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Observation : Rails Consulting Rates Lower Than .NET Rates

October 20, 2008 by Rob Bazinet

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I have been an independent developer for the past few years doing all of my commercial work in the .NET platform.  In the past year or so I have been doing more Rails development driven by my interest in Ruby.  I had the opportunity lately to take on some additional work and spoke to a couple companies about their Rails-based projects and was surprised by what I found.  The rates offered by these companies where significantly less than the rates I had been charging for .NET, particularly C# work.

The companies which offered work to me had a range of hourly rate in mind when opening up the projects to outsiders and even when I was offered the high-end, it was still more than 25% less than that of .NET. 

I decided to start looking around for other companies looking for direct relationships with consultants for Rails work and my findings held true, the rates were much lower than .NET work. 

So I posted a question to one of my favorite places, Twitter:

TwitterPost

I wanted to see if this was just something abnormal I had see or if in fact this was how it was.  I did not get concrete answers but what I did get was interesting:

Twitter2

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Twitter3

Twitter4

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So, I wonder what others are seeing out in the consulting world.  Do .NET consultants make more, on average, than a Rails developer?

The companies I have been consulting with are fairly large companies and can offer higher rates for .NET developers.   The organizations offering Rails work have been smaller companies and perhaps can’t afford the higher rates.  So this makes me wonder, do companies with more budget choose Microsoft over Rails or some other technology because of the company (Microsoft) behind it?  Is it the Web 2.0 companies hoping to become the next Google choose Rails because of cost alone?

I would like to know more about the companies choosing .NET compared to Rails and why and what they are paying.  This is pretty interesting stuff and should be interesting to someone making a career and/or platform choice.

I would appreciate some feedback.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Ruby on Rails,.NET,ASP.NET,Consulting

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Comments

  1. Keyvan Nayyeri says

    October 20, 2008 at 3:06 pm

    Recently I developed a small real state site in Austin with ASP.NET that was developed by RoR just some months before that.
    I wasn’t directly in contact with the realtors to know their reasons but it seemed to be some kind of that kind of trust on Microsoft that had convinced them to rewrite their site.
    Moreover, with .NET enterprise scnearios are easier to develop than with RoR specifically when it comes to intergrated applications. RoR is a technology for website development but .NET allows more, and this is required for many enterprise scenarios. I think this is one of the main reasons for its good demand among bigger companies.

  2. Keyvan Nayyeri says

    October 20, 2008 at 3:06 pm

    Recently I developed a small real state site in Austin with ASP.NET that was developed by RoR just some months before that.

    I wasn’t directly in contact with the realtors to know their reasons but it seemed to be some kind of that kind of trust on Microsoft that had convinced them to rewrite their site.

    Moreover, with .NET enterprise scnearios are easier to develop than with RoR specifically when it comes to intergrated applications. RoR is a technology for website development but .NET allows more, and this is required for many enterprise scenarios. I think this is one of the main reasons for its good demand among bigger companies.

  3. Rob Bazinet says

    October 20, 2008 at 3:48 pm

    @Keyvan – Agreed that the enterprise integration scenarios with .NET are easier, but Ruby is getting better.
    I am surprised by some of the difference in rates though and can only attribute the difference to the size of the client, which may be the real reason and not .NET vs. Rails at all.

  4. Rob Bazinet says

    October 20, 2008 at 3:48 pm

    @Keyvan – Agreed that the enterprise integration scenarios with .NET are easier, but Ruby is getting better.

    I am surprised by some of the difference in rates though and can only attribute the difference to the size of the client, which may be the real reason and not .NET vs. Rails at all.

  5. Mike Moore says

    October 20, 2008 at 3:52 pm

    Interesting. I hadn’t heard this before, but I admit I have not been looking at individual developer rates. My sense is that Ruby on Rails still has an advantage in getting things done quicker and more correctly than languages like Java and C# that have much more ceremony.
    My sense is that we are seeing the effects of the PHP-ification of the Rails market. I’d guess many ex-PHP developers are keeping their old PHP rates as they adopt Rails. That said, this can be misleading because it does not address the quality of the developer or team. A truly good developer is hard to find and always worth the money.

