How much should I pay a university student for a holiday project?

Question

It's been a while since I was at university ...

I have a project that I'm currently struggling to devote sufficient time to, so am considering paying a student to develop it for me (I'm based in the UK).

So, what would be a reasonable hourly/daily rate to pay a student during the summer, probably based in London, England.

Some (optional) side questions:

• Is it reasonable to expect them to have comparable experience in terms of development process to those of us that do it as a job? And a similar skillset (assuming they enjoy what they do)?
• Is cold hard cash likely to be more appealing than some sort of revenue share?

Answer 1

You should pay him like you would pay anyone else, what he (or she) is worth. There is no reason you should pay them less (or more) then someone with equal skills who is not a student. It greatly depends on the person, there are many students who just go to their CS classes and don't have the experience you are looking for and there are students who are even better than most of us with day jobs.

Answer 2

Google Summer of Code pays USD 4500 to each student for projects that typically take hundreds of hours; Stanford University pays $14.50 an hour for student internships. In both cases there are also non-monetary inducements (helping open source, helping some professor who may be useful to you in the future, etc).

Definitely NOT reasonable to expect any real experience -- lots of "book learning", very bright intelligence, and maybe some clever hacking in their spare time, is the most you can expect; the point of an internship is starting to acquire real-life experience that's not easily gotten in a classroom or lab!-)

Answer 3

I once had a student programming job where i was paid 12$ per hour, and i loved it, it beat any other job i could get at the time. I got to work from home and be my own boss.

I could have probably landed a higher paying job, but i wouldnt have been programming at home, which i really loved, so it was worth much more to me then the 12 bucks. Also, i dont think i had as many bills back then, so it seemed like more money.

Answer 4

I think your should see what he or she is capable of, and then you both agree on the pay rate value. You should not be influenced by the fact that the programmer is a student but on the fact that you believe your project will be completed in the right way and how much you evaluate the job being done.