What day rate for a python web developer?

[KentPhilip]

A friend of mine has done some python web development at home and is quite good at it now.

He is taking redundancy from one IT job and is going on holiday a month later.

There is a one-month python web development contract that he is applying for, and he is wondering what day rate he should quote.
I suggested £200/day.
Is this about right?

Thanks

[timh]

Seems low.. Location?

[KentPhilip]

Seems low.. Location?

South East.

But don't forget he has no COMMERCIAL work experience with python. But he recons he's good, so maybe this does not matter.

[floatsy]

Is it on ITJobsWatch?

[timh]

I presume he's already had commercial development experience though? Most languages are quite alike so it's not like he's starting from scratch.

Assuming that's all the case and I wasn't going to pretend to have commercial experience, I'd try for £250 and accept £220. With commercial experience go for 300-400, in that part of the world.

Also, Python seems to be losing ground to Ruby at the moment, might be something to bear in mind.

[Xenophon]

Is it on ITJobsWatch?

floatsy, you love ITJobsWatch.

[floatsy]

floatsy, you love ITJobsWatch.

lol Xenophon Yes! Anything which will give me some good stats on the market are helpful to moi. Cheers for the laugh.

[KentPhilip]

I presume he's already had commercial development experience though? Most languages are quite alike so it's not like he's starting from scratch.

Assuming that's all the case and I wasn't going to pretend to have commercial experience, I'd try for £250 and accept £220. With commercial experience go for 300-400, in that part of the world.

Also, Python seems to be losing ground to Ruby at the moment, might be something to bear in mind.

Thanks for that.
I should clarify he is sort of in IT work - he works in the editorial dept of a new media company, and uses a content management system to manipulate the format of the output data - moving subject areas, deciding what types of headlines to go where on the site, and other business/management stuff like that.
He specifies what VB scripts need to do on a scheduled basis to move content around, and I then write/edit the scripts.
He could himself but they wouldn't let him (stupid company rules).

[timh]

Hm.. that might be a steep learning curve. I also don't know whether, as a prospective client, I'd want to take the risk - even for 200/day, seeing as he'll be off at the end of the month whatever happens.. Might be worth bending the truth on the CV, to include previous dev experience. Others may have different opinions!

[chicane]

Rates for web development vary like you wouldn't imagine - a lot of it seems to depend on a) the type of client and b) the technology in use.

Design agencies are generally the lowest paying clients - some of them excruciatingly so. Big corporates tend to pay a lot better. The open-source stuff (python, rails, php, perl etc) generally attracts lower rates than the proprietary stuff (asp.net etc) - no idea why.

Competition for web work at the lower end of the experience scale is fierce - it's far from unusual to see web contracts on Jobserve at £18-20/hour - sometimes even £10-13. There are a lot of people (around here at least) with 1-2 years experience who would consider £200/day a very reasonable rate.

Taking into account the short contract duration, I'd say your mate can either overstate his previous experience and go in at £180/day, or more like £150/day if he's going to be honest about his (lack of) experience. If you're in the south, you can add perhaps £20/day to those rates.