Originally Posted by myneid

a lot of the hourly rate of most programmers is based on the time you will spend. currently we've decided $160/hour is fair because usually doing 1 hour of work for $100 is not worth it since it takes away from clients paying a monthly retainer.
People paying a monthly retainer though, they need 20 or 50 dedicated hours and are willing to pay that each month, they will get the lower rates.
Its very competitive out there right now, but having a technical person that knows programming and systems and can integrate nats or mpa3 with a custom billing solution is well worth it. What a jr programmer at $40/hour can do in 8 hours, i can do in 1 and you get higher quality.