Evaluating Cost
Cost is important, but software development does not lend itself well to direct rate comparison shopping. Here are a few questions to consider when evaluating the cost of our services.
How should you evaluate programmers?
Can you evaluate programmers like carpenters (or other tradespeople), where you have good ones and bad ones, but the time required to complete a job doesn't vary widely? No! The difference between mediocre, average, and good programmers is staggeringly huge. Using the carpenter analogy, imagine a team of 5 carpenters that can build a house in about 6 months. If carpenters were like programmers, you would find a team of two or three that could build a BETTER house in a week. And a team of ten that would still be stumbling along after a few years, and could never complete the house no matter how much time or money they had.
How and why this is possible can be found here: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/HighNotes.html
Billing is billing, right?
Some contractors/companies bill when the day starts, and make sure that the clock is ticking for a particular client as much as possible. At AppVizo we only bill when we are actively engaged in solving a problem for the client. We do not bill for any item not directly related to addressing a stated problem as found in our project/bug database. If we need to learn a new technology to solve a problem, we do it on our own time.
Couldn’t one really good programmer complete my project?
It depends. The average number of technologies used in a professional product entails the equivalent of 3 different college degrees (Comp sci., business operations, and design). So, if you can find a good/great programmer that knows server-side code, algorithms, scaling, load factoring, user-interface frameworks (HTML, CSS, JavaScript/JQuery/TypeScript, etc.), database design, development operations, testing, production rollout, AND is a good designer, then the answer is yes. There are a small number that can do most of this EXCEPT design, and they are known as "full stack developers". They command between $100-$250 per hour for contract work, but still need someone who can design and program a professional looking user interface. So by and large, the answer is no. You really need a couple of good ones with complimentary skill sets (like we have at AppVizo).
If my programming project is behind schedule, should I hire more programmers?
In programming this is known as "the mythical man month" and was documented over 40 years ago by Fred Brooks at IBM. At one point his book was required reading for all Microsoft managers so that they understood the implications of Brook's law: Adding manpower to a late software project does not help. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month