  6. Mike Moore says

    October 20, 2008 at 3:52 pm

    Interesting. I hadn’t heard this before, but I admit I have not been looking at individual developer rates. My sense is that Ruby on Rails still has an advantage in getting things done quicker and more correctly than languages like Java and C# that have much more ceremony.

    My sense is that we are seeing the effects of the PHP-ification of the Rails market. I’d guess many ex-PHP developers are keeping their old PHP rates as they adopt Rails. That said, this can be misleading because it does not address the quality of the developer or team. A truly good developer is hard to find and always worth the money.

  7. Rob Bazinet says

    October 20, 2008 at 4:01 pm

    @Mike – Agreed. This is just an observation based on my findings in a very limited scope of time. I did do some searching around some ROR gig sites just to compare and found the rates offered lower than if I went to a .NET gig site with similar requirements for experience.
    I know the arguments for Rails is faster to market and does really matter for the rate does it? Or should the Rails rate be HIGHER than .NET rates because it is faster to market.
    All I can says is..I was surprised…and trying to figure out what this really means. I figured I could easily provide both types of development, Rails and .NET with interchangeable rates but it looks like that is not the case, at least in my limited experience with finding both types of gigs.

  8. Rob Bazinet says

    October 20, 2008 at 4:01 pm

    @Mike – Agreed. This is just an observation based on my findings in a very limited scope of time. I did do some searching around some ROR gig sites just to compare and found the rates offered lower than if I went to a .NET gig site with similar requirements for experience.

    I know the arguments for Rails is faster to market and does really matter for the rate does it? Or should the Rails rate be HIGHER than .NET rates because it is faster to market.

    All I can says is..I was surprised…and trying to figure out what this really means. I figured I could easily provide both types of development, Rails and .NET with interchangeable rates but it looks like that is not the case, at least in my limited experience with finding both types of gigs.

  9. WebWorkerDaily » Archive says

    October 21, 2008 at 5:27 am

    RE: Observation : Rails Consulting Rates Lower Than .NET Rates

    Pingback from WebWorkerDaily » Archive Double Shot #316 «

  10. WebWorkerDaily » Archive Double Shot #316 « says

    October 21, 2008 at 5:27 am

    RE: Observation : Rails Consulting Rates Lower Than .NET Rates

    Pingback from WebWorkerDaily » Archive Double Shot #316 «

  11. Double Shot #316 « A Fres says

    October 22, 2008 at 7:37 am

    RE: Observation : Rails Consulting Rates Lower Than .NET Rates

    Pingback from Double Shot #316 « A Fresh Cup

  12. Double Shot #316 « A Fresh Cup says

    October 22, 2008 at 7:37 am

    RE: Observation : Rails Consulting Rates Lower Than .NET Rates

    Pingback from Double Shot #316 « A Fresh Cup

  13. Sean Schofield says

    October 23, 2008 at 9:23 pm

    When I was on the job market about 10 months ago I definitely noticed a difference in salary for RoR vs. Java. I mentioned this at a couple of RoR conferences and people thought I was crazy.
    In my experience its true though. RoR just pays less – but you can’t put a price on happiness. My guess is this is due to low demand and the fact that in the Washington, D.C. area most jobs are government related contracting (and they’re slow to adopt Rails.)

  14. Sean Schofield says

    October 23, 2008 at 9:23 pm

    When I was on the job market about 10 months ago I definitely noticed a difference in salary for RoR vs. Java. I mentioned this at a couple of RoR conferences and people thought I was crazy.

    In my experience its true though. RoR just pays less – but you can’t put a price on happiness. My guess is this is due to low demand and the fact that in the Washington, D.C. area most jobs are government related contracting (and they’re slow to adopt Rails.)

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