Poll: long-term contractors, what is your hourly rate?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5769348

by csomar • 13 years ago

164 169 13 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Choices is countable, so thats "fewer choices" not "less choices".

Breaking open 150+ might be useful in some countries.

Where I am, basic consulting would get someone $500-$750/day. With 5+ years experience in a language/library that would be $750-$1250. 5+ years experience with languages + specific domain knowledge would be $1500-$3000+. eg. Codec implementation in assembler or VHDL/Verilog.

hcarvalhoalves2• 13 years ago

I would love to know me where I can move to and get paid $ 1250 a day for 5+ years experience developing web products in Python.

hermanhermitage4• 13 years ago

Not sure about python or web work, I mainly do C/C++/hardware/Security/Performance. I think Python+web sort of projects would best be charged as a whole or page-by-page / feature-by-feature. ie charge by outcome.

Its hard to build a case for differentiating the value of one JS/Ruby/Python programmers hours against another as the barrier to entry is low without a context.

Where as you can differentiate with a Portfolio of completed projects and indicative prices.

The other thing to look at, is can you convincingly argue 5+ years experience, or is that 5x 1 years experience? (ie doing the same thing for 5 years, versus really having moved up the expert scale).

The question to consider when you sell yourself, what is the lowest realistic substitute the person hiring you could use? How do you contextualize and stratify that decision tree?

damon_c• 13 years ago

You don't have to move anywhere.

Just bill at least $625/day (cheap!) and take multiple projects. Working in django, it is fairly easy to deliver sufficient value to two clients per week at this rate. Very often they need the same things anyway.

mkl• 13 years ago

Choices is countable, so thats "fewer choices" not "less choices".

Actually, that's a widespread misconception. See here, for example: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003775.h...

(edit: tl;dr: "less has been used of countables since the time of King Alfred the Great", i.e. since before English existed)

That's a linguist's take on it - you can find many more by googling [fewer less languagelog] or similar.

StavrosK2• 13 years ago

That link isn't saying what you think it's saying; "fewer" is the correct word here.

USNetizen7• 13 years ago

Don't underestimate how much people will pay, but it almost entirely depends on geographic location and your level of skill. Not just technical skills, but your "soft skills" like communication, teamwork, and marketing are equally important.

In the northeast US, a mid to senior level programmer/engineer could fairly easily charge between $90/hr and $120/hr (or much more in some cases, such as if you have a specialized skillset) for a fully loaded hourly rate. Don't forget (I'm sure you know this, but it bears repeating), about 25% to 35% of whatever you charge is overhead and will go towards administrative costs, not profit/salary.

The GSA (General Services Administration) publishes the average hourly rates that companies charge the US government for all kinds of services. You can probably expect about a 20% variance in these depending on your level of skill, reputation, and the geographic location and size of the client, but it is a pretty accurate and informative starting point.

Link: http://www.gsa.gov/portal/content/103877

eksith• 13 years ago

Yes, exactly. It's one thing to be technically knowledgeable and quite another to be able to transfer that knowledge effectively to someone else; especially if they're not technical.

Diplomacy and delicacy go a long way to improve job relations and demand, but these aren't usually taught unless you specifically