These are univeristy sites so they are not complex apps. But there is a lot of backend code and middleware for pushing files to the CDN and to an xml database.
One thing is for sure: there are definitely, 100%, no-questions about it, over 1 people who can be reached and who, at least for a few months, would take over 15,000 pages and 154+ sites. (An early 20s hacker). For under $30,000.
That excludes nearly everybody: but not everybody. There is 1 person you can find who can do it.
However, that one person is not going to be over 50. Over 50 people "aren't stupid" and are not going to do that for you for $30,000 and no other compensation.
You can say under twenty people will be "stupid enough" that you can find someone to do it. But more accurately, they have different motivations. There's nothing stupid about working for $30,000 doing a job that's worth half a million, when your friends are earning $20,000 as barristas at starbucks. People's lives change over time. . . .
That's patently false. Undervaluing your labor because your friends work in a poorly compensated industry makes no sense. If anything the money you are earning when you are younger is more important to secure for ROI purposes.
we're just going to disagree if you think otherwise - we don't have to get into an argument about it. In my world view not everything is about maximizing salary.
Maybe they just want to get out of the house and do something useful?
Otherwise if it was for $$$s, and they aren't poor without a safety net, seems like they'd be better off learning higher value skills and getting a better job.
I've considered it, but I don't think I can do that work.
I'm not actually retired, and may never be able to, because of a catastrophic health event around twelve years ago. I get paid very well when I'm working, and that plus learned frugality and a supportive family has enabled me to get by pretty comfortably, but the same health catastrophe created a situation in which it's quite difficult to find people who want to hire me. That difficulty is increased by a couple of other personal limitations that don't hamper my productivity (I can be outstandingly productive given the right tools, goals, and situation), but the right combination of things is just a little different from and more specific than the common default, and that's enough to have a strong negative effect on my chances of being hired. I'm a white crow, is what it comes down to--or a nail that sticks up.
My solution so far is to take work I'm likely to excel at when I can get it, and especially when people are comfortable paying me on par with what I've been usually been paid before (because it's good pay), but to be open to any steady work of any kind that I think I can do, because I also often have to weather extended periods of no work. The longest so far has been a little over two years.
Oh, and of course I'm always working on projects meant to become things that will generate residual income in the long run.
I would certainly work as a Wal-Mart greeter if I thought I could do it. There are a lot of other low-paying jobs that I would do if I thought I could do them. The main problem with low-paying jobs is that a lot of them require sustained physical exertion that I can't do, or rigid work schedules that I can't observe, or both.
In the non-labor market airlines a great example of this. They create tremendous value for their customers (fast long distance transportation), but the industry as a whole is not very profitable.
Same for employment. Many (hopefully most) employees generate more value than their salaries, but that does not mean they can negotiate for that value to be added to their salary. If there is someone else with similar capabilities willing to do the job at $x, then negotiating pay above $x will be difficult.
The worst case[0] is that they don't show up the next day and you are SOL.
0. Assuming they don't actively try to sabotage the company that has been exploiting them.
people at the bottom of the totem pole view money as simply a scarce resource -- when it becomes somewhat more abundant, you have other things to worry about and it becomes a means to an end of hiring and retaining good, reliable people.
one way of doing this is not to substantially underpay someone who's worth a lot more on the open market, because eventually it will bite you in the ass.
No, it's just rational as an individual, yet it ends up driving down wages. If, as a group, this kind of pay was shunned, that wouldn't happen. Don't devalue your job, wait it out.
Employers are in a better position to divide and conquer, than employees are to unionize.