Ask HN: What do you do and what's your consulting rate?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30188101

by burtonator • 4 years ago

98 109 4 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I'm curious what various services people provide in tech and what their consulting rate is...

Can you share?

It would be interesting to see the highest paying fields.

hokumguru• 4 years ago

Native app freelancing. Mostly MVPs and helping small businesses get their software off the ground.

Midwest USA

Price varies but usually around $150/hr

swyx• 4 years ago

I’ve done developer relations at AWS and two unicorns, consulting rate is basically negative 10k/hour because I now meet founders for angel investing and that’s my avg check size :)

less facetiously i do wonder if i should do the proverbial patio11 move and Charge More (tm) but kinda dont want it to conflict with the day job.

d3ad1ysp0rk2• 4 years ago

Dev Manager or Tech Lead - $150/hr for longer (3+ week) engagements, $225/hr for shorter ones. Focus is generally optimizing delivery + quality, which can take the form of anything from requirements gathering processes to testing pipelines or rebuilding trust. Fully remote in Maine.

brtkdotse• 4 years ago

Is there a market for a dev manager/tech lead for less than 6 months? Seems like a slow ramp long term engagement

d3ad1ysp0rk2• 4 years ago

More likely to be a tech lead in those cases, or to be helping hold the project together while they are hiring a full time resource. Also in certain cases the companies are so far from ideal states that a lot of good can be done in 6 months. Overall, I agree that most times it won't make sense for a company to plan on switching dev managers or tech leads after < 6 months, but again that assumes ideal conditions or options.

anbende• 4 years ago

Psychological measurement and data science consulting. Currently billing at $145 an hour.

anonymouse008• 4 years ago

Have a website or place to contact? The industry is wide, but maybe we could collaborate

karlshea• 4 years ago

Drupal/Laravel/React freelancer in Minneapolis. $125/hr or $100/hr if through a design agency. Although I get the feeling I should raise my rates again.

ggillas2• 4 years ago

Design blockchain token economic models. Paid in % of total token supply.

Prior, consulted on intellectual property strategy $550/hr.

yrral• 4 years ago

Sorry for all the questions but:

Generally what percentage of the total supply do you get?

Do you have a lockup period?

Are these primarily defi protocols?

Can you disclose what projects you worked on?

ggillas2• 4 years ago

Most projects put 12 month or greater lockups on tokens (which I'd recommend for both vesting considerations and protections for the protocol against dumping).

The standard YC advisor templates are fairly easy to translate to token-based compensation and are battle tested.

Just like advisor compensation in stock, both the protocol and the advisor should weight the advisory scope, how early the project is, and determine fair %s from there.

cperciva5• 4 years ago

I do occasional consulting in cryptography and security design, and anything related to FreeBSD/EC2.

$300/hour with discounts for open source, startups based in Canada, longer engagements, and anything which particularly piques my interest.

tptacek5• 4 years ago

$300/hr for your time is a steal.

richardw• 4 years ago

Patio11 is typing...

cperciva5• 4 years ago

Feel free to steal from me. ;-)

As a practical matter: If I were a full time consultant I probably would charge more, but I would also be spending some of my time making sure I had a full pipeline of gigs lined up. The fact that my marketing process is about as lean as it gets -- people send me emails from time to time -- means I don't have to cover that sort of overhead.

bitexploder4• 4 years ago

You could probably charge a good bit more. Our customers are at 14k week rate for good quality pen testing, app sec, device hacking, sec eng, red teams etc.

Edit: and I know friends at big firm with crypto services specialty and they charge a looot more. $400-$500/hr. They stay pretty busy.

throwaway815238• 4 years ago

I'm fairly good at crypto (not as good as Colin of course) but I think that's not of that much help in general security stuff. Pen testing = knowing all the bugs and code smells in the popular Javascript frameworks, 0 days in a zillion libraries like log4j, etc. I'm basically resigned that the modern web is bloaty buggy crap and so I haven't found it worthwhile to get too familiar with its workings. I have gotten some fairly pure crypto gigs here and there, but I think wider security, especially web security, is a much bigger and messier subject.

nataz3• 4 years ago

You interested in being a sub contractor?

