Question For Those of Us Who are in IT

FlyinHawaiian30 · 09:44 PM

Okay I'm sure most of you in IT are like me and moonlight doing piddly type jobs for people on the side, you know basic preventative maintenance, setting up routers, replacing hard drives, etc. I know how to price the small stuff. My question is for when an organization or club wants to hire you for what I would consider a midlevel job what to charge? From what little information they gave me they are wanting me to install some scanning software for them to do inventory and I'm pretty sure the app is a standalone instead of some sort of client/host deal. No server involved. Of course I haven't even been told what box they are wanting me to put it on or the name of the software but I would like to know what is reasonable to charge. A friend of mine set up a local subway's 4 workstations and server for $1500. Any suggestions?

Goodfoot · 07-24-2008, 07:12 PM

Whatever figure your thinking of, double it. At least double it. If you bid low you'll be kicking yourself and hating them.
Of course the job sounds simple coming from them. But already there are problems. They don't know a damn thing about the sw they want to have installed. You think its standalone, how come the can't tell you? Do they even know what they want to buy? They don't know where it will be installed. Not a good sign. Is there any additonal hw that will go with this sw, like hand held scanners? If so will you have to configure it? Will you have to provide any training on what your setting up? And figure that you'll be stuck doing support for this little fiasco for a long time. You know how it goes with your little job's, just expand that to a whole group of people.
Anything that goes wrong will be blamed on you for at least the first 6 weeks.
Figure it like this, take whatever your charging per hour freelance. If you think you can do it in a day charge 2 or 2 1/2 days. This way you'll pay yourself for the inevitable comeback call's your bound to receive. And you can make the first 2 calls free since you've already made sure they've paid for them. Seriously the worst thing you can do is give them a "good deal". Remember a good deal for them is a bad deal for you.

FlyinHawaiian30 · 07-24-2008, 07:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Goodfoot

Whatever figure your thinking of, double it. At least double it. If you bid low you'll be kicking yourself and hating them.
Of course the job sounds simple coming from them. But already there are problems. They don't know a damn thing about the sw they want to have installed. You think its standalone, how come the can't tell you? Do they even know what they want to buy? They don't know where it will be installed. Not a good sign. Is there any additonal hw that will go with this sw, like hand held scanners? If so will you have to configure it? Will you have to provide any training on what your setting up? And figure that you'll be stuck doing support for this little fiasco for a long time. You know how it goes with your little job's, just expand that to a whole group of people.
Anything that goes wrong will be blamed on you for at least the first 6 weeks.
Figure it like this, take whatever your charging per hour freelance. If you think you can do it in a day charge 2 or 2 1/2 days. This way you'll pay yourself for the inevitable comeback call's your bound to receive. And you can make the first 2 calls free since you've already made sure they've paid for them. Seriously the worst thing you can do is give them a "good deal". Remember a good deal for them is a bad deal for you.

From what i can tell it SHOULD and i emphasize SHOULD be just a straightforward sw install on an XP box with a hand held scanner. Now if i have to freakin set up their labels and all that then you're right I am going to have to charge for a headache. Normally i charge a flat rate of $50 per hour but this isn't something I have had to do for a business, just here at work. But thanks for the suggestions on charging for that 2 or 2 1/2 days so when they do call back I won't get so pissed off like I normally do when docs call me for their freakin vista laptops not hitting ebay, lol.

str8loco1 · 07-24-2008, 08:25 PM

How much do IT guys make a year. what's the schooling for that like?

FlyinHawaiian30 · 07-24-2008, 08:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by str8loco1

How much do IT guys make a year. what's the schooling for that like?

it depends on where you live and what part of IT and for what type of company honestly. For example I work for a health care system, mostly toiling in the help desk, software tech, and hardware tech depts and am going back to school to move into application support. There are plenty of database and networking jobs that might only require an associates out there and you can make a decent living. I live in western kentucky and those jobs are probably at around 40,000 or so a year which is decent money for this area. In some of the bigger kentucky cities maybe 60,000 working for an employer? And obviously that goes up with a higher education level. Of course if your kung fu is strong a lot of places don't require a degree if you are that good. I know a guy who didn't take one class but contracts out for about 50 grand a year.