Expert: Ahmed Salami - 12/6/2011

Question
Your company needs to temporarily hire a programmer to work on a project. Two proposed payment schemes for this work are as follows:

•(1) A flat fee of $1,000, plus $20 per hour or (2) $25 per hour.
◦For each of the two plans, show an expression that can be used to compute the amount of pay for that plan. The variable should be the number of hours worked.
◦Set up and solve an inequality that would enable your company to determine possible job lengths (in hours) for which the person is paid less according to plan 1 than for plan 2.
◦Interpret the solution of the inequality in terms of which is better for your company.

Answer
Hi Patti,
In the first scheme, the pay in dollars
P1 = 1000 + 20h
where h is the number of hours worked.
In the second
P2 = 25h

Now, for P1 < P2 then
1000 + 20h < 25h
1000 < 5h
h > 200

And so we can see that if the programmer would be working on the project for more than 200 hours then the first payment is financially better for the company since it pays less for the work.

Regards