Replies

Republican Party Reptile:

"BUT, the market does not set the rate based ONLY, or even primarily, on the lowest rate"

PatrioticAmerican:

They sure do. Why do you think indian firms are getting the job? Because they are better? It is because they usually are the cheapest.

Moreover, the customer (or contracting manager) often lacks the competance to disceren the more skilled service vendor and hence all vendors look alike, in which case, choose the cheapest.

OK then, if the market set rate ONLY on lowest cost - so the market is clearly saying there is no value for being better - at least not a vlaue that the market is willing to pay for. So if it is a cost based only competition - why harping on how American programmers are better and how much the outsourcer sucks when the market is saying it doesn't care enough to pay for it? To the market, it's really better only if the market think it's better and is willing to pay for it. And "PatrioticAmerican", if you say the market is what it is because the client only has so much to spend; in that case, it's not the client or market intentionally push the rate down to squeeze out a fatter margin, it's just the market finding its own equalibrum.

There is no intrinsic value to being a programmer, or a marketer, or a burger flipper, no matter how much work you out into it or how much you may have made previously, nobody is intrinsically deserving being paid $5 an hr or 500K a year. It's just supply and demand, no?

If the market oesn't value what you are offering, you can't make the market to assign a value to something it doesn't value, and you can't say this or that deserved to be valued at such and such because of such and such value above and beyond the lowest cost when the market says it simply doesn't care about any value other than the lowest cost.

If I build a widget and want to charge $1000 a piece for it and nobody wants to buy my widget for $1000, am I still correct in insisting that my widget is in fact worth $1000? ... I'm talking about what it's worth in the marketplace, not how much investment I have put into the widget, which may be $1 or $1000,000, but my cost has nothing to do with how the market assign value to my widget.

If I happen to think I am worth 100K a year but the market says no, am I still right in insisting that I am in fact worth 100K per year?