Have a look at our website [http://www.phpgenie.co.uk] and let me know what you think.

Kind regards,

Daniel

Wishing you every success with your search. The contract market seems pretty opaque at times.

Given what you have outlined, there is clearly a shortage of PHP Programmers. I too have had to deal with what you are dealing with. I also know the market will bear $100 an hour for developers. I assume if you were able to bill out $100 an hour for 25 hours a week, you would make more than most top end PHP developer jobs.

Finding quality PHP developers is a whole nother thing. That is a mystery I am trying to unravel also.

From my current experiences I can understand as I’m finding qualified PHP developers hard to come by.

Two pieces of advice though – if you’re not sure about market salaries for contractors – take a look at http://www.jobstats.co.uk – it should help you get an idea of what to offer.

And secondly think about signing up to somewhere like http://www.technojobs.co.uk/jobs/php – getting involved with these guys gets your job on http://www.itcontractjobs.co.uk (a great little find for any contractors) and you get access to their CV database – worked a treat for me!

Obviously there are other IT job sites to think about but in my experience this one offers the best contact with contractors!

Hope to of been of help,

Grace

I’m from India and would like to discuss about opportunity to work with you. I’ve more than 6+ years of experience with LAMP platform. If interested, please write me back.

regards,

I have learned Object Oriented design approach and just learned how to use namespaces (new in PHP v5.3). I operate my own Ubuntu Web Server and I program for fun.

I’m 21 years old and I have been teaching myself how to program for over 4 years. I just recently started my own LLC and I’m looking for fun and exciting projects to take on.

I also have a lot of experience with JavaScript (AJAX, JSON, & jQuery).

I look forward to hearing from you!
Thanks, Jeff

http://uk.crunchboard.com/ukcrunch.php

Talking of freelance, people I’ve met doing that all say they charge £300-£400/day so £25/day seems low.

That said for a lot of people it not all about the money. I think many techs would like to know they can work in a flexible environment where there ideas can be used, casual dress code, interesting projects etc. – though that’s probably more employees than contractors.

We do honestly interview students better than this bloke who expected a rate that is, to be honest, as much as we could support with what our customers pay (it seems to be the downside of the generally good flow of work we get). We have employed students who have required far less training than he would have done. In my opinion these are entry level ideas – things that we teach people in our one-week “learn to program” type course for novices

If other employers are paying £25 an hour for people who write such poor, unmaintainable code, then they really don’t understand what they’re doing (and people like us will probably end up rewriting it in a few years time when it has all turned to a pile of unreadable mush!

We’re not looking for someone with experience – they can learn on the job from the good developers we have. What we need is someone who has enough interest in their own career to have learnt how to do their job with some semblance of professionalism!

Admittedly I’ve been too busy reproducing to write any code over the last couple of years, but while I think we may have to find someone who can only be onsite part of the time, there should be some inexperienced but enthusiastic developers out there wanting to work and learn – we just have to find one!

Also, my experience from the other side with recruitment agencies has taught me that they really don’t know what they’re talking about most of the time, so it wasn’t my first choice to go through them!

I mentioned the one guy expecting 25/hour, and he would require more training I’d be prepared to give; coupling this with the messages I was getting back from recruitment consultants implied that it wouldn’t be easy to find someone – and most of the better programmers available would actually be PHP/Java/.Net programmers (where presumably PHP isn’t their primary focus). Perhaps I looked at the wrong agencies…