Only half joking...

Seriously though, one of the most powerful tools in consulting is a deep rolodex of unique talent. You never want to be in the position of telling a client you can't help them. You should always be honest, but you should also be prepared.

Someone could probably put together a pretty nice consulting association/firm with contacts made here on HN.

cperciva5• 4 years ago

As long as I get paid, I don't really mind who writes the checks. ;-)

Seriously though, I wouldn't want to give up any of the flexibility I currently have, which includes both absolute veto over customers and projects, and "best effort" availability which ranges from "reply within 5 minutes because I happened to be checking my email" to "I'm busy with the baby today while my wife plays an orchestra gig" and in the extreme case "I'm tracking down a FreeBSD bug this week; hopefully I'll get around to helping you next week".

This may be incompatible with being contracted out by an agency.

RomanPushkin3• 4 years ago

I did a couple of Ruby trainings in last 6 months for $8000/day (2 total, so it was a bit more than $30k). I wrote a book (free, 400 page) about Ruby. I do it with my partner, I'm happy to pay 20% for all unrelated stuff (organizing, filling in gaps, communicating with people, etc).

throwaway815238• 4 years ago

Holy cow, that is great, I had no idea that trainings paid so well. I taught a Python class for free which makes me think I could do traiinings. Was there a lot of specialized stuff in your Ruby trainings? I had figured doing that type of stuff got at best normal hourly rates. Maybe I should pursue this type of thing more.

ethbr06• 4 years ago

Training speaks to the truism in consulting rates -- you can only command up to the value you deliver to the customer.

With training, you're playing one of the strongest cards: delivering value to many people at the same time, where your time required scales sub-linearly with the number of people.

Consequently, the more people, the more value to the customer, the more they can realistically pay you and still get good value for their money. Win/win.

ensemblehq5• 4 years ago

Any tips on structuring trainings? Would love to incorporate some trainings this year for data science/data engineering.

RomanPushkin3• 4 years ago

I follow "20 + 20 + break" approach. My father used it for 30+ years (professor of physics and CS).

It means 20 minutes of theory, 20 minutes of practice, 10-minute break. It can be 25 + 25 + 5, or something along these lines. I never do more than 25. The bottom line is that people are getting bored after more than 20 minutes of theory.

Good luck!

mwilcox• 4 years ago

$2180/hour mining magic numbers

semireg• 4 years ago

IIOT iOS and nodeJS consulting, $200/hour in Minnesota, USA.

gwlperl• 4 years ago

Rack Rate: $225USD/hour. Friends and Family rate: 1 beer per incident.

muzani• 4 years ago

I've learned that it's a terrible idea to have separate rates for friends. Do it for completely free - not even a glass of water. The beer often puts you in as much obligation as the $225.

bitexploder4• 4 years ago

14k week rate. We do infosec consulting. High end boutique. App sec, pen testing, reversing, IoT/device hacking etc.

nataz3• 4 years ago

You mention 14k/week. You also mention "we".

If you don't mind me asking - How many people involved per job, and was that 14k per person or all inclusive.

bitexploder4• 4 years ago

14k is one consultants rate. Engagements are 2-6 weeks, 1-3 people typically. Bigger engagements happen often enough. Blended bill rate is lower with legacy customers, new customer bill rate is 14k/wk. Some discounts possible here and there, for purchasing a lot of work, allowing logo use, etc.

acrooks3• 4 years ago

I’ve shifted to bidding fixed rate on projects around a defined scope. It’s a lot more work upfront to define a clear statement of work, but it has allowed me to stay above USD$200/hr without customers batting an eye - whereas my rate was consistently a sticking point in negotiations.

My consulting mostly focuses around IT/digital strategy and the work product usually involves connecting together incumbent systems, and sometimes implementing new systems while ensuring they’re deeply interconnected with the rest of an organisation, aligning them closely with biz process, etc. My customer is always a business unit lead so the budget tends to be more aligned with top-line outcomes.

mojomark• 4 years ago

It’s a lot more work upfront to define a clear statement of work, but it has allowed me to stay above USD$200/hr without customers batting an eye - whereas my rate was consistently a sticking point in negotiations.

