[menloparkbum]

Give up and start over with someone else.

$2500 for 2 months of work comes out to 8 dollars an hour. This isn't a good wage for a programmer anywhere and should have been your first hint that this wasn't going to work out.

[ScottWhigham]

This is potentially very dangerous advice and I would not be so quick to accept it were I the OP. The question is, "Since the original programmer is almost finished with the entire thing, if you fire him before the contract is finished and start over, what will he do with the code?"

Depending on the contract structure, he might be free to sell it on his own, give/sell it to a competitor, or release it on the web for free. Meanwhile, poor OP is now six months behind schedule and has to start over.

Sorry but I don't know how you can be so black and white about the issue without us knowing more information. If OP followed this advice without thinking through the problem, he could be much, much worse off. It could be that you are right but, without more info about the contract, we don't know.

[owkaye]

"$2500 for 2 months of work comes out to 8 dollars an hour. This isn't a good wage for a programmer anywhere ..."

You're very wrong about this. I ran an outsource programming company in the Philippines for years, and $8 per hour is far higher than the highest rates I ever paid my best programmers.

Try living in a third world country some time, and get used to the labor rates they expect, before you make blanket statements about what's a good rate "anywhere".

There are literally thousands of qualified programmers in third world countries who would die for a chance to earn $8 per hour. Many of them are lucky to earn $8 a day ...

[a-priori]

I assume the programmer is not working on this project full-time.

[menloparkbum]

Even so, $2500 is less than a week's worth of work for anyone good.

[hhm]

In a salary or for freelance? I think salary hours are typically 0.5 * freelance hours, is that right?

So inside a company, $1250 is less than a week's worth of work for anyone good?

[menloparkbum]

Freelance. Salary-wise, $1250 a week is about $62K per year which anyone with a pulse can get in silicon valley.

[hhm]

So what does anyone good get then? (salary-wise)