Seeking Someone to Design and Build Audio/Electronics Project

[rfm]

This project involves designing and building an audio/electronic device from off-the-shelf assemblies, based on a digital voice recorder and a Raspberry Pi to control certain functions. You'll need to assemble the components, write the code for the Pi, make sure it works as required, and ship it to me. I'll pay for the parts, shipping, and your time. I'm looking to spend $400 maximum on labor. Prefer someone who lives in the continental US. If you're interested, please PM me for more details.

 

[jpanhalt]

My local Ford dealer charges $100/hour to plug your car into a computer and read the codes. Do you think that project can be done in 4 hours, including research and assembling the parts for it?

Perhaps your target audience is a hobbyist who just wants some spending money. I any event, are your specifications written and in final form? There is nothing more frustrating and time wasting than dealing with specifications that are constantly changing. Can you post the specifications?

 

[rfm]

Do you have the overhead of your local Ford dealer? If not, you shouldn't expect $100 an hour. I do have specs but am not posting them here for a reason, and I'm not interested in patronizing lectures. I asked people who are interested to PM me. You're clearly not interested and can't follow directions, so you're disqualified anyway.

 

[Pommie]

You don't mind paying a mechanic $100 per hour but begrudge a highly skilled engineer the same?

Mike.

 

[jpanhalt]

rfm
I am sorry you took offense at what was intended to be a step back and look at reality. Benchmarks in business are not hard and fast rules, but they do serve a purpose.

1) Employee "cost" is approximately 2x salary. Thus, net income for a successful business must be greater than the sum of those costs. A corollary of that is for free lance work, one must charge at least 2x his current or expected salary. There is a clamor in the US to set minimum wage at $15/hour. Using that minimum wage, which most of us would consider quite low for a skilled programmer, one gets to $30/hour for the work.
2) There is a widespread "myth" that a good programmer should be expected to write 10 lines of good code (LOC) per day. An IBM friend told me in the 80's that the LOC expected at IBM was a bit higher than that, about 30 LOC/day.
3) Minimum wage would mandate that your contractor charge at least $240 per day ($30 x 8 hours).
4) At minimum wage, your $400 = 1.67 days of work, which equates to 17 to 50 lines of code.
5) On top of that arithmetic, you probably expect the work to be "for hire." That is, you own all rights to it and expect an NDA from the contractor.

I do not think those considerations add up to a realistic expectation -- assuming you do not expect the programmer to have significant ownership in the product . If you needed that lecture, maybe your experience in business is too limited.

John

 

[Dr_Doggy]

And if ford is anything like toyota, they will even repair the wrong tire before charging you that 100$

 

[gophert]

rfm
I am sorry you took offense at what was intended to be a step back and look at reality. Benchmarks in business are not hard and fast rules, but they do serve a purpose.

1) Employee "cost" is approximately 2x salary. Thus, net income for a successful business must be greater than the sum of those costs. A corollary of that is for free lance work, one must charge at least 2x his current or expected salary. There is a clamor in the US to set minimum wage at $15/hour. Using that minimum wage, which most of us would consider quite low for a skilled programmer, one gets to $30/hour for the work.
2) There is a widespread "myth" that a good programmer should be expected to write 10 lines of good code (LOC) per day. An IBM friend told me in the 80's that the LOC expected at IBM was a bit higher than that, about 30 LOC/day.
3) Minimum wage would mandate that your contractor charge at least $240 per day ($30 x 8 hours).
4) At minimum wage, your $400 = 1.67 days of work, which equates to 17 to 50 lines of code.
5) On top of that arithmetic, you probably expect the work to be "for hire." That is, you own all rights to it and expect an NDA from the contractor.

I do not think those considerations add up to a realistic expectation -- assuming you do not expect the programmer to have significant ownership in the product . If you needed that lecture, maybe your experience in business is too limited.

John

Your assumptions of economics are funny. I don't remember much about economics class but I do remember the phrase "supply and demand" sets the price. I don't remember hearing there is some minimum price a technically qualified person must charge determines the market price.

