A380 captain's pay

In a previous article, Jim Logajan said:
1) Work mostly fixed-bid software development with payment due only if the
customer accepts the final deliverable (i.e. I take on most of the risk). I
do not require nor expect fully fleshed out requirements (one of the few
things 30+ years of experience should have taught me is anticipating the
probably extent that the scope may change).

In my brief experience trying this sort of thing, this is a ticket to
spending the rest of your life following a constantly changing target as
the user is never satisfied and will never sign off until they are
satisfied.

You must have been very lucky to get reasonable customers.

--
Paul Tomblin http://blog.xcski.com/
Frankly, your argument wouldn't float were the sea composed of
mercury.
-- Biff

(Paul Tomblin) wrote:
In a previous article, Jim Logajan said:
1) Work mostly fixed-bid software development with payment due only if
the customer accepts the final deliverable (i.e. I take on most of the
risk). I do not require nor expect fully fleshed out requirements (one
of the few things 30+ years of experience should have taught me is
anticipating the probably extent that the scope may change).

In my brief experience trying this sort of thing, this is a ticket to
spending the rest of your life following a constantly changing target
as the user is never satisfied and will never sign off until they are
satisfied.

The main reason I think my customers (at least) don't go into endless
target changing is because the projects address realworld problems they are
having that can't be put off indefinitely.

You must have been very lucky to get reasonable customers.

Very probable - but it may also be the nature of the kinds of projects I've
been doing and my client's underlying motivation. I believe in all the
cases so far my clients had prospects themselves who were interested in new
features or had existing customers who had feature enhancement requests. So
they had strong motivation not to dink around. I suppose that gives some
idea of the kind of work that fixed-bid is best used on.

(Generally a client who constantly changes the target will quickly become a
non-client in short order.)

Sylvain wrote:
Jim Logajan wrote:

Most of the competition balks at point (1). Not too many programmers are
willing (or can afford) to work months on a project before delivering it
and then wait another month after invoicing to get paid.

well, having done it once or twice without ever seeing the color of the
money, I'd say that balking at point (1) is not totally unreasonable :-)

Alas, all too often true. On the other hand, such sad stories is why I
don't worry about much competition from others using that business model.
;-)

In article ,
Jim Logajan wrote:

(Generally a client who constantly changes the target will quickly become a
non-client in short order.)

Except for the federal government. That is business as normal.

Jim Logajan writes:

Very probable - but it may also be the nature of the kinds of projects I've
been doing and my client's underlying motivation.

If you can restrict yourself to projects suitable for this philosophy, great.
The problem is that there are still a lot of projects that have to be done and
do not conform to this philosophy.

Generally a client who constantly changes the target will quickly become a
non-client in short order.

Not for people billing by the hour. A lot of consulting firms love such
clients.

On May 26, 5:35 am, (Paul Tomblin) wrote:
In a previous article, "Robert M. Gary" said:

The cost is actually a very small factor in overseas hiring in the
software industry. Our two main motivating factors are 1) we want a
large pool to hire from, in the U.S. right now its very much an
employees market, its hard for employeers to find "good" (not the high
school kids that were hired during the internet bubble, real engineers
with real engineering degrees) programmers to pick from and 2) Since a

Bull****. At least 50 percent of the programmers I know are not working
as programmers because their employers fired them and replaced them with
off-shore workers. There are plenty of very good programmers here in the
US who can't get work because employers don't want to pay a living wage.

I told my kids not to bother getting engineering degrees because in a few
years there won't be a single job left in the US.

--
Paul Tomblin http://blog.xcski.com/
"Harry very carefully read the manual - four times - because Snape would
cut off his breathing privs if he asked him a question that the manual
could answer..." -- Harry Potter and the Book Of The BOFH

Hi Paul,

Yes, I told my nephew not to become a Mechanical Engineer for the same
reason. He is going into business and Lanscape Architecture instead.
They can't offshore that.

One of the reasons that engineers are disappearing from the
marketplace is because a lot of them are getting sick of the lack of
job stability, declining pay, and generally poor workplace
environments that have come into being in recent years and have left
the profession for other vocations. I know of several that did that
here in Idaho.

Dean

writes:

Yes, I told my nephew not to become a Mechanical Engineer for the same
reason. He is going into business and Lanscape Architecture instead.
They can't offshore that.

Why not?

One of the reasons that engineers are disappearing from the
marketplace is because a lot of them are getting sick of the lack of
job stability, declining pay, and generally poor workplace
environments that have come into being in recent years and have left
the profession for other vocations. I know of several that did that
here in Idaho.

What fields did they go into?

On Sat, 26 May 2007 16:27:58 -0700, Sylvain wrote:

B A R R Y wrote:
Responsibility... Just like a sea captain.

if you define responsibility by, say, the number of
casualties you might get per goofs, then why are physicians
(who can kill/maim only one person at a time) paid more than
engineers (who can goof really big, and repeatedly, unlike
airline pilots); we should be on the very top of the pay
scale! :-)

A colleague of mine is a retired commander of nuclear powered
ballistic missile submarines. What would he be worth? G

I was using sea captains as a comparison, as they get additional
ratings and pay based on displacement tonnage. For instance, a super
tanker captain is usually better paid than a 100' whale watch boat
captain, even though the tanker will have less people aboard.

wrote:

One of the reasons that engineers are disappearing from the
marketplace is because a lot of them are getting sick of the lack of
job stability, declining pay, and generally poor workplace
environments that have come into being in recent years and have left
the profession for other vocations. I know of several that did that
here in Idaho.

In my business (automatic temperature control systems), technicians make more
than the mechanical engineers who design the HVAC systems we control.

For a few engineers, the ceiling is higher, especially if they become
partners in large firms. Still, for the most part, being a controls
technician-which does not require a 4-year degree-is a better job.

--
Dan

"The future has actually been here for a while, it's just not readily
available to everyone."
- some guy at MIT

In article ,
"Dan Luke" wrote:

In my business (automatic temperature control systems), technicians make more
than the mechanical engineers who design the HVAC systems we control.

ME's might make more if management of companies with large buildings were
willing to pay the price for an HVAC system that could actually correctly keep
the temperature comfortable, especially during seasonal changes. Instead
they just shrug and go back to their nice offices.

(:-{

--
Bob Noel
(goodness, please trim replies!!!)