Good luck with this. Here's why you're seeing those numbers. Let's say a competent software engineer's salary is $100k. With a 2000-hour year, that $50/hour. But that's not the total cost which you can double for insurance, capital equipment, overhead, profit, etc. A reasonable loaded labor rate is about $100/hour. What's your auto mechanic's shop rate these days?
How much prep time is required for a 40-hour class? 3 hours per hour of class time? so that's a minimum of 160 hours, or $16k. Of course, one can reduce that a bit if the course materials can be reused, but you're asking for custom work. Since commercial training is so expensive, you are going to want a whole level of polish on the presentation. Something of the quality of a textbook with professional-looking graphics. That takes time to prepare. Some chicken scratching that I can do on paper (or a white board) in a couple of minutes takes an hour or more to do as a crude drawing with illustrator (or inkscape). It'd take me hours to do the same graphic at publication-quality, just making it look good, not adding information content. Time is $$$. I'll admit to having tried to do this last quarter and falling on my face. It wasn't the money, which I considered a loss leader; it was simply that I did not have enough time to devote to bringing the presentation to the level of quality they expected. You're asking for champagne on a beer budget if you want something customized. On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 3:41 PM, Chad Trabant <[email protected]>wrote: > > Hello all, > > We are looking for an instructor to come to our office and teach our > experienced developers basic to advanced Python. I'm hopeful the SeaPIG > can help us find such an instructor. The course topics we would like to > cover include: > > * Introduction to Python (for experienced developers) > * Reading and writing technical data (HDF, NetCDF, MATLAB) > * NumPy > * SciPy with focus on signal processing > * Interfacing with C and Fortran > * Data visualizations (matplotlib and beyond) > > Class size would be up to 8 or 9 folks with smaller groups depending on > the topic (some have Python experience and can skip the basics). Looking > to do the training before the end of the year, ideally later this summer or > fall. Ideally we would like these covered in a week or week and a half > with a mix of full days and some half days, but we are flexible. > > Naturally we are prepared to compensate the instructor(s). After getting > quotes from some well known Python training companies and suffering sticker > shock ($15K and up!), we are looking for alternatives. > > Before we commit with any instructor we'll want to see examples of > experience, specifically for coding and ideally for instruction. > > If you are interested in such an opportunity please contact me. If you > have any suggestions for how to find such an instructor please pass that > along too. > > About us: We are non-profit seismological data center (funded by the > National Science Foundation), our users are academic researchers in the US > and around the world. Our office is near the main UW campus in Northeast > Seattle. http://www.iris.edu/dms/nodes/dmc/ > > thanks, > Chad > IRIS DMC
