Another interesting concept is the internet-based contracting sites where developers bids for work.

Lots of students and other people undercutting seriously, and lots of companies not knowing that they tend to get what they pay for. Source code (or PCB + BOM) for initial product release is a small part of the total lifetime cost of a product.

The cost of documentation is at least as high as writing the source code.

The cost of testing is at least as high as writing the source code.

The cost of maintaining the source code can be many, many, many times the development cost unless the code if the code was not professionally written by someone with some knowledge of that market segment and and idea about what may potentially be future improvement requests.

The cost of maintaining the hardware in case some of the selected components dosn't handle the required temperature range or can't be ordered anymore can be huge. The cost of changing the hardware to replace a component may result in new certificatin processes.

And few companies seems to include the loss of sales from delayed shipping when evaluating the alternatives. They often just look at man hours times hourly fee.

In the end, this results in a larger and larger spread of acceptable fees/salaries depending on how knowledgeable the hiring company is or how good personal references you have.