Also, I remember that an employee "costs" 1.4x the salary, not 2x (unless the company is also counting tools, travel and training if those hours are non-billable). That said, there is a lot to be said about incremental costing. Overtime is often used because it is a variable cost, and incremental. The benefits and all costs above monthly salary are covered so the extra hourly pay is roughly the same as far as the company is concerned and it only occurs in the weeks that extra labor hours are needed (much better than training a temp for those extra hours and much better than keeping a bloated staff to cover the "just in case" cases.

Finally, if the OP is asking for some modules to be specified and combined, the project may be done in an hour or two for someone familiar with Raspberry Pi and an audio amp. In the end, the pay may be $200/hour if it takes 2 hours. It may even work out to be $1600/hr if it takes 15 minutes.

PS: what makes you think an engineer is automatically worth more on an hourly basis than a skilled mechanic?

 

[Rich D.]

My 2 cents: If he finds someone, great. But I don't think he will get a top-notch guy for this project, but somebody down on his/her luck and desperate for cash. Or he could find somebody that has already done a similar project and basically has the work done.

Supply & Demand. If somebody is in need of the bucks, he'll get the job done. They would likely also have to deal with his apparently rude-ish, aggressive nature.
If not, he'll have to ante up some more dollars to back-up his demand or the project dies.

I personally would feel insulted to do all the ground work and write the software for nothing but a few hundred dollars. No supply here.

 

[gophert]

My 2 cents: If he finds someone, great. But I don't think he will get a top-notch guy for this project, but somebody down on his/her luck and desperate for cash. Or he could find somebody that has already done a similar project and basically has the work done.

Supply & Demand. If somebody is in need of the bucks, he'll get the job done. They would likely also have to deal with his apparently rude-ish, aggressive nature.
If not, he'll have to ante up some more dollars to back-up his demand or the project dies.

I personally would feel insulted to do all the ground work and write the software for nothing but a few hundred dollars. No supply here.

Yup. And, he can always offer more if he doesn't get a nibble at the current price. On the other hand, he also has his own supply demand or alternative priorities of what he want to do with his money. It may not be worth it to him to spend $50,000 on a development project.

 

[audioguru]

I think you should ask for the $400.00 up front because maybe the project is for school homework and maybe this guy is a middle-man or there is another middle man. If the teacher sees this thread then the student needing this project will fail and will not pay the first middle-man $1600.00 who will not pay the second middle-man $800.00 wh0 will not pay the guy who wrote this thread $400.00 hee, hee.

 

[unclejed613]

that's definitely something i would not take on for a flat rate of $400. as a matter of fact, i would want a piece of the action if the thing goes into production. back in 1983 i had a request to build a prototype of a muscle stimulator. i got $250 for the prototype and $250 for the schematic. it helped me pay my rent, but today those things are all over the internet. if i had asked for $1 per unit manufactured...

 

[Cicero]

Hahaha, this is gold.

 

[unclejed613]

i guess i had learned my lesson by the 1990s, because i was working at a shop that repaired computer monitors, and i wrote some software that generated test patterns for testing and aligning monitors. a Sencore pattern generator cost $3500 at the time, and another system that was a PC with an "all in one" video subsystem (it was a proprietary video card that did "everything") was $10,000. i wrote the software to emulate the $10k system, using an ATI multi card (mono, herc, cga, ega, vga, svga) which cost about $100 at the time. the software autodetected the dip switch settings on the card, so it went straight to the menu for whatever type of monitor was selected on the dip switches. a company that sold service manuals and repair tools for computer monitors got hold of a demo copy of my software, and called me offering me $50 per licensed copy to sell my software as part of a software bundle. that turned out to be a pretty good deal for a couple of years. when LCD monitors began to get into the market, the average price of a new SVGA monitor went from $300 to $150 almost overnight. the CRT repair business dried up fast. but, for a few years i had been self-employed with about 25% of my income provided by sales of the software. i was self-employed at the time repairing CRT monitors. i had to go back to work working for other people...

 

[Roberto Weiser]

Are you still looking for someone to help? I am living in Thailand atm and the 400USD can pay for my accommodation so I am OK with that. Let me know and we can set up a call.

Thank you