Also, the author fails to note that you can't hire great Perl programmers because the going rate for Perl programmers seems to be about $30/hour, and who can do that? I'll continue to earn my bread and butter in the non-programming trades in order to make sure my daughter's teeth are straight, thanks.
Depending on the nature of the job, yes, it is definitely low. If we're talking freelance, remember that you've got to account for your own self-employment tax and health insurance out of that.
The last time I did any serious freelance software work, five or six years ago, I started out charging $80/hr, and was still selling myself short.
I don't know where you are, but in the UK $30 (so £19) or roughly £160 a day is a very low rate. I would say that, depending on the location, the normal rates are from three to ten times this figure (depending on area of expertise).
[Edit - any time I see "daily rate" I think of contracting - £160 a working day as a salaried employee is probably on the low side, but nothing exceptional].
I agree $30 is low but It would be rare in Australia to see $90-$300 for fulltime employment pure development. It's certainly possible as a freelancer or as a more senior role though. Definitely as a consultant of some kind.
Agreed, I was saying $30 is low for fulltime workers. For a freelancer, given that they can only bill so many hours as you say besides other expenses and risk that employees do not have it is simply reckless.
The US is too large to just say $30 is low across the board - $30/hour plus good benefits is quite livable in some areas. In other parts, it's pretty hard to raise a family on $30/hour.
Maybe I'm just a terrible screwup, but in 2004 I qualified for EIC and left programming entirely because the bottom had fallen out of the Perl market. And I've never gotten benefits.
And no, $60K is pretty tight for a family of four anywhere in the US.
> And no, $60K is pretty tight for a family of four anywhere in the US.
That's... not true. I came from a family of eight who never had more than $50k income (no health insurance), and I don't remember ever even having to think about it. We had multiple cars, a large-ish house, etc.
This was of course not in a city, but it's not the cheapest place in the states either.
(After a bit more googling, I may have to retract that last statement. If it's not the cheapest place in the US, it's awfully close.)
Dude, I live in Richmond, Indiana, and my 14-room house cost me $8000. If this isn't pretty damn close to the cheapest place in America to live, I'll eat my hat and yours alike.
Sure, back in the olden days growing up 20 miles from here on the farm, we didn't have squat, either. But seriously, my daughter's braces cost $5200. No joke. Maybe it's just that I can't survive on a diet of Marlboros and PBR any more, having seen something of the world, but $60K would simply not be enough.
A lot depends on habits, sure. One can develop expensive or inexpensive habits. Ours were mostly inexpensive, I suppose, but I never thought of them that way. Practically nobody I knew had a brand new car, so it didn't seem unusual that we had three old cars instead.
(Five of us kids had braces, by the way; and five of us had glasses, and one had hearing aids. I know none of those things are cheap.)
...Anyway, I seem to have dragged you into a rather off-topic discussion. Sorry about that.
The median household income in the US in 2008 was $52,029. Probably with health insurance, but still. If $60k is pretty tight, most of the country has it pretty bad.
$60k is claimed to be tight for raising a family of 4. You're looking at households, which are not the same thing at all.
According to the table at http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0884238.html (which claims to be using census data; I tried digging through the census website for this information but actually finding it there is a pain) as of a few years ago 27% of households had 1 person. 33% of households had 2 people. You will note that adds up to 60% of the households. So the median household size is 2.
Households with at least 4 people (the ones that $60k is claimed to be tight for) make up, according to the same table, about 23% of households.
It would be interesting to look at the income distribution for such households, since _that_'s what would be relevant to the concern you're raising; I would expect their median household income to be somewhat faster than $52k, though possibly not a huge amount more. If you can figure out how to get this data from the census website, I'd be really interested.
