LibriVox hits 100 Million downloads, looking for a PHP Dev | Hacker News Reader

LibriVox hits 100 Million downloads, looking for a PHP Dev

librivox.org

41 pointshughmcguire9 comments

Congratulations on the landmark download. Seems like a very laudable service.

With that in mind, may I make a suggestion re: your PHP position? I totally understand the below-market pay you are offering (35-50 USD/hr); after all, you are a non-profit with a limited budget, and there are other rewards for working for a non-profit. Nonetheless, it will likely prove very difficult to find a qualified developer at those rates, particularly once willing to work with PHP. And yet, you are requiring 5 years of development experience. Do you really need someone with that much experience?

If I were you, I would consider lowering that requirement to 2 years at the most. There are probably some well-qualified PHP devs just starting out who might like to work for you, and who would be perfectly capable of meeting your requirements (btw, this does not include me, since I haven't done significant work in PHP since 2003).

Finally, if you choose not to lower those requirements, you might want to ask yourself why a developer with 5 years of experience is willing to work for pay so far below the going rate. Unless he/she is a philanthropist whose life mission is to spread the use of audio books, I'd be willing to bet that this applicant is a very poor developer. Wouldn't you rather have a talented, eager developer with a year or less of experience?

Normally, I wouldn't take the time to write this kind of missive, but I appreciate your work and ideals and just want to alert you to going labor market conditions.

tl;dr: it's a hot job market for developers, so you might want to re-consider your hiring requirements.

updated the job post accordingly, asking for 2 years.

That's smart -- hopefully it will net you a better developer. You'll definitely want to post your same job at one the HN "Freelancer?, Seeking Freelancer?" job thread. It comes out at the beginning of each month but you can still post yours on the April thread. It might get you some good candidates.

Unless I'm doing my math hugely wrong, $50/hour is a little over $100k/year. That doesn't seem particularly low, at least not in my area.

The project has a fixed budget, so it won't be $100k ... more like $35k.

$100k/year with no benefits and a relatively short fixed term, plus the overhead of setting up the contract and having the space/equipment to fulfill it (admittedly those are minor in this case.)

In my experience for good contract work like this the prices start around $50/hour (at least in big cities in the US), and tend towards 75-100.

I'm not saying that _this_ should cost that much, just taking a stab at the rates I usually see in the DC area.

$50/hr is a low end for somebody with 5 years of experience, especially if it's 1099 and not W2-hourly.

You can't directly equate contract rates to salary rates. In terms of costs, the contractor has to cover taxes, equipment, insurance (of all types, including health).

Additionally, the contractor has to set aside sufficient profit to cover the risks involved in short-term work. Business development takes a considerable amount of time, and it can be days (or, in some cases weeks) before another contract starts. That time has to be paid for.

zeejayoz: as you will have seen from the others who responded, it's not a salaried position, it's a contract job. Contractors have to pay for their own equipment, supplies, business taxes, licenses, etc. For example, as a freelancer I pay almost twice the federal FICA tax rate of a salaried worker. Plus, I have to take out unpaid time for marketing, and sometimes, even if you're good, you'll find yourself with a week or two of unexpected (and unpaid) vacation. Contract workers have to plan and budget for all of that. So yes, it's below the going rate for experienced developers in any part of the country here in the US. It's way below the going rate for developers with 5 years of experience. I think LibriVox is smart to lower the amount of experience they are requiring -- they'll likely end up with a better developer because of it (although there are no guarantees at below market rates).

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