Are freelance programmers getting fd ?

[pseudorandom21]

Do freelance programmers get somewhat f'd on projects, mainly the fixed-price ones? I can understand paying $16.00 for a utility if it doesn't take two or three days to complete, oh and the requirements keep changing too! Bet employers don't tell their unlucky programmers that the requirements will change and take them longer. It would be bad for business lol.

Well that aside, if you have done freelancing, what was your best (easy/payout ratio) project and with what programming language was it done?

[jwenting]

If you're a freelancer taking on projects where you agree to a fixed price but not a fixed set of requirements and deliverables, it's nothing but your own fault.
Same goes for any contract.

Nothing special about freelancers there, except they often lack the expert knowledge in reading and writing contracts, think they know everything about requirements gathering etc., and try to wing it where a professional consultancy firm has dedicated people for all that and a professional legal team in place.

$16 for a few days' work? Forget it. As a freelancer you're going to need at least 10 times that much per hour to break even.
We're as a big consultancy now charging at least $100 an hour for our people, and that's down from >$150 a few years ago and barely enough to break even. For a freelancer its worse as his income situation is less predictable so he has to charge more just to cover the risk of being without a contract for a while.

[JustCC]

If, hour for hour, people are expecting to getting paid the same as or less than a warehouse pallet stocker, then something is fundamentally wrong with your client. Don't work for cheap people, they are among the worst clients you can get.