wayne@csri.toronto.edu (Wayne Hayes) (02/22/91)
I've been offered my first contract programming job by an individual starting up a very small company in Toronto. Basically he has an IBM clone XT and a fancy little card that can do wonders with a phone. (eg be an answering machine; call up groups of people to leave messages with them; have people call in with touch-tone phones and interact with some software that comes with the card.) He wants to set up the thing so that desperate employers can call in requesting workers for temporary jobs, and then this thing will call a predetermined list of people who are looking for work, and when one of them responds "yes, I'm available for work immediately", then the software is to set up a conference call between worker and temporary employer. I haven't had a chance to look at the software that comes with the card, but it looks pretty comprehensive. There is also a programmer's toolkit available for lower level control of the card (via interrupts in C or assembler), and even a proprietary interpreter built on top of the toolkit. The guy who wants to hire me is not very programming literate, so even though I don't think the job is overly complex (perhaps only a month of part-time work), he wants a "real" programmer to handle it. First, I wasn't out looking for the job. I was recommended by a good old friend to this guy as "the local programmer/hacker". I do have *some* professional experience. Right now I'm a second year Comp Sci student who is taking a year off working at a "real" computer company. But I've never looked into "consulting" or "contract programming", so I have no idea what to charge the guy. The bottom line is I'd like some advice on what "going" rates are for an inexperienced programmer working for a very small company on a project that probably won't be overly complex. -- "You ask me what I think about war and the death penalty. The latter question is simpler. I am not for punishment at all, but only for the measures that serve society and it's protection." -- Albert Einstein Wayne Hayes INTERNET: wayne@csri.utoronto.ca CompuServe: 72401,3525