[patio11]

The world is upside down when college-educated white and Asian males making $60k+ a year ($40 an hour programmers) are "the weak", isn't it? I just have to put that out there.

Vis-a-vis businesses it can actually make sense, because any business which is e.g. hiring an intermediate Ruby developer for $40 an hour is exploiting him, but "Five figures a month is unachievably high! There are no reliable ways of earning that! (+) The people who tell you otherwise are exceptions! You are an effing commodity who is indistinguishable from a $5 an hour code monkey in a low-wage country! Do not aspire above your station! Play your part!" is not advice which has his best interests at heart.

+ Freelance Rails developers can put out a shingle and get $100 an hour, which trivially gets them to $10k a month even at about 70% utilization. The interesting business problems are in getting from $10k to $20k and then points beyond. Advice which meaningfully accelerates that is worth what the sophisticated, rabidly skeptical, too-smart-to-realize-when-they're-being-stupid developer community will pay for it.

[ahoyhere]

If you know where I can hire decent Rails developers for $100 an hour or less, please let me know! That's not the kind of rate I see.

Just a couple weeks ago a talented 15-year-old in Belarus told me his rate was $100/hr. And when I said "Sorry, you don't have the experience to justify that rate for me," he told me his last client paid just a little less.

[juddlyon]

Speaking of salesmanship, this kid has a great future!

[varjag]

This is not a typical rate in Belarus. A competent Java developer would net you €25 or so.

[GFischer]

"If you know where I can hire decent Rails developers for $100 an hour or less, please let me know! That's not the kind of rate I see."

Montevideo, Uruguay. Mail me if you want - I'm not the talented Rails developer, sadly, but I know some guys that worked at Cubox (http://cuboxlabs.com/).

[nasmorn]

I am a reasonabl competent rails developer (doing it for more than five years, actually shipping products) working out of Vienna. Apart from a largish startup gig I also consult/freelance parttime. If you are interested we can have coffee(if you are still based in vienna else skype/email) and talk about your project needs and schedules.