by Chris Corbyn »

jshpro2 wrote:$10 an hour is an insult d3ad1ysp0rk. One of my friends makes $15 working part-time updating HTML pages / inserting data into databases. You could easily do $15 or more by coding your own site with a good business model, I was pulling in almost $700 a month and hardly doing anything (of course since I hardly did anything my site died out pretty quickly, but the point is there are alternatives to working for $10/hr).. I would simply refuse to work for a penny under $15 regardless of experience level (If you don't at least know the language that's different, but in that case you'd be acting irresponsibly be trying to take up a job you cannot handle).

On a side note I know someone else who makes $10/hr coding perl, but he went into the job with only basic HTML experience, so ontop of the wages he's receiving training in the language.
Actually, I earn £22,000 GBP/yr.

That's not much over £12 GBP per hour and believe me, I'm busy and writing lots and lots of code as well server maintenance, front-end design and database administration.

Yes, I feel underpaid too at times but I'm young and I know that I'll move up as time goes on. Just kind of the way it works I guess. I'm 22... you're only a teenager still. You can make your points and take them to your boss politely asking for a pay rise but in the end, at your age do you not find that simply doing that job is providing you with all the experience you need to go out there and get a big salary once you've finished studying? :)
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onion2k
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Post by onion2k »

The only way to get a half way decent pay rise these days is to change job.
matthijs
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Post by matthijs »

Are we only talking regular jobs here? As far as I know here in Europe, freelance webdevelopers charge around $80 - 120 /hour. From friends in the IT business here I know that a normal rate when outsourcing is 100-150.

Off course when working for your own business you cannot bill every hour, you're at least spending 20-30% doing other stuff. Maybe even more. But on the other side, if you want to you can work 80 hours and bill 60 of them :)
(I'm not that lucky.... yet)
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jwalsh
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Post by jwalsh »

While I agree very much with Feyd's reasoning for the pay rate. My salary would be significantly less if I charged on a per hour basis.

I charge based on the expected value of the website 6months to a year after completed (variable depending on project of course). Building a website for some stay at home mom with roughtly 300 hours of work will not generate a website with as much value as working for a higher profile company that also requires 300 hours of work. Who do I charge more? The higher profile company, by far!

Granted, we are a contracted firm, not employee situation of course.

There's also the added benefit of working with higher profile companies. Happy high profile companies will refer you to other high profile companies.

Although I've only been in the business full time for 4 years, this is how my income has tripled over 4 years while my number of billable hours has remained roughly the same.

Josh
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raghavan20
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Post by raghavan20 »

d11wtq wrote: Actually, I earn £22,000 GBP/yr.

That's not much over £12 GBP per hour and believe me, I'm busy and writing lots and lots of code as well server maintenance, front-end design and database administration.

Yes, I feel underpaid too at times but I'm young and I know that I'll move up as time goes on. Just kind of the way it works I guess. I'm 22... you're only a teenager still. You can make your points and take them to your boss politely asking for a pay rise but in the end, at your age do you not find that simply doing that job is providing you with all the experience you need to go out there and get a big salary once you've finished studying? :)
I am just paid 12k per year in UK. But I do not feel much bad about it because I am still a masters student and I have no commercial experience before this eventhough I have worked for an year on PHP at home and few freelance jobs. This work is part of a placement in my course, eventhough I know 12k is very low and I have to take it up to get my first year of commercial experience which is crucial. Now, I am working more on Backend scripts, corelogic scripts and database administration. The IT manager has recognized my work, they definitely feel that I am doing more than what they expected but they would never hike the pay and I know it for sure because they were very stringent on pay when going on one year contract. Eventhough I feel bad at times about 12k but I still convince myself by telling me that this is my first commercial experience.


And regarding the degree, I feel, degree is important atleast an under-graduate degree to get holds all sides and basics of IT. But I would not say all degrees are good, because my masters course is not so good. But as feyd told, without a degree is definitely a problem and the reason I am doing masters is that even in India if I go back there should be a masters for getting promoted to higher levels.....

And for people who are doing part time jobs during studying, make sure you study properly and try to get A grades, if you only have good degree and good grades you can get high pay and good jobs at renowned big IT companies. It is good to work during study but also make sure that you shine in studies as well.
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