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You’re describing people contracted to be an employee. Basically just hours with no specific deliverables.

GP is describing people contracted to deliver a product/service.

Who hires such contractors? All the major companies have their own tech departments and write software in-house (or outsource it whole-sale to giants like TCS). That mostly leaves smaller non-tech companies. Do they have the money to pay a competitive rate?

Smaller companies that don't specialise in a specific thing.

Do you have the money to pay a locksmith a competitive rate? Same.

Locksmiths make a couple hundred dollars per job at most. Software engineers make tens of thousands for basic jobs, and hundreds of thousands for more ambitious things. It's not really comparable. Even $50k is not an insignificant amount for a small-to-medium company.

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