Hot answers tagged paying
24
In my experience, the most productive rockstar programmers in an organisation are almost always people who are truly passionate about what they do. So the trick is to find people for whom the "work itself is the reward", not some "external" stimulus such as better pay.
As for how pay rises should be done - I'm not sure. I've always essentially just been a ...
19
This video has excellent insights on what motivates people:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc
It does not give an answer on how people should be motivated but it does say how they shouldn't.
In the video Daniel Pink gives a lot of examples of money rewards that don't work (sometimes they do the opposite of what you want).
By the end of the video ...
17
Up-Front + Milestones
Typically, you should have some payment up-front to begin work. Then, have milestones where you deliver some part of the project to them, or show an update to progress where the next payment is due. This way you have the incentive to keep working on the project, because you don't get paid the full amount until you deliver, and they ...
17
The formula that I usually follow:
Initial Rate = Your hourly rate * worst case estimate of number of hours you'd need to finish this project + Expenses
Expenses = Power Cost + Money transaction costs (wire, western union etc) if applicable + Any hardware or software that you needed to purchase for your work + Internet Connection Costs
Final Rate = (1 - ...
17
To understand why Annual Reviews are teamicide, consider the consequences of the following analog:
Your marriage is going along great, but you decide that once per year you need to have a conversation with your wife initiated by the question : "How do you think our marriage is working out?" followed by "Let's talk about what you have done right and what ...
13
If it's directly for work, unless there's an understanding otherwise, the company should absolutely pay for it. It doesn't matter if it's all day for two weeks, if that's a reasonable amount of time to learn the framework. If the company hires a programmer with the understanding that they don't already have that skill, the company, generally, should pay for ...
13
Honestly, a lot of developers will be happy just to be given work-time to do that in -- as long as their contributions are publicly accessible (ie. not some private intranet blogging tool).
The rest will do a half-assed job, even if you sit at their backs and hold a gun to their heads. Why bother trying to convince those?
11
Things I personally have seen in the performance review process that have actively harmed morale and productivity in the organization:
All the managers were in the same bonus pool, the most senior guy rated everyone else down so that he got the entire pool to himself. Needless to say the managers were livid.
People were told they could be rated no higher ...
10
This is from another international freelancer (I'm currently in Pakistan). If they're giving you a visa to the U.S, take it. Work until you can be free from them and still stay in the U.S, but don't let a chance to get U.S citizenship /permanent residence slip from you because of 1-2 years of stressful work life. People from your and my country have had to ...
9
I ask clients to pay 50% up front and 50% when the project is complete and I have given it to them. I have lost a lot of money in the past when clients suddenly pull out and I have not gotten anything off them up front.
With the 50% up front you know you can trust them and it will cover your development costs. They will also feel happy that you won't get ...
9
You should be aware that there's a possibility that the only reason they were willing to take you back is because they need you to complete your current project and will simply fire you after you're no longer needed. From a business perspective, you've already shown them that you're likely to quit when you don't enjoy the work so they want to make sure ...
6
If your company was willing to make changes before to keep you around, they will probably be willing to do that again.
Make a list of what you hate about your company, and how you would like to see it fixed. Bring it to your supervisors attention. Try and be diplomatic... you don't want to come across as "I'll quit if you don't fix these problems" (even ...
6
It makes absolute sense in theory and in isolation.
Pay the best guy the most, and make it a sliding scale down from him.
The problem is all the little things that you can do to play the game, the politics in the organization, the project you might be stuck on, and a multitude of other things.
What if you have a spineless manager who cannot make the case ...
5
A very different formula to those already posted, used with great success by some people, is
price = whatever you think the customer is willing to pay at most
Obviously, this formula contains a variable that is hard to determine, but I've seen cases where a customer was willing to pay €800 for a task that hardly takes an hour to complete. And similar ...
5
If the company requested/asked you to learn the Framework, then there is no question of being unethical to spend entire working day learning it. However, you should be aggressive to get a grasp of it fast so you can start to develop production code as early as possible.
Since you are involved in a Startup with only two of you as programmer, for the benefit ...
5
I'll go with the UltraEdit way, with a discount on renewal for already paying users.
How much time will you pass developing new functionalities ? If a user already paid for the "base" version, doesn't it makes sense to ask them to pay a little extra if they want more features you worked on ? (without asking them to pay for something they already have)
Of ...
3
two sane options
if you're flat-bidding the work, or the cost of an iteration, half in advance and half on completion. For your own protection, insist that acceptance tests be objective and automated.
if you're working by the hour, sell pre-paid hours
3
At the end of the day its the team that counts, I find individual performance appraisal often nullifies the team effort causing unnecessary conflicts, like people trying to get ahead of others by keeping things for themselves and jealousy. Money seems always to bring out the worst in people, in a team you want people to reach outside of their roles and take ...
2
I currently get paid by Google every week day (Monday - Friday), assuming I've actually earned some money. It takes >24 hours for a new order to be charged to the customer's card, so that money is not paid immediately. Once Google sends the payment it takes 3 days on average until it appears in the bank. There is no minimum threshold for payment. If I've ...
2
After a bit of researching, I found this:
Payments for successfully processed
orders are sent for disbursal to your
account within two business days.
However, the actual payout for your
Google Checkout account will be
initiated as per the applicable payout
schedule for your account. Once the
payout is disbursed to the bank
account you ...
2
If I look at how these have been implemented in every organisation I have worked in, then the answer would be, yes they are harmful.
In my experience there is a huge gap between the stated objective of performance reviews, which is generally to improve the performance of the individual and the organisation, and reality.
Where performance reviews are ...
2
This process is known as authorization & capture and is used by most major payment gateways, including PayPal and Amazon (Amazon refer to it as delayed order fulfillment or Reserve action).
PayPal on authorization and capture
Amazon on the Reserve action in their API
2
PayPal has a number of tutorials/demos on how to integrate with their system, with examples in PHP, Java and ASP.NET. You can use their shopping cart buttons, or interface with third-party ones.
Here are a couple of books on the subject:
PayPal APIs: Up and Running: A
Developer's Guide by Michael
Balderas (to be plublished March 7,
2011)
Effortless ...
2
The reason you dropped your resignation is because you were being slaved like a donkey. H1B is just a dangling carrot to keep you in.
Will working conditions improve in USA? Probably not. In fact you will have to deal with the overhead of Onsite-Offshore coordination along with your work.
Having said that a friend of mine did the exact same thing as you ...
2
I would suggest that major version releases with significant new features should be paid for, though with a discount for people who bought the previous version.
You should still provide bugfix releases for free for the previous major version, though. Those are faults in a product you have sold and, to a point, your customers have a right to those repairs.
...
2
Why would this be different to any other part of their job?
That means two things:
1) You don't get paid extra for it, it's part of what you do in the same way fixing bugs, talking to customers and everything else is
2) As it's part of your job you get time, support and resources to do it properly. If I expect you to produce a 500 word piece every month, ...
1
Would you be paid the higher hourly rates of freelance contract work or just 'normal' hourly rates?
I have agreed in one company to a lower starting salary for the first three months once, since I wanted the job and had a personal interest in acquiring the necessary skills.
But if you have just a normal job, it is quite common to spend some time learning ...
1
Bit of an iffy question.
Perhaps spent an hour at the start of each day practicing and learning this framework.
Any extra work on it probably should be done outside of company time...
Unless, there is a large portion of downtime during your day when you aren't actively working or engaged in a company project.
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