[PLUG] hiring full-time: PHP programmer

[Bear Giles]

PHP freak wrote:
>>does $25/hour seem low to anyone else for PHP experience
>
> But then, we're just a little record store, not a Big Corporate Business.
> Everyone else here works for $8/hr.

So how much do you pay your lawyer?  Your doctor?

The point being that rates are determined by the amount of experience 
and effort that goes into being qualified for the job, not just how much 
everyone else is paid.  I might not like paying a plumber or electrician 
$100/hour for work, but I know that it's usually going to be cheaper 
than me doing it myself.  (And redoing it when I screw it up the first 
time, repairnig the extra damage caused by the first attempt, etc.)

Assuming that you can figure out which guy deserves $50/hour instead of 
$25, the "more expensive" guy may be cheaper because he'll get the job 
done right the first time, and has enough similar experience to get it 
out quickly since he's already implemented something similar.  Meanwhile 
the "cheaper" guy may be more expensive since he'll implement stuff that 
could never work in practice, miss deadlines (because he doesn't yet 
have the ability to make good schedule estimates), etc.

Ultimately, it's your call.  But don't pull the "poor little me" line. 
Not unless you can show that your $8/hr workers have spent as much of 
their own time keeping current with their fields as we have.

Bear