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Upgrade Pricing on ColdFusion Builder 2

So, maybe I'm late to the game wih this, but I was just on Adobe.com and happended to look at ColdFusion Builder 2 in the store and saw they now offer upgrade pricing for Builder if you have any of the following:

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Freelance Pay Scale - What should you charge

So, this started out as a bit of a brain dump on the AZCFUG.org mailing list when someone asked what the going rate is for a ColdFusion Developer these days. I recieved a lot of positive feedback on it, so I thought it might be a good idea to share on here.

 

A good baseline for picking a rate is:

 

Take what you earn a year, say, $60,000

You work about 2000 hrs a year, so your hourly rate there is about $30 an hour

Being a full time employee has it's advantages (usually..) Steady pay, health insurance, paid time off... You get the idea.

Those "benefits" have a literal value, say roughly equal to your pay.

So as a baseline number, double whatever your assumed hourly rate a full time job would be, in this case somewhere around $60 hour

I then usually add or subtract based on the job itself: Taking over someone else's evil, poorly coded project that looks like a nightmare, I add 50% - 100%

If it's something cool that I've never done before and I can learn from it, I might discount it some.

Also, factor in that you need to pay taxes on this income (we all report all of our side income, Right???) So, assume your going to lose about 40% of the money you make.

The volume of work (guaranteed work), my availability, possible perks (free stuff they make or sell), how tight or loose their deadlines are, do they seem cool or are they going to be a pain in the a**, should all factor into that pricing.

(Comments added by Cheryl Novalis-Marine)
I think you also need to consider Industry and size of the company (maybe even more so than the location).  I have a long time client out of Manhattan NY, but they are a smaller company and because they are in NYC they have a lot of high expenses.  No way they would be able to pay $200/hour.  So, lots of things to factor in when deciding.

At the end of all of that, look at how much money you stand to take home once the job is done, is it worth the time/effort/stress

 

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cfdevcamp phoenix brain dump - the next day

1

Posted by | Posted on November 14, 2010

Category : ColdFusion · Adobe

 

So our first ever cfdevcamp came and went this weekend. The day went very well and most of it is already a blur... We had a great turnout, including around 7 or 8 people who came in from outside Phoenix. 5 or 6 from Tucson, one from S California and I think even one person from Seattle!

I'm so proud of out team, everyone worked so hard to make this event happen and then spent an entire Saturday helping total strangers learn a little but more about ColdFusion. It was exciting to be part of something like that.

This post is mostly for myself and the other members of the cfdevcamp Phoenix team, after hosting a big event like that it's best to get down your immediate thoughts on what went well and what didn't can be crucial for planning your next big event.

 

What went well:

  • We had a great group of people attend, despite hiccups and technical difficulties, everyone seemed to be having a great time
  • Gangplank was an awesome location
  • CafePress made us some great shirts and got them to us incredibly quickly.
  • The USB drives and DVDs containing all of the possible variations of CF Server and CF Builder made getting things installed MUCH easier
  • Coffee and Bagels were very popular, but 3 dozen bagels for 30 people were actually too many.
What didn't work well:
  • Showing everyone the really cool new features on CF / CFB and Apptacular
    • While having Terry there was awesome, and his presentation great, it really distracted people away from simple, core CF projects.
    • Everyone got VERY excited about CF Builder and ORM, but then spent most of the day trying to get it to work
  • Beer: Beer was a fun idea and a good marketing gimmick, but really, hardly anyone drank it.
    • To be fair, the beer from San Tan Brewing was awesome (even if it comes in cans not bottles), Chip and Lisa were super nice and the food there after cfdevcamp was awesome
  • Sodas an energy drinks were fairly popular, but not in the quantities I had expected.
    • The 12 pack of Bawls went quickly, but I think mostly out of curiosity and shock value, there were many jokes about "my bawls"
    • No one touched the red bull... However it wasn't in any of the coolers
    • Hardly any of the sodas were touched, but they were buried in the coolers and the cooler were not labeled.

What should we do differently next year:
  • Dry Run 
    • At least 2 weeks in advance of the event. We need time to make sure things will work well and if hey don't time to find a way to make them...
  • Central dedicated DB server
    • MS SQL and MySQL on it so no one needs to worry about standing up a DB server locally. It cause TOO many problems 
  • Installation Walk through:
    • We spent FAR too much time helping people get setup, that nearly buried the day.
    • Next time, we need to a large group walk through on how to install each piece of software and configure it, including how to connect CF to the central shared DB server. This should allow 90% of the people to get up and running in the first hour and will let us focus on the 10% that are still having problems.
  • Dedicated staff:
    • Don't mis-understand me, the volunteers we had were super dedicated to helping out, I mean we need to have certain people dedicated to certain tasks.
      • Someone who's in charge of registration, taking photos, helping with installations, tweeting etc...
  • Pre-planned and tested demos. 
    • We need to come up with a few simple ideas that we can walk newbies through. Ideas we know we can build, that we've tested and we can take them through quickly.
  • Group Photo
    • I really wish we had taken the time to do a few, both with the whole gang there and a few with just the staff..,
  • Label the shirts with their sizes...
    • CafePress was awesome, but the only thing that had the sizes on the were the shirt tags, which were not always accessible... I had to open virtually every shirt to see what size it was.
  • Get more info about the users during registration.
    • While we didn't run into any issues this year with users, we should try to ask people for a little info on things like, desired shirt size, any food needs or allergies...