I don't know why I'm reading this thread 15 minutes before I study the back of my eyelids for 8 hours, but the truth in this statement oddly stoped my academic pursuits dead in my tracks.

throwaway815238• 4 years ago

I've never seen a project where the customer knew what they wanted clearly enough to have a SOW with a fixed scope. The work always expands. Maybe I've been doing something wrong. How are you doing during the pandemic, which makes in-person meetings and on-site work difficult?

seanwilson3• 4 years ago

I've never seen a project where the customer knew what they wanted clearly enough to have a SOW with a fixed scope.

Not sure if you do this but that's why you really should charge for helping with the requirements gathering and solution design, it's really valuable to pin down what the problem is and know that what you're going to build will fix it properly. It also means you're not in a rush to throw out an estimate with limited information. Better for both sides.

acrooks3• 4 years ago

Well, there are a couple components to that:

- Because of my focus in particular industries, I tend to start projects already having a baseline of understanding of what my customers need.

- You can write a fixed price contract that leaves room for a customer to change their mind / not know what they want. If you articulate very clearly in the SOW what you will deliver for the fixed price, then you leave yourself open to issue change orders as the scope evolves. Of course, you need to be careful how militant you are here, because issuing a change order for every minor thing won't help you get repeat business. To hedge against this, I tend to include a bucket of hours for arbitrary changes. This gives the customer some room to change their mind still without allowing them to derive and negotiate against an hourly rate.

- In my experience, fixed price allows me to 2x or more the hourly rate I would otherwise be able to charge, so if I do a bad job at writing an SOW then I have a lot of breathing room between what I'm getting paid and what I likely would have gotten paid had I billed hourly.

RE: Pandemic: I don't develop the work product on customer sites, so I'm only really there for meetings (so a lot during discovery and a lot during delivery). I've found that it's been pretty easy to migrate this to Zoom/Meet albeit with a bit more friction. It's a lot more difficult doing discovery remotely, but I find running workshops in Miro has been invaluable to ensure I'm capturing everybody's voice.

FpUser2• 4 years ago

Develop complete products of healthy complexity. Very wide range - enterprise backends, complex multimedia front ends, device control, firmware etc. etc. Located in Toronto, Canada. $100/hr or better say around $200K/year give or take as each contract is rather long term engagement. Typical would be 6-12 month first version with restricting functionality. Year for maturing. Another year support, transition to maintenance team. All in all the average duration is about 3 years.

Every once in a while do hit and run jobs. In this case the highest effective rate was $20K in 3 pure days of work. Some went to a person who got me the gig.

always_swapping2• 4 years ago

Just starting out and I like your style. I would love to know more. My email is in my profile.

- Young eng in the GTA

FpUser2• 4 years ago

I was employed for 6 years at company in Toronto until 2000. The company was a consulting business oriented towards delivering complete solutions (products for clients). I saw their ad and just walked into their office. Chatted for a bit with the receptionist who'd also doubled as assistant to CEO got her interested to the point that she brought me to a CEO (company was very small by then). When they hired me, I very quickly have progressed from a developer to a lead architect. While working there I proved myself as creative solution provider and the stuff I've done impressed our clients (those included guys like Bell). All of this came at a price. I got sort of burnout and have decided to do it on my own. Since I already had a reputation and have met many people it was not long before I nailed my first deal. Somebody recommended me to a self-funded startup who knew the business had an idea for a product but had zero experience in developing. We've met. We liked each other. I hired another programmer as single me was not enough and have delivered first prototype in 3 months. The rest is history. I just kept going like this. I've had ups and downs. I gained money, I lost money but overall, I am doing ok. I also have my own products that bring me some money. If you are looking to get a job / contract I am 100% ok for a current contract so no help on that side unfortunately.

