no wonder I still see Ads for C++ contracts in Melbourne for $50/hr for a mid-senior level job... clearly there are people who work at those rates...
the biggest thing holding dev salaries back is cause many devs love what they do..
I would work for $10, not per hour just ten dollars, because it would be more than the zero I earn right now.
but the rates should be similar to what is earnt by other professionals.. in this case the rates seemed to be at burger flipping ones for the region..
basically I feel lots of devs are underselling themselves..
If you really need the money and don't have another option then working for a very modest quantity of money sure seems like a much better deal than working for none at all.
I know a bunch of freelancers who get paid a ridiculous amount of money for simple web-dev stuff, just because the companies they work for don't know anything about this and are simply happy to have found a dev.
dev skill isn't a common one, it takes a special kind of mindset to be a half decent dev...
We don't seem to be valued much at all.