Ask HN: Why do UK companies think that software development is cheap?

Yes.<p>Look here: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.itjobswatch.co.uk&#x2F;contracts&#x2F;uk&#x2F;developer.do" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.itjobswatch.co.uk&#x2F;contracts&#x2F;uk&#x2F;developer.do</a><p>This isn&#x27;t quite the same sort of work, but it will do as a rough guideline. Look at the average rate outside London: £350.<p>So, what does this work pay by comparison? £3000&#x2F;25 days=£120&#x2F;day. Not enough! The page above suggests £300-400&#x2F;day is a usual daily rate. So you could use that as a guide. 25 * 300=£7,500; 25 * 350=£8,750; 25 * 400=£10,000.<p>This isn&#x27;t the sort of work I normally do, so I&#x27;m not hugely familiar with what people tend to charge - but I think £10,000 might even be a bit low. There&#x27;s possibly people who&#x27;ve done this before laughing at the very idea right now. After all you&#x27;ll be shipping on 3 platforms with payment&#x2F;videos&#x2F;online shop, and in only 5 weeks. If you&#x27;re going to need to pay somebody else to do anything (artwork, programming), that is going to eat into this sum at quite a rate. Don&#x27;t forget hardware and software costs too.<p>Aside from the scope, there is also a good possibility that more people at the client end will want their fingers in this pie once it gets going, and that will delay things further.<p>(Apologies if none of the above is news to you. I just assume that if you&#x27;re contemplating doing this for £3,000, then it&#x27;s something you haven&#x27;t done before.)

The scope of this project sounds huge. I can&#x27;t imagine that you&#x27;d be able to do it as a sole developer in 5 weeks.<p>Are they handing you wireframes and design files? E.g. has somebody already done all the work of thinking through the UX, come up with all of the pages, handed you the static assets, and all you have to do is program it? Because if not, that part alone can take months.<p>Are you prepared to develop on multiple phone platforms? That could take 5 weeks.

The scope seems way too large to fit in 5 weeks for 1 developer. Not to mention 3k doesn&#x27;t even come close to being realistic. I do wonder though, are you talking a mobile responsive website or a native mobile application? The &quot;with CMS&quot; makes me question that as does the online shop etc. Either way, still way too much for the timeframe at money.<p>Realistically, in the US at least, regardless of web app or mobile app you are looking at likely multiple 10&#x27;s of thousands of dollars to do it right assuming it is all new code and design work still needs to be complete etc.<p>As an FYI, I have seen a few companies make these wild type suggestions to find out who NOT to use. If someone even entertains it they know the person has no clue and so they won&#x27;t work with them.

Couple thoughts.<p>If &quot;got asked from a reputable university&quot; means the client is a university, in USA at least universities and non-profit institutions tend to pay less than for-profit.<p>Generally, I avoid firm fixed price contracts and quote an hourly rate and a non-binding estimate of hours. The reason is it is usually very hard to accurately predict how long a software project will take. Sometimes if it is something very cookie-cutter that you have done several times before, you can make a fairly good estimate of how long it will take.

I would not blame the client, any industry&#x27;s value is a direct reflection of how the industry projects the value of its produce.<p>We software engineers more often than not, project the &#x27;I can build that easily&#x27; view (you can see that in this thread too). Many of us are too eager to put our engineering ego before business sense. We forget that it is one thing to demonstrate technical feasibility and quite another to build a finished product. Even the smallest piece of software needs real good effort to make it complete.<p>This is compounded by having substantial pieces of software available as open source and customers always read that as free as in free beer. It takes quite some effort to make them see otherwise.<p>When we say its easy, when many of us give our work away for free (even with good intentions), when we put engineering before business, we are steadily moving software in the path to being a cheap commodity.<p>All this is not even considering availability of software talent in countries where the skill set is available for much less...

Thanks all,<p>I have other contracts that pay above the market rate for my services. I did email the person back and said they would be able to get my services for one week for 3k.<p>I was interested in what people thought about the offer, as recently I&#x27;ve had a few offers in this bracket. (Which I&#x27;ve politely turned down).

Given the spec and the deadline, I would quote a ballpark 100k. Drop it to 50k if they can relax the deadline. Maybe to 25k if they can accept a list of caveats about what will and will not be included and off the shelf solutions where they will have to accept some limitations.

3K is not on the low side, it&#x27;s at the bottom of the barrel. The project doesn&#x27;t sound simple at all (on the contrary) and the time frame is short. Is 3K for each OS platform or for all three?<p>Assuming the latter and assuming you work 5 days a week 8 hours a day for 5 weeks, it amounts to 200 hours. You will be working for 15 pounds an hour.

Will you be able to deliver to other clients in the same period? If not then you are working for ~28kpa which is low, and given you are freelance pretty unfair (because the reality is that you will be unlikely to get close to that on those rates.<p>Realistically if you have some experience you can expect (outside London) to earn ~40k pretty easily (and much more if you are good&#x2F;prepared not to do the easy stuff) Given you are freelance my view is that you can ask for a 10% premium to cover sickness and fallow periods. So aim for 44k so I think that £4700 would be a fair quote (low end) for this job.<p>Of course this assumes that the work can be done in 5 weeks on 40 hr weeks. If in fact you will need to work 60hrs a week you need to be asking 50% more ~£7k

Just say no and move on. You&#x27;ll make more money going after sensible clients than negotiating with a bad prospect to get the price up to something reasonable.

It sounds like they&#x27;re just not very serious about getting this job done. In this business, it seems that a lot of potential clients are just fishing.

The first offer is almost always low, especially if they&#x27;re caching it in the normative terms most favourable to them - five weeks vs business value.

Will it take you 5 weeks to build?

Way too low. Say No.

Just say no.