[Princeton]

this only relates to people who are looking to hire for custom mods - not providing full-time employment

What you're talking about is inexperience.

Cost is determined by a variety of factors (I won't go into this) ... but ultimately, you can save more money if you accept a "per project" bids over hourly bids.

Just imagine ... paying someone hourly for a project that takes 100+ hours to complete. At $75 an hour, that's $7,500+. Most programmers "here" would have done the project for $5,000 (maybe less).

Inexperienced programmers do not understand the complexity involved in projects ... the same thing applies to people who are looking to hire - employer (member submitting a service request).

For starters, all projects should go through a "beta testing" phase to find bugs and usability issues - some projects will require more time than others.

• most employers do not account for this period ... they want something and they want it now
• inexperienced programmers do not account for this period ... they want the money asap and really could care less of what happens thereafter

I've seen many projects fail because of 1 or more of the following...

1. forward compatibility
2. growth
3. security
4. usability

On 99% of service requests - the above is never mentioned.

When a project fails it ends up costing employer and programmer money.

employer - hires someone else to fix issues
programmer - just lost a paying customer


TIP
When submitting a Service Request - If a programmer does not ask for a detailed bulleted description of your request - ignore them.

Coders looking for work - If employer does not provide a detailed bulleted description of project - ignore them.