Is there anything in particular you are looking for?

scrollaway• 4 years ago

Systems / Solutions engineering, specializing in fintech. 180-360 USD / hr depending on how specialized the work is. Lower sometimes if I feel like it.

GauntletWizard2• 4 years ago

I'm a Site Reliability engineer. I help startups figure out how to deploy to the cloud. My rate is $250, though I'm wondering if I should raise it again due to inflation.

ensemblehq5• 4 years ago

Definitely raise if possible :)

Generally, how do you find clients and startups to help?

GauntletWizard2• 4 years ago

I've had a bunch of success from the Monthly Freelancer thread, and a little from networking and going to local meetups and such.

tirrellp2• 4 years ago

Strategy and management consulting for the Pharma industry. $450k/3 months.

folli• 4 years ago

Can you elaborate a bit on your background? I'm myself working in biotech and am very interested going down the strategy route. Mind if I contact you?

tirrellp2• 4 years ago

Please do. Decidedly unhip email in profile.

hkhanna2• 4 years ago

Lawyer (corporate/VC/M&A) for $495 per hour, with discounts offered if they have me on retainer.

Python/Django/React.js developer for $295 per hour.

I offer both of these together at a blended rate to folks who need both a lawyer and a software developer.

dzhiurgis• 4 years ago

folks who need both a lawyer and a software developer

Strange intersection, but can you give examples?

tata71• 4 years ago

Any software company with competitors.

hkhanna2• 4 years ago

The most common case is very early stage technology startups where most of their employees wear many hats. They usually have no legal counsel and maybe 1 or 2 developers including a CTO. They need help on everything from employment agreements, fundraising and NDAs to building the newest API endpoint or Airflow DAG.

It's a little strange at first to have someone doing very different jobs for them simultaneously, but when you're that early stage and having difficulty hiring, it's a blessing once you realize I'm highly experienced and hard-working at both.

chad_strategic• 4 years ago

Just out of curiosity... what kind of project require a lawyer and a developer on the same job?

_tardigrade• 4 years ago

Python/Django freelancer. Mostly working with small businesses.

Location: Poland Price ~ $45/hr

jpgvm• 4 years ago

Specialize in distributed systems, big data, etc.

My short term rate is $300/hr, $200/hr for longer term commitments and $500/hr + all expenses for on-site. Pre-pandemic on-site w/training was the most successful of all of these despite being the most expensive.

I did it full time for a while, these days I only do it on the side and only for projects that are worth it.

nataz3• 4 years ago

It was about 30k/week.

The tech side was almost irrelevant. In the end it was about helping the client document good requirements.

Which you could only do after getting a good understanding of their business ops/process, and identifying the gaps and the impact to resources.

Then you put down really good requirements (which is hard), and only then use that to engineer a solution that appropriately addressed the risk (balancing cost/disruption vs. mitigated impact).

That said, often the solution is tech agnostic. I was just as happy punting final implementation to either internal teams or doing it myself (which often involved sub contracting to a specialist).

That may sound like a lot, but it often involved travel, tools, specialized coms gear, etc.

You also have to factor in insurance, taxes, and a myriad of other expenses related to running your own business.

The sweet spot for me was 45k/week, but that normally involves subcontractor payments as well.

Sytten2• 4 years ago

I did backend development (typescript, graphql, prisma) and devops (kubernetes, terraform, gcp, aws) for two years. I started at 40$/h then finished at 75$/h (100$/h for short contracts).

I honestly got burned out by context switching (which I needed to do to fill my week). And it was somewhat easy to find contracts at 75$/h (I consider I am senior level) so I would consider either charging more or billing more hours (both of which I was not good at).

Based in Canada.

ensemblehq5• 4 years ago

Have you done work in Python/Django?

Sytten2• 4 years ago

I dont like big frameworks like django, I worked with python and flask in the past. Why?

