Carl Perkins wrote:

>You desperately need to go to: www.realrates.com and be prepared for a shock.
>I am amazed at how many programmers underestimate their worth. Full employment, shortages due to Y2K, look at the H1B law! Any good programmer should be contracting, not an employee, and billing a minimum of $65/hour. Do not take my word for it, go to: www.realrates.com and examine the real_rate survey.
>
>It is YOUR skill that THEY need, not you needing the work!

Carl, I'm going to dispute (politely) your assertion that "any good programmer should be contracting, not an employee".

The company I work for pays me *very* well (in the higher ranges of what's been stated here). Above that, they treat me like a human being and not like a commodity or a "dunsel" (all you Trekkers will know what that is). There are lots of benefits that don't appear in our employee handbook which I either couldn't afford or couldn't qualify for as a contractor.

Additionally, I'm allowed to spend my own time as I wish (read: contract) with the (obvious) provisos of not allowing that to interfere with my job tasks and non-competition/conflicts of interest. And I do so, up to the point where other things start to suffer -- then I "pass the ball" to another developer.

Does that make me a "non-good" programmer? Not hardly (although other things might (G) ). I have a family to support (as many of us do) and this avenue provides us (read: my wife) with the security that contracting can't. Besides, she put up with me doing the government contract thing, and all of its billing uncertainties, for several years before we accepted my current situation.

By the way, I've been a VFP specialist since it arrived, a Fox specialist since 1990 and in the business since 1978 -- so I've seen quite a few trips around the block. I've met *lots* of "good programmers", many of them *outstanding* programmers, who for one reason or another prefer not to contract.

Just my $.02 worth.

Evan Pauley