Re: The Economics of Incompetence
- From: "Steve Covert" <scovert@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 30 Dec 2006 15:38:32 -0600
Bob,
I believe the old saying applies: "you get what you pay for."
And, hiring managers, (who have never coded), need to understand that the
skill to author quality software takes years of experience to master.
Unless, of course, the developer has read "Learn Visual Basic in 21 Days."
Regards,
Steve Covert
"Bob Johnson" <A@xxxxx> wrote in message
news:OdBZiM9KHHA.5016@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hourly Rates:
Senior Programmer - $85.00/Hr.
Junior Programmer - $15.00/Hr.
Incompetent Programmer - $15.00/Hr.
The Project:
Create a simple report.
Initial Cost of Project:
Senior programmer takes 10 minutes to complete the report. Cost to the
business: $14.00
Junior programmer takes 2 hours to complete the report. Cost to the
business: $30.00
Incompetent Programmer takes 2 days (16 hours). Cost to the business:
$240.00
Lifetime Cost of the Project:
Consider the "final product" delivered by each of these programmers. The
solutions delivered by the incompetent or junior programmers are more
likely to suffer performance problems and have "bugs." The solution
delivered by the senior programmer is likely to "just work." There are
huge long-term cost differences between software that is buggy as compared
to software that just works.
Rhetorical Question: Who is the most expensive programmer on the team?
I"m just looking for some additional perspective on this question after
years of consulting - and observing that businesses so frequently care
only about the hourly rate... and end up paying so much more in the long
run... through living with their bad systems and, if bad enough,
eventually hiring someone to come in and fix things. There's so much bad
software out there - I'm guessing that it's the myopic managers
considering only hourly rates.
Thoughts? Opinions? Perspective?
Thanks.
.
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