_em_2• 4 years ago

How can you find jobs in Canada. I have been trying to find some side cnosulting work but i am not sure which avenues to start from.

powcontech• 4 years ago

Electrical power engineer in generation and control systems $150-$190 cad/hr

blunte• 4 years ago

75-85 EUR/hr for Ruby/Rails, Python/Django, etc. in Netherlands.

martinopp• 4 years ago

Healthcare end-to-end product development and staff augmentation. Hourly rate usually around $150/hour.

welder• 4 years ago

$200/hr long term contract if it's new tech

$300/hr if it's something I've done before or the billable hours are low

Senior SE Full Stack in SF Bay Area

aviditas2• 4 years ago

Cloud security reviews and audits, either by account/resource numbers which has a minimum of $500 for a single account with a reasonable number of resources or by the hour ($500) for which I have a 4 hour minimum. The small biz stuff is a breeze to audit and create reports on so I keep the lower rate available. I also do insider threat specific IR work which is typically done on retainer and starts at $10k but averages the $15-20k mark per incident. That work is rare but time sensitive. Hours spent can be as little as 5-6 for initial triage but I usually spend about 12 in a single stretch on average with a few hours of debrief for the client. That work is exhaustive and exhausting but is rarely boring.

ryanSrich• 4 years ago

I imagine nearly 100% of your clientele is through networking?

aviditas2• 4 years ago

Yep, I'm always open to new opportunities, but to manage my own sanity and time, I keep my client list short and have a robust set of referrals if I'm already working on an incident. Almost all of the work I take is after hours and weekends as that's where my flexibility is.

I like the idea of working for a consulting firm as needed but it feels like most of those companies only want full-time commitments and I'm rather attached to my current position.

haolez• 4 years ago

150$/h. Distributed systems, AWS and Azure, Kubernetes, C, C++, Python, JS, Go, bash, build systems, database design (SQL and NoSQL), maybe a couple other topics.

syncerr• 4 years ago

NFTs. $3000/hr

abnercoimbre• 4 years ago

Okay. I'm trying to ascertain whether this is a joke meant to be a well-crafted critique or...

senectus1• 4 years ago

its crypto. there is a very good chance its all three...

michaelanckaert• 4 years ago

Solutions architect focusing on cloud architecture, design and security. €350 per hour.

Current technology mostly in demand (or what comes my way through networking) is AWS, GCP, Python/Django

pragmaticpirate• 4 years ago

$500 per hour for coding up NFT contracts and building DeFi protocols.

I offer discounts for longer engagements and projects based in India.

tmaly• 4 years ago

how did you get started in this?

pcglue• 4 years ago

Embedded software development, $165/hour

Mostly PIC16/18/32, some STM32.

bnwww• 4 years ago

DevSecOps and AWS consulting, solution design and engineering. Normally around AUD $200/hr (~USD$150) but can be more for fixed rate / outcome-based projects.

goingindi• 4 years ago

Would you guys share

- are you consulting on the side or full time?

- a template proposal / sow or a link to a good starter?

- can you do this remotely? I’m far far away in terms of time zone and want to get in on remote consulting is it an option?

At some point I’m gonna have to ask these questions with my real user account and a link to my resume as I am needing extra dosh now more than my prior comments on here would suggest

tldrthelaw• 4 years ago

Tax and technology attorney ("tax technologist") with a splash of data science.

I consult on tax matters and more specifically anything involving tax and technology (former software engineer).

Rate ranges from $250/hr to $500/hr depending on the level of sophistication.

nopcode• 4 years ago

110-160 EUR / hour. cybersecurity for ICS.

sliceform• 4 years ago

3D Design, 3D Printing, Product Development, CAD Tutoring, $150/hr.

kemistri• 4 years ago

Working with Microsoft products Dynamics 365 for Sales + Power Apps + PowerBI. Started at 0 knowledge and 0 customers 7 years ago. Have few customers, am fully booked months ahead, quality over money, that's how I do it atm. Currently going at 90EUR/h (103USD/h). Each time I get a new major client my rate goes up 10EUR/h. That's not even a pricing strategy or anything, just how I do it, like a bonus to myself for being a cool dude.

_em_2• 4 years ago

For people running successful consultancy business, how can i start? Where to find clients? I live in Toronto (Canada)

Ask HN: What do you do and what's your consulting rate?

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