Send me some mail
I'm a web developer. Professionally. I work for a major government contractor in the Washington D.C. area. Much of the work I do is for the larger government agencies. But here's the truth of the matter: my job is really unnecessary. I'm going to clarify, but for the moment, let's just look at the average web site.
Let's say you want a two megabyte web site. Probably two thirds of it is graphics. These are generally done by a graphic artist (I do my own graphics; most graphic designers don't know how to dither or reduce images effectively into a 256 or even 16 color palette, which once again I will deal with later). This leaves about 2/3 of a meg of code, or about 680K of HTML and JavaScript.
The vast majority of this is repeated. Most companies have a standard header, footer, and set of JavaScript functions which they want on all of the pages; this generally adds up to about 2K per page. At an average of some 10-15K per web page as a final, this means that in the 680K of code we have about 50-odd pages, with about 20% of each page written once.
Most of these pages will then have some copy. The copy will be provided by the department that has provided the web page, to the tune of about 5K per page. This can be cut and pasted into the final page. We now have about 7K of every page written already. This leaves an average of 5K per page. That 5K is made up of links and images, mainly, along with the actual formatting of the copy.
Working raw, as I do, this process cannot be automated greatly other than by cutting and pasting. A simple 'find next' on a sentinel value (I use xxxxx for images and yyyyy for links) can zap you through a document in next to no time. More than half of the image/link information is static, leaving about 2K of data per page or 100K total to be entered.
Your 2-meg web site is thus about 100K of work and about two hours of data shuffling. I don't think it's out of line to expect someone to do 100K in around 12 hours (a little over 8K per hour). Therefore, the site should be completed in about two days, and a larger site should proceed at the rate of about a meg per day.
How long does your 2-meg site last? Well, if you're like most companies, it lasts at least two weeks before you need anything changed. The change is normally in the vicinity of 10 to 20K of code overall. Two and a half hours max.
Now, do the math here. That two and a half hours is two weeks worth of work. That's 75 minutes a week, but you're paying for 40 hours. That's 32 times what you get. So your full time HTML guru at say $20 an hour (which is low) is actually costing you $640 an hour. Even if you're a subcontractor, you can't very well bill your HTML guru at that rate. It's impossible to make your money back. And at the rate the net changes and shifts, you'll be spending more on tools, upgrades, maintenance, and training for an HTML developer than you will for anyone else. HTML is a constantly growing and changing standard; just last year, a web page was not normally enhanced with sound, music, video, or streaming multimedia content. Now, that's a standard. And if you want to keep up, you have to keep buying and upgrading the tools your developer needs to create this content.
Your average web guru will want and/or need about $1500 worth of software, hardware, and training every month. Taking that down to the hourly rate again, your web developer's cost is now $1140 an hour. Furthermore, his benefits are in the range of half his salary, so half again of that $640 ($320 more) puts his hourly rate at $1460. Is anyone worth $1500 an hour?
So where's the solution? I don't know for sure. But I can point out that the obvious requirements here are to ensure that your web developer is involved in productive work as much as possible, or that his compensation be reduced or reorganised in order to more accurately reflect what he does. A web developer will ideally have training and experience in the areas of graphic design, user interface construction, ergonomics, and programming.
The best solution is NOT to take a developer and train them in the artistic disciplines, but to take a desktop publisher or graphic artist and train them in programming. A developer will have difficulty learning to contrast color and form properly; these disciplines are antithetical to their main areas of expertise. A computer-literate artist, on the other hand, has a firm grasp of logic as well as art; a desktop publisher is already doing much the same thing as an HTML specialist would, but in a different language.
This is why I feel HTML and web design should be farmed out to independent consultants. The inherent competition of the field will drive the effort of the developer to new heights, and open significant options for the company. When a fantastic high-media design is called for, the proper design firm can be contacted; when minor updates are required, nearly any designer can handle the text entry and formatting.
This also places the burden of equipment and software on the consultant. In the maintenance of his discipline, a consultant who must pay his own expenses will choose his areas of study more selectively; it is less likely that books and classes irrelevant to the work will be acquired, as the consultant is now in charge of his own bottom line. 'Toy' equipment like full-page scanners will not be acquired until absolutely necessary. And of course, the developer now must justify his position -- both by performing exceptionally, and by creating web sites on his own time which showcase his talents effectively.
From a developer's standpoint, in order to maintain a steady cashflow and income, he must perform his work expediently and effectively. Flat-rate services will be an asset, with no sliding scales or hourly rates, much like a lawyer's retainer. A single web developer can handle something in the range of twenty to thirty sites, which at a monthly rate of $300 or so will cover an average salary with benefits. In short, $300 a month for twenty to thirty sites will cover a comparable salary to a full time developer, and keep the developer busy and comfortably employed. It will also manage to keep the clients well serviced and pleased with the results, as many of the enhancements made to the sites can be propagated among all the clients, allowing the overlap of services to benefit overall. Efficiency will be enhanced if the developer runs the server, as he will be concerned with his own site's performance and will thus maintain the server in as highly-tuned a state as is feasible. Bandwidth will be his concern as well, and in the end will result in a site which is kept constantly optimised for speed and efficiency.
This is the vision of Darklock Communications. This is the ideal to which we aim our efforts. And it is in this ideal that we find the greatest benefit both to our customers, and to ourselves.