Trumped to a PHP contract by cheapskate who accepted £80 per day!

[bobhope]

In a way, aren't these low rates just symptomatic of the reputation of IT. We're just data entry clerks after all?

[Board Game Geek]

In a way, aren't these low rates just symptomatic of the reputation of IT. We're just data entry clerks after all?

As an old boss of mine was want to saying,

"IT ? It's not exactly rocket science is it ?",

before continuing to struggle with turning on his mobile phone...

[expat]

Why all the hostility and disbelief? There is allowed to be such a thing as an entry-level position in IT.

Of course: but to me, an entry-level position would be "trainee". No experience or knowledge expected.

[Mich the Tester]

Keywords are POS and SAP. That combination always attracts decent rates I'd have thought.

Yep, but for testing it isn't really so important; if you know how to test you can test pretty much anything. Don't tell the clients though, it's quite useful having some SAP on my CV.

[Bright Spark]

many reasons why rates in PHP are low

1) recently there have been
a lot of new frameworks that have improved and speeded up development.
ie codeigniter,cakephp

2)proliferation of CMS's like joomla and drupal, clients just need to install these and they got a complex website in a few minutes + loads of plugins.

3) sites like elance.com
and getafreelancer.com, people from india etc bidding for php projects or
smart people in uk getting gigs and using the above sites to outsource the
work and earning comission .

4) credit crunch, demand / supply.

I only use PHP for my plan B, a few years ago I was thinking of doing PHP
contracting then looked at the rates and said sod it.