[job advert] looking for a perl person to write a web control panel

[Greg McCarroll]

On Sun, Aug 31, 2008 at 08:07:10PM +0100, Peter Corlett wrote:
>
> However, you're after a fixed-price job, which costs more because the  
> contractor is taking on the extra risk of the job going pear-shaped  
> for reasons outside their control. And IMO, £500 isn't enough to cover  
> that risk.
> 

I think Peter is spot on with this logic, and I'd never want to bid on
a fixed price piece of work at such a small amount, the handshaking
time[1] alone would be just to large a % to make it worthwhile.

However it's an open market, someone out there hasn't as much risk
aversion as I have or as large a mortgage payment (its not that large
actually, i'm scared of risk). 

I personally reckon he'll get a taker, and I'm not sure either of them
will be fully satisfied, but thats ok. And of course you can always
suggest to Martin you'll do it for more as a counter offer.

What's maybe more interesting is the value/cost people put on fixed
term work vs. contracting and of course the value people put on a
really good job (and what that means) and a shoddy job. And these are
both topics I believe will become more significant in the next five
years or so.

To be honest, I'm changing my views on software development quality
daily now I'm back at the cutting edge, and it really doesn't have
much to do with code/frameworks/documentation. On a recent project I
was shepherding, the project plan had maybe 10 tasks, yet when I was
told to move onto another project, my handover task list had 22 soft
tasks[2] that were all about making sure the business got what they
wanted, that ratio is fairly significant given there was a full
test/qa/systems allocation to the project.

Greg

[1] Just made up the term, the time it takes to set up any
contract/deal, agree exactly what the deliverables are and set up the
agreement in a strong enough (legal) way.
[2] None of them on the original plan.