CompuServe Messages

John, Thanks for the interesting reply. For what it's worth, I don't think an annual salary provides the appropriate basis for calculating hourly charges, unless you throw in a factor of 2 to cover vacation, health, retirement, and educational/training/conference attendance benefits. And job insecurity as well! The range you cited – $20 to $100 – seems right. I'm sure I'll wind up in there somewhere! 🙂 Seriously, I'm going to have to spend a lot of time training myself, and of course that is not going to be figured in. I'm thinking now that I'll try to assign hours to each requested program feature, both for the prototype and the final version, and put in time for testing, revisions, documentation writing, and whatever else seems like it will be part of the development cycle. I'll assume reasonable competency, even though it will probably take me much longer, being more or less incompetent at the start. That seems to be the only way that is fair to both parties. And I'll receive the very important extra benefit of learning a marketable skill with someone else's partial assistance. Again, thanks for your reply. I had wondered if computing a fixed-fee bid had something of a black art to it; you've indicated that it can be a straightforward calculation, but that it has to be based on a good estimate of hours to be spent on the project. And then left open to negotiation. Regards, Gerry Zeitlin / Lee Vining, CA / (619)647-6438 / gmz@netcom.com