Often, folks who are looking to have computer programming done are surprised when the consultant presents them with the estimated cost of a project. Their objection usually takes the form similar to, “Why is it so expensive to contract with a software developer?” or “I can hire a junior programmer for a year for what you want for this!” These questions really are misunderstandings of the value an experienced consultant brings to a project.
If a contractor quotes you a rate of $100 an hour, you’re probably going to be quick to respond with, “That's about $200k a year! Forget that!” But that misses a lot of things. Aside from the fact that the contractor has to pay their own insurance, workers comp, FICA, and all the overhead of running a business, let’s focus on what you're actually getting.
It’s not merely an hour of that person's time you’re getting. You're also getting the years of experience they have in doing similar challenging work for other firms. They've seen far more problems and disastrous projects than a junior programmer will see in even their first two years. You're getting access to a portfolio, a code library and methodology, they have developed over the years that they can draw from that is largely tested and true. You're buying the experience of all the late nights that they spent on past projects, pulling out their hair, finding solutions to knotty problems, so that pitfalls are quickly avoided on your project. Essentially, you're paying for a much better ability to control the cost and schedule of your project.
If you’re still thinking, “It still seems expensive”, well, face it, you can't sell an hour more than once, and you’re the sole customer on this project. This is simply the nature of custom software. Microsoft can sell Office for a couple of hundred dollars a copy, even though it may have cost them millions of dollars to create, because tens of millions of copies will be sold. A contractor selling you a finished product will sell it to you at a lower cost per hour basis, because you're sharing the development hours with all of the other people who have purchased the product.
Does it always make sense to contract with an independent developer? Of course not, but the next time your project has zoomed past a deadline or gone over budget, think about the depth of experience you have working on it, then ask yourself, “Is having this project where the project schedule calendar says it should be worth the cost of a consultant?”