[JunkDNA]

Indeed. I recently saw a US job posting located in a major city that wanted a COBOL programmer to update a legacy system. I know I've read articles in the past about how much of a need there is for COBOL programmers, so I was kind of curious what someone would pay for one. They advertised that the pay would be $30/hour. You could make far more writing horrid J2EE code for practically any big company.

[ChuckMcM]

However, if you have the requisite skills, you can often contact these folks and say "Sure I'll help, but my rate is actually $500/hr, is that a problem?" and see what they say.

When you ask HR to run an advertisment like this they don't have any idea what they are asking, they hear "computer consultant for this program" and look in their book of "What do we normally pay consultants?" Oh yes, here it is $30/hr, put that in there. So when you contact them and tell them $500/hr they will initially tell you "No thanks."

Then they will tell the person who asked them to write the ad that some "Kook" said they would do it but for $500/hr and the manager will say "Did you get their number? Are they local?" and the HR person will fall off their chair, then pick them selves up and sheepishly call you back :-)