Hiring practices have been an interesting trend to watch, even before we get into the Harmony or Chaos that comes from bad leadership.

A recruiter just sent me a job description where a client needs someone with 12+ years of experience on the Dynamics CRM platform. So far, so good, I have been 12 years specifically consulting for Dynamics in a range of roles from Architect and Lead down to SME.

The recruiter then asks for a rate. I tell him a reasonable rate, and you can then hear him audibly gasp.

Now, to set the stage, 12 years ago, a junior consultant with senior level C# skills could easily command a rate of $100/hr c2c. To this day, it is not unreasonable to see the large consulting companies (eg Microsoft consulting, Avanade, Accenture, etc) charging as much as $300/hr.

If you estimate a modest inflation of 4% each year, the rate a junior CRM consultant was earning would be in the range of $150/hr c2c in today's dollars. However, we know that price fixing has kept wages stagnate in the United States since at least the 1970s. Even so, the recruiter gasped and stammered trying to tell me that he could not submit at the rate I had mentioned.

His excuses were wild. "Oh, there's a recession..." Fascinating, in the midst of a recession, you need to hire the best talent, I told him.

"Others would work for less," he said. Excellent, I wish them the best; his client will lose about $1,000,000 per year if they hire inexpensive "competition," I assured him.

About half of the companies I have worked with were saved by hiring me. Not all, only half. The companies who were failing had lost anywhere from $1-5M each year, at least two were in the process of being fired by their client when I came on. Each time, their end client thanked me personally for saving the program and getting the project back on track.

If utilized correctly, my rate would be Worth $500/hr c2c because of the multiple millions of Value I could be bringing to a company. Most companies can never fully utilize our talents. I know this, and I do not blame clients for not understanding the difference when evaluating what they could be getting from a resource vs what they actually get. (With that said, I do not take projects where I provide less than my best.)

I have worked alongside the scam profiles who are happy to take $65/hr for a position that should be $150/hr; and it pains me to say, those guys badly copy&paste from the internet. While everyone utilizes forums (and should), the $65/hr resumes cannot understand the meaning of the code they "liberated" nor explain why a plugin is now timing out and erasing customer data. One Senior Microsoft consultant could not explain why his plugin was changing the values of his data and was greatly offended when I showed him what a Reference type is in C#.

One cannot express enough that this estimate of losing $1,000,000/yr is a real thing.

Speaking only for myself, I have literally the personal Velocity of about four senior consultants. On several projects I have measured it; and I do mean talented senior consultants, any one of whom I would gladly hire if given the chance. This is before you consider my experience, my design patterns, and the mentorship I bring to projects. I like to joke with other developers that I write poetry in C# because the elegance of my design patterns allows junior developers to carry my designs forward powerfully while I move on to lay the groundwork for the next sprint.

Can you imagine then asking anyone with 12 years of experience to work for less than half of what they were making 12 years ago?

Let's have a conversation and set the rate question aside, I would be happy to show you what the difference is between a consultant who is Worth $500/hr vs one who bills at $65/hr (or less.) And to be clear, while I mention what I am Worth, my rate is substantially lower, as I do have to compete with legitimate consultants with 12 years of experience and not just the scammers.

I can afford to not work. Can your program afford to hemorrhage $1,000,000 per year?