Ask HN: Lowest salary for a programmer?
How much should an entry level programmer/web developer charge for work?
I'm thinking either for a company or maybe freelancing at home.
What's the lowest salary ($/hr) you would lower yourself too?
I'm thinking either for a company or maybe freelancing at home.
What's the lowest salary ($/hr) you would lower yourself too?
It's not intuitive, but raising your price will signal that you and your work are more valuable AND you will get more and better customers. Consider this: when you shop for something (that you don't have a lot of knowledge about) I bet you use the price as one indicator of quality. Same for services: Your customers will think "If he can charge $XXX hour, he must be good."
It is so common to devalue your own abilities as developer that it is a cliche' (Google "imposter syndrome"). In reality, your ability to deliver real value to a business/client happens long before you consider yourself an "expert".
I have 2 rates. (1) Free (2) Full price. In my experience, customers don't appreciate introductory discounted rates. Instead, they feel ripped off when you start charging them the full rate.
I don't have time to find the links now but HN'er Patrick McKenzie "Patio11" has written great stuff on this. See his blog on Kalzumeus Software.