 

cfdevcamp - Phoenix - Registration is now open!

0

Posted by | Posted on September 14, 2010

Category : ColdFusion · Adobe

For everyone interested, registration for cfdevcamp Phoenix is now open!

http://cfdevcampphoenix.eventbrite.com/

Remember, registration is limited, sign up early.

cfdevcamp - Phoenix

0

Posted by | Posted on September 13, 2010

Category : ColdFusion · Adobe

After many yers of talking about it, a group of intrepid and dedicated ColdFusion developers here in Phoenix have finally managed to put together a plan to hold a ColdFusion Dev Camp!

Here is what we know so far...

The event will be held on November 13th(Saturday), 2010 at the offices of Gangplank (260 South Arizona Avenue Chandler, AZ 85225)

This will be an all day, hands on ColdFusion training event, no experience is nessesary, just bring your laptop and a desire to learn.

Registration will be setup soon, we will be limiting attendance to around 50.

http://phoenix.cfdevcamp.org/

 

More info to come... Stay tuned

Dear Cox Communications - Why do you hate your customers so much?

0

Posted by | Posted on September 11, 2010

Category : Ranting

Dear Cox Communications,

Why do you hate your customers so much? Have we done something to offend you? Is it that when we send you huge chunks of our income on a monthly basis for your low quality product you know just how grossly you're over-charging us and it makes you feel bad? Not bad enough to either lower your prices or give us better service, but bad enough that you occassionally think about it while wandering your mansion looking for the room you left one of your rolexs in... oh heck, you'll just send your assistant to go buy another one... It's not really your money anyway...

Seriosly though, what the hell man? I spend like $150 a month with your company, but whenever anything goes wrong the only answer I ever get is, "I'm very sorry but don't worry, we're not going to do anthing to actually help you."

Today I discovered that my beloved Arizona Wildcat's football game was actually getting televised tonight! A rare treat given how poorly we've played in the last decade... All I needed to do was subscribe to that channel and I'd be able to watch it. Given that I was sitting around waiting for an oil change, i figured I had some time to kill, so I called into the "customer service" number and was quite suprised that I got hold of a human being in under 2 minutes (a rare feat for any company these days). I spoke with a rep and explained my situation, I wanted to watch MY football tonight game on channel 172, so the only channel I cared about was channel 172. As such I specifically asked, "Can I get this channel" the answer, "well, you'll get the whole package (like 20 channels), which includes channel 172". Please note, I did not ask, "Can people in general get this channel" I wanted to know specifically, can I, Alan Rother in Glendale AZ, get this channel. We completed the tasks required to add the sports package to my account and the rep informed me that the package was now active and as soon as I got home the channels would be up and running.

Sure enough, I get home turn on th TV, change the chanel to 172 and BAM - a big blank grey screen... WTF! I check all of the othe channels in the package... Every single other channel in the package (with the exception of the two other Fox Sports College channels) worked perfectly...

Once again I call "customer service" and immediately get hold of a rep, she reviews the situation and verifies my account, sure enough, she see's why it isn't working. She noticies that I have a Cable Card listed on my account, yes that's right, I can't stand the DVR the cable company offers, so instead I have a bad ass HD Tivo... The problem is simple then, all I need to do is drive over to the Cox office a block from my house and pick up a "tuning adapter" Great, super, easy... I'm on my way... Oh wait, they close at 4... It's now 4:20....

So I ask, well can I get one from an on site tech? Yes of course, we can schedule to send one out in 3 days... Not even a little helpful... Well, can you tell me where one is right now, I'll go meet him and he can just give me the adapter, after all it doesn't actually require a tech to install it??? Oh sure, oh wait... no we can't do that...

All I need is a stupid adapter, that just plugs in to the back of my Tivo, to fix a massive design flaw in the stupid Tuner Card that Cox makes me pay $2 a month for... But no... despite the fact this is YOUR fault, you just will not do ANYTHING to help me out. Even though there is no technical, legal or physical reason you can't simply give me an adapter, you just won't. Apparently there is some paperwork involved and you wouldn't want a little thing like customer happiness to get in the way of paperwork... FFS...

Cox, do you not realize that in the next 5 years your whole business niche of providing television is going to change? We won't need you soon... TV will be nearly all, on demand, over the internet... Don't you want us to not hate you so that maybe, just maybe we will still do business with you? Would it have killed you to have someone in your employment who actually cared enough to help me out? I just want to watch a stupid football game... Hell, I'm even PAYING YOU to let me watch my game... NO, I'm even PAYING EXTRA to let me watch my game, and it's not even gong to be in high def!

In conclusion... Cox, you suck. I don't know what else to say... ComCast can you please move into the Phoenix area and bury this awful company, please?

-----------------------

For the record, everyone I spoke to was as nice as possible, I'm quite certain the last tech I spoke to before I spent 30 minutes yelling at a manager, truely wanted to help me, but was clearly worried about being fired for doing so... The manager also agreed to give me a credit on the sports package... woo hoo, I'm not having to pay for a service I CAN'T FUCKING USE BECAUSE SOME NITWIT DIDNT DO HIS DAMN JOB!

 

 

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