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Q. Why don't people understand how much this work really costs?
A. Because if they did, it would be because they are doing it already.
There’s a lot of folks who think they simply have to get the headed note paper done to lay claim to being a Web developer. Any of you out there who have been doing this for a while will know that it goes much, much deeper than that. You need somewhat massive computing resources and a lot of time. I estimate, that a serious Web developer, you would need around 10 times the leverage in terms of compute power compared to an ordinary office worker. You can get by with less, but what you are buying with that computational leverage is turnaround time. Certainly the disk space requirements are around 50 to 1. That all costs money. Gobs of it in fact, and you need to apply pound notes to this work, like you would stick puncture repairs onto a perished rubber dingy. When you take into account the software tools you will require and the space in which to work, you could not set up a realistic Web development system for less than twenty thousand pounds. That seems like a lot but when you consider the hardware required, plus the software, plus the office and the media, books and time to get it all running so that you are ready for that first job, that estimate seems quite cheap.
None of these costings include the time taken to learn your craft as a Web developer. In my case, that has taken the better part of the last 20 years. Not all of that time has been spent doing Web or multimedia but we are of course, the sum of all the experience we have had. All the graphic arts, technical publications and programming work I did before becoming a multimedia specialist, are contributory to the way in which I develop content. How much is 20 years of experience with computers worth?
Because of that setting up cost, and the time you take to serve your ‘apprenticeship’, I think it is quite reasonable to look for some kind of return that is commensurate with the time and energy you have put into it. Now the figures I have quoted here are really just to set up a single modest development workstation. To really do the job some justice, you should be looking at investing between seventy-five and a hundred thousand pounds as a minimum. To equip an office for 10 people to work in, you could be looking at start-up costs of around a half a million pounds at least, taking into account some premises and salaries to be paid. Depending on the scale of your operation and your overheads, you are going to have to generate up to 10 times as much turnover. That means you need to be looking at a turnover in the region of 7 figures or if you are a small company like mine, somewhere in the region of a hundred thousand pounds turnover per year will get you by with scarcely anything to spare for expansion. Its truly frightening when you add it up and I got quite shock when I did because I have spread my costs over a number of years.
Check out the whole list of Cliff's pithy tips for Web developers.
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