I'm just starting out my career in software engineering but I often read things about how costly it is to make an app or program? I'm guessing if its a big enough project you'd have to pay people to do your graphics/code with you unless you can do it all yourself?
and obvious fee's such as putting it in the app store im aware of but is there any other "hidden costs" most people dont know about?

Hardware, development tools licensing, staff salaries, marketing, etc. It's just like any other business. You are trying to sell a product. You have to factor in the costs to manufacture and produce that product.

Short answer: labor.

you can choose cheap/free software solutions usually, especially for startups or small side projects.

my coworker (another dept, knows nothing of coding) recently tried the line "i have a great idea for an app. lets team up and make it!" I told her the story of the chicken and the pig (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chicken_and_the_Pig) to help explain why it was a terrible idea for me. then i showed her an ipad app we've been writing for our sales guys. something like 6 screens, web service calls, database. i asked her what she thought of it. she said it seemed fairly simple. then i asked her how long she thought it took to make it. she guessed a month. it actually took about 6 months, with 2 developers working 30+ hours a week on it, a project manager, 2 testers (among others), multiple meetings, servers, etc.

two developers will charge at least 50$/hr, more likely closer to 100$ C2C. so...30 hours/week * 4 weeks/month * 6 months * 50$/hr * 2 people gives us.... $72,000 just for labor of developers at a minimum. in comparison, paying 3k for computers and 1k for software is negligible.

(for reference, 50$/hr C2C is maybe 60k W2, which is entry level.)

Some people try to make apps on the side. Consider that you won't be working on it 40h/week if it's on the side. it's more like 10-20h/week, so a 1 month full time project can easily take 6 months to complete. even if you write all the code yourself, it has a high opportunity cost. every hour you spent on your project could have been spent getting paid 50$/hr. i'm guessing the majority of apps either fail or don't turn a profit, so it requires a pretty hefty investment.

$50/hr entry level...? you must be in cali lol

This post was edited by Aimed_Shot on Oct 10 2014 06:44pm

no, GA. that's C2C pay. i started around 60k salaried. don't think i'd touch an entry level cali job unless it offered 80k+, but i'd still choose to stay away from cali unless they offered 100k+ entry with benefits and future resume fodder (facebook, dropbox, etc).

This post was edited by carteblanche on Oct 10 2014 06:59pm

Nice answer. Thank you for the detail.