There are many things to take into consideration regarding the data gathered by the polls and a lot of things not taken into account, so please keep that in mind. This data is somewhat accurate and I think it provides some loose guidelines to consider for determining your rate and salary expectations.

Two of the polls provide location data however one doesn’t. That’s also something to consider. Larger cities are generally going to compensate developers a bit more due to the cost of living. For instance, NYC costs a lot more to live in than say, Colorado Springs, CO. Another thing to take into consideration is US vs. non US rates/salary. Additionally the salary poll doesn’t factor in health insurance, 401k, stock options, etc. (Are companies even doing that stuff anymore in this economy?)

With all of that in mind, here’s the high level breakdown of the polls; one for rate, one for salary and one for years of experience doing Flex development.

Out of 106 votes across all three polls:

• the average yearly rate is roughly $90,000
• the average hourly rate is $100 an hour
• the average amount of experience is 4 years

There is other data on the interwebs with regard to Flex development rate, salary, etc. however I think the data from these polls is a little more reliable because it’s coming from real developers in the trenches. There weren’t a ton of votes but I don’t see that as a terrible thing because I’m pretty sure every single person who voted was a real world Flex dev and there isn’t any fluff data included.

Here are the links to the polls so you can check them out for yourself, and also see the location data. Please note that the Flex development salary poll is still open so please feel free to vote!

How many years have you been developing with Flex?
http://bit.ly/hQPmzP

What is your hourly rate for Flex development?
http://twtpoll.com/r/15g1tx

What is your yearly salary as a Flex developer?
http://bit.ly/gRpyRQ

Personally I think this information is pretty important, being a freelancer and all. For one it’s not often talked about and people generally get uncomfortable when talking about money. This was a good anonymous way to collect the data and share it with the community. I also think it helps to set a standard and help developers know what type of range they should be expecting. This information also should help anyone taking the leap into the world of freelancing, so they know what to ask for and expect as an hourly rate. With the average being around $100 an hour imo you shouldn’t be taking these $20 an hour projects. Obviously you don’t have to.

Flex is a valuable skill and not widely known. People need to pay Flex developers what they’re worth and developers should be aware of the relevant baseline rate. Granted, take the information in the polls, apply your experience, the project itself, your location, etc. when determining your rate and asking for a salary.

I’d like to thank Rich Tretola for the heads up on twittapolls.com. It’s a pretty slick polling site that he put together and I’d recommend it if you’re interested in putting together some polls of  your own.

Hopefully this post hasn’t offended anyone. I think this information needs to be shared and hope it helps Flex devs determine and justify their skills and worth.

San Diego Flash Users Group: Flex Best Practices Presentation

To start 2009 off I gave my first presentation to an awesome group of Flash and Flex developers in San Diego. The presentation was created from the two articles I wrote in 2008 for the Adobe Developer Connection on Best Practices for Flex development. I’ve kept the Powerpoint presentation offline until now. Some of the content is a little dated but it’s probably still worth checking out. I may update this presentation with everything I’ve learned over the last year and for the upcoming changes coming in Flex 4, if time permits.

Download the Flex Best Practices Powerpoint Presentation here.

Java Programming II at UCSD

After wanting to learn more about Java for many years I decided to go back to school and take a structured class. This was the first time I’d set foot in a classroom since about 1998. It was through the UCSD Extension program but classes were held on the UCSD campus. It was pretty cool to walk around the campus and see the “college” life again after so long. In addition this was the first time I’d ever taken a class at a University, my previous college experience was at a community college. The instructor Kent Yang was really awesome and the class was killer! I learned a lot more about Java, OOP, Unit Testing and Design Patterns. This knowledge was all transferable into AS3/Flex so the experience was well worth the time and investment.

Check out the class details here.

The Flex Show Episode 71: OOP w/ Sean Moore

The Flex Show is awesome, simply stated. Jeffry Houser has done an excellent job with the podcast and I’ve been a fan for a few years now. One of my goals was to be a guest on The Flex Show and in 2009 in became a reality. I was able to put together a talk about OOP in regards to Flex and ActionScript development. The Java class helped solidify my knowledge of OOP so hopefully the talk will help others grasp some of the fundamental OO concepts. It was an honor to be on the show and I really appreciate the opportunity. Hopefully I can do another show sometime in the future. Maybe on the Mindset BCI work I’ve been doing lately.

