Yea, like going for interview and demanding salary in advance. Even restaurants do not request payment until new clients have eaten, or any other skilled services like doctors,dentists, etc. and they have offices.
Time is $ for others too, that's a typical coder self-centred point of view and the code can cost the trader if the coder is quietly not satisfied with agreed price giving a working compiled program and delivering a different decompiled version.
Just curious if you have looked at these websites. I have friends who have posted trading projects, programmers bid on it, he has used programmers from Russia, Egypt, Pakistan. I don't recall him mentioning any issues with payments etc. No one really pays full payment in advance. http://www.freelancer.com/
Programmers and clients are going to eye each other with suspicion at first, in my opinion, on first cyber meet. Programmer will be wondering if that he will be paid and not dicked around, client that he'll get a good job done and his ideas kept confidential. It will take a bit of time before each will entrust the other. As for myself as a client, I have a very trustworthy coder, besides, he doesn't give a shit about my 'secret fuckin super duper code', he has too much other stuff on his plate to care about my new idea. He codes it and when it's done he forgets it, and moves onto the next job. Coders and traders are two different mentalities, a full time coder is usually not a trader. The world is big, your idea is insignificant in the big picture, but getting a good coder to work for you will take a bit of time to work thru until you both get onto the same wave length of what is required and what is expected.
I have worked in both businesses and in general traders are far more self centered then software consultants. I would add in trading there are less opportunities to work in group projects and learn how to work well with other people. If a software consultant wants money up front it likely reflects on the huge risk dealing with you as a client. Software consulting truly is a "$ per hour" business ( time is money when you are busy ). Trading is a different animal, a lot of down time mixed in with profitable time frames. Given the huge potential these days in properly coded trading solutions and the shrinking work force choosing programming as a career ( I would never recommend it ), I think there could soon be some great opportunities for people who are truly experienced in both areas. One thing both traders and good software consultants understand is you need to seize the good money making opportunities when they appear and milk them for everything they are worth.
Yea, CONsulting like scratching butt for an hour and spending an hour coding but charging for 2 hours.This is not like lawyer, doctor or psychic meeting session.
Pay yourself then by scratching your own butt and doing an amateurish coding job on your own time. That is how free enterprise works no professional software consultant owes you anything including the time of day with that bad attitude.
I wish but normal 9to5 working programmers do not get paid by hour or even overtime scratching my butt like good attitude free enterprise professionals.
As a client, I'm on the programmers side in terms of how difficult the business would be. Myself, I'm a person who is generally considerate and careful with explaining detail, but I would say the majority of the time when I request a new project formula coding job to be done, I fail to explain clearly and concisely what I require. It is actually a difficult thing being articulate and technically savvy enough to mention in detail all the intricacies of how this new formula should work, many times the coder will often mis-interpret what I require. I'll give an example, I have one formula which gives buy and sell signals based on volatility plus a trailing stop plus looks at the market as a whole, plus works on daily, weekly and monthly periods as well as having a turnover filter. It is a chart and as well is back-testable. The formula is about 2 pages long and took weeks to complete after many corrections and alterations. this sort of work for the coder is extremely complex and time consuming, because at the end of the day he needs to get it to work.
I do much of my own coding now, so i don't need to explain how this needs to work to another person, yet even coding my own stuff is time consuming and needs the formula to be reworked a few times due to the fact theory and practice are often two different things. Some ideas don't work and need to be approached differently from the initial concept.