Hey Scott, Didn't mean to put you on the defensive. Looking over the different posts, most of us aggree with the main points made. I want to know what happened to the idea of Junior. When i started, that was the title I got to wear. That ment, i got to do a lot of crappy codeing. Take a lot of heat. Get paid what I was worth, almost nothing. But learn tons! I don't see that concept anymore. I am watching management higher newbies with salarys that make me blush. But when they can't perform, or they under perform, management gets very confused.

AFter reading the article that started this thread, I have to wonder if the author has ever heard of Visual Basic? VB was introduced to the world as the first programming langueage that didn't require a CS to use. Turned out that marketing ploy was a huge success for MS. Not so good for business though. It took a few years for a fall out to take place but it finaly did. The accountants, students, Masters of Business folks, figured out they couldn't create a quality product with drag and drop alone. So they started highering profesionsals again. Unfortunatly those professionals werent much better. So then the industry decided that if you used VB as a means of writting product code you where nothing more then a mere scripter. Sadly untrue. ( can you tell I used VB? ) Ideas create need. Some Ideas are worse then others. In fact, there is probably more money then brains in business. The internet craze is a fine exmaple of that. The ideas get backing, the need becomes overwhelming so that it can't posibly be satisfied. Then come in the H1b's. They fill that bogus need. Unfortunatly, they don't leave as soon as business discovers that there ideas where based on error or pure greed and thus doomed to fail. So we that are citizens, or who plan on making the US there final home, suffer the lower wages and less work. One of the poster stated that we need to write our congress. SO TRUE!!! Most of the time we don't really need the amount of H1's in the country that currently exist. We do need to encurage US citizens to get into IT. And to encurage Corporate America to higher the best labor market in the world. If for no other reason than to keep the best consumer market in the world going. I have so much to say about this, but I think that is enough for now. Happy 4th! Dan

Its going to vary from state to state and corp to corp. MS pays the agency about 65% more then the contractor is getting. At one point in time, here in the state of washington, we tried to get a bill passed that forced agencies to reveal there rates. It was squashed by the Washington Software Alliance. The organization is made up of consulting firms and companies with large IT departments. It was pathetic. In the state of Washington it is also fairly dificult to go 1099. It is a matter of trust. The more we as profesionals talk about the rates and the rediculousness of what agencies make, maybe we can get more of the percentage and force the butt heads to actually earn the rates. I know one guy, he is a bonified load and perf tester, that demands 75% of the total bilible rate. He can do that becuase there aren't that many folks that can do what he does.