throwaway011001

Just recently I have put a hard floor at $50 per hour, but its hard to get people to accept $50 per hour when I can't give an exact time frame for all of their wants to be met.

They try to push for a flat rate, but I won't anymore because I have been burned many times by this.

It's not as easy a road as I thought it would be. My flat rate projects always ended up taking longer because of client demands and so my hourly actual pay went way down.

I got good with Django by building things and doing a lot of googling whenever I ran into problems or needed to do something new.

I had a basic computer programming background before this though.

This is exactly when strikes are called for:

"Every job in video gaming has a line of people waiting to take it, and you will be abused at the lower end of the spectrum. Hell, you'll be abused at the higher end of the spectrum. Make peace with that idea"

That is the philosophy of a predator, and anyone that expresses that sentiment to you is dangerous and not to be trusted.

This Ben Kuchera is now a pariah in my eyes.

Read down in the comments and you will see the abuse continue:

"Ben, we've been tearing this jerk a new one for over an hour over at Kotaku even before your excellent article came out. He refuses to answer any criticism at all, it's really pathetic. Come over and join the fun!"

How fun! The original article was authored by a 32 year old man that was working as a contractor for $11 an hour and made to work unpaid weekends and treated in such a way that Ben calls it abuse, and Ben is defending the employers.

For $11 an hour the man has no protections, no safety net and no health care.

And if you read the article you will see that he really tried to put in his best effort, to go above and beyond, and this is what he is met with.

Then Ben Kuchera has the nerve to say "If you don't like it try to do something about it" after he is eviscerating this man for trying to do something about it.

The machines/networks/technology are coming for all of our jobs. In 100 years (assuming strong AI) there will probably be no job a human can do better than a machine.

Are we going to mock, belittle and make homeless other humans the entire ride down?

Ben Kuchera should be ashamed of himself.

Just because there are plenty of kids willing to be abused for a job in the video game industry doesn't make it right, because your still abusing kids.

Has the tech sector really come to the point where coders/geeks can't even be socially awkward anymore?

I thought coding was one profession where socially awkward geeks could make an honest living.