BreakPoint
Interesting Stuff
Yes, but unfortunately without any real information, other than salaries/income for LabVIEW developers varies widely (and wildly). I remember seeing a Monster posting for a LabVIEW developer in New Mexico where they wanted to pay $15 - $20/hr. I want to fid the clients that I can say $120/hr without subsequently having to perform CPR! My problem tends to be that they (the prospective customer) has been to a LabVIEW demo and come away with the belief that it will solve their problem (it may) and that it will be both easy and cheap, the big expense being buying LabVIEW and the needed DAQ hw. When I go in with my estimate of 4 weeks effort at X$/hr, on top of the LabVIEW and HW purchase, they frequently start having breathing problems, their eyes roll back, and the next thing I know there are a lot of ambulances, etc. Well maybe not that dramatic, but they really do have problems with the idea. More than one has decided to send their own engineers off to LabVIEW training (Basics 1, 2) and all too often I get a call many months later saying that they have decided to call me in. I probably should then hold out for a higher $ (Bill G. would), but usually go in at the original rate. Most of these companies are not "high tech", nor large, so their experience with building test systems or hiring technical consultants is limited, but it does make for a tough sell.
Putnam Monroe
Putnam Monroe
And when they sometimes do understand that LabVIEW is a programming language they think that those who program in it are "just" programmers. I had to repeatedly sell a customer (who had a big enough investment in LabVIEW that NI held user group meetings onsite limited to employees/contractors of the the company) on staying with LabVIEW vs. VB or VC (I guess it could have been worse I could have been defending against VD!) They seemed to think that the fact that they could find a bazillion VB programmers would mean that they could find a bunch that would/could develop complex automated test systems in VB for the photonics industry. That is the other part that I run into. At that previously mentioned customer I had been there for two years (originally for 6 mo. contract, but they renewed it) when I got into a technical "disagreement" over some measurements with one of the staff engineers. He made some offhand comment about "what does a programmer know about spectrum analyzers". To win my arguement I talked the HP (now Agilent) sales engineer that had a desk there (they were a big account!) to give a technical seminar on Optical Spectrum Analyzers. It didn't hurt that he and I were neighbors about 140 miles away from this customer. During the Q&A at the end I made sure that a hypothetical measurement question was worded to be exactly like the parameters of my debate. But I run into that about 40% of the time. Of course, coming in as the expert sometimes results in the expectation that I can look at a customer's product, instantly tell them the best way to test it, divine all the possible design errors that haven't been found yet, and oh by the way we go into production in 2 weeks!
I'm sometime think a threat I made to a former boss that I was going to "quit, get on my boat, go to the Caribbean and set up a booth carving and selling coconut heads to the sunburned tourists" was one I should have followed up on.
P.M.
I'm sometime think a threat I made to a former boss that I was going to "quit, get on my boat, go to the Caribbean and set up a booth carving and selling coconut heads to the sunburned tourists" was one I should have followed up on.
P.M.
