[tpm] Wondering about fair wages

[Digimer]

Hi all,

   I'm not sure if this is on topic or not. If it's not, please let me know.

   I'm co-founder of a small but growing business in Toronto. Up until 
now, I've done all of the development work myself; architecture, 
sysadmin and software development. The last one being all in perl, save 
for a touch of jquery. We're getting to a point where I can't do it all 
myself, so I have to start planning, and budgeting, to hire a proper 
program/web developer.

   The reason I am posting here is that I have to balance available 
resources against what is fair to pay for a given skill-set. Just the 
same, I don't want to offer an unreasonable pay, either. I would very 
much appreciate your input on what you think would be a fair pay package 
for someone with these skills;

* Very comfortable with perl and writes clean, readable code.
* Can convert "traditional" HTML UI into a proper AJAX UI.
* Making an existing program properly testable/write unit tests.
* Familiar, ideally comfortable, with RHEL/CentOS 6+ system calls.
* Diligent about writing self-documenting code and proper comments.

   This is the front end for a high-availability cluster. So more than 
"X years for experience in Y" or some such, the number *1* thing I would 
need is someone who is slow, steady and careful. I would still be 
closely involved with the systems side of things, so someone would not 
need to know about HA clusters, but they must understand the caution 
needed and be diligent about their work.

   So, given this description, what would you guys consider a fair 
compensation package to offer? What conditions/trade-offs might cause 
you to consider in exchange for a reduced direct pay package?

   Thanks for any input!

-- 
Digimer
Papers and Projects: https://alteeve.ca/w/
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