You can listen to my talk on The Flex Show here.

Orange County Flex Users Group: Flex Best Practices Presentation

Laura Arguello was kind enough to invite me to give my Flex Best Practices preso at the OCFlex Users Group in March. This gave me a chance to visit the ASFusion office before the preso and hang out with Jeremy Saenz (aka The Flex Gangster) a bit as well. The crowd at OCFlex was really great and very patient as I got set up and had some trouble finding a room at the venue big enough for everyone. Thanks again to ASFusion and the OCFlex Users Group for inviting me to present. It was a great experience!

Technical Authoring for O’Reilly InsideRIA

2008 was a big year for me and authoring. I wrote articles for Adobe, Flash Magazine and O’Reilly’s InsideRIA. I continued the trend in 2009 by writing three featured articles for InsideRIA. Rich Tretola is one of the coolest guys I know and such a pleasure to work with. He helped me a ton with the articles I wrote this year through the good and the bad. Another person I really have to thank is Matt Chotin. His feedback on my Flex 4 article was a huge help and I really appreciate his time and input! You can check out the articles I wrote for InsideRIA below:

Round up of ActionScript 3.0 and Flex optimization techniques and practices

Overview of Flex 4 (Gumbo)

Decorator Design Pattern

Technical Reviews for Manning Publications

Reviewing books is great for a lot of reasons, it helps your writing skills, you get a preview of the books before they’re published and you get to contribute to the quality of the books being published. I do the reviews on a volunteer basis and really enjoy and appreciate the opportunity to do so. In 2009 I had the privilege of reviewing three books for Manning. They are all great titles and I encourage you to check them out.

Hello! Flex 4

Flex On Java

Flex 4 In Action

Present.ly AIR Client Development

This is one of the larger apps that I worked on completely by myself. Dave at Intridea got in touch with a request to help them refactor an existing AIR application to best practices. This project was one of the best projects I’ve ever had the pleasure of working on. The app was cool, the concept was cool and the client was cool. The Present.ly service is a private Twitter like service for businesses, if you haven’t already taken a minute to check it out I encourage you to do so. Another really awesome aspect of this project is that the codebase for the AIR app is totally open source and available for download on GIT Hub. I was able to use Cairngorm and Flex Unit on this project which I feel really helped the codebase and application’s stability and scalability. You can check out the codebase and the finished app by following the links below:

Present.ly AIR source code at GIT Hub

Present.ly AIR Client

Game Consulting and Development

A game development company contacted me for some assistence with consulting and development for a Flex and Flash based game. This was my first experience doing any game dev and it was really great. This was another awesome client. They are not public yet so there aren’t any links to share. I did want to note that game development is something that I’d like to do more of and hopefully 2010 will present more opportunities to do so.

Parsley

Learning Parsley was been on my radar for quite some time. I’ve been able to work with the framework quite a bit over the last few months and really like it so far. It’s quite a bit different than Cairngorm development but it offers more flexibility and is the preferred direction by many developers. IoC frameworks are all the rage and I am glad to be learning how to use them.

Presentation Model

This design pattern is great. It enables better unit testing for your applications and helps to decouple logic from views. Using the Presentation Model wasn’t totally clear at first but after working with it for a while I’m really beginning to like it. Having a bunch of code in MXML files wasn’t really ever all that appealing to me and using the Presentation Model really helps to separate this code out into pure AS3 classes.

ThinkGear Brain Computer Interface API

In an effort to end 2009 with a bang I released my ThinkGear API. This API enables the Neurosky Mindset Brain Computer Interface to communicate with AS3 based applications. So far I’ve been able to build a rough dashboard that uses my brainwaves as its data source. In addition I was able to tie my brainwaves into some AS3 based particle visualizations. You can see my demo video and learn more here. Control ActionScript with your mind!!!

Well here’s looking to 2010. I can’t believe it’s already been a decade since Y2K. It’s been a great decade for the Flash Platform we’ve all come a long way.

I’ve also been having some discussions on twitter regarding fixed bid vs. hourly billing. Any thoughts on that?

Source: HotGigs.com