Hire a .NET Developer or Put the System on Retainer

A mid-level .NET developer at a $135,000 salary costs about $175,000 a year with tax, benefits and equipment. A recruiting fee of 20 to 25 percent of salary comes on top in the first year. A support retainer at Parka Software costs $22,800 a year for 10 hours a month, $43,200 for 20 hours and $84,000 for 40.

The figures are only comparable once you know how many hours the system needs.

Utilization

A full-time developer works roughly 160 hours a month. A system in maintenance mode often needs 10 to 40. The salary covers all 160.

There are good uses for the remaining hours: clearing a backlog, modernizing the system, writing the documentation that was never written, building the next application. If you have that work and someone to direct it, a hire pays for itself. If the role is only maintenance, a capable developer will usually move on within a year or two for more varied work, and the search starts again.

Coverage

With one employee, the system has no cover during vacation, illness or a notice period, and that person's decisions go unreviewed. A second developer solves this at twice the cost. On a retainer, documentation is built as the work is done and belongs to you, which keeps the knowledge from resting with one individual.

Where a retainer is weaker

• Availability. A retainer covers business hours within a monthly block. An employee is there every day.
• Context. Someone inside the company hears the hallway conversation and knows the business beyond the tickets.
• Surge. A crunch that needs full-time attention for weeks will exceed the block.
• Ramp-up. A retainer on an unfamiliar system starts with an assessment. A new hire also needs time, commonly six to nine months on an undocumented system.

When to hire

Hire when the workload is steady above about 40 hours a month, when the application changes every week, or when the developer needs to sit with the people who use it. Hire when the system is the product, or central enough that the knowledge should be on staff. Hire when you have other .NET work that fills the week. In those cases a retainer costs more per hour and gives you less.

The numbers to work out first

1. Hours per month the system used over the last year. Changes plus incidents.
2. Planned work for the next year, in hours.
3. Other work a developer would do, and who would direct it.
4. What an hour of downtime costs, and whether business-hours response is acceptable.
5. Who covers when one person is out.

If items 1 and 2 total under about 40 hours a month and item 3 is thin, a retainer fits. If they total more, or item 3 is a full list, hire. What a support retainer covers has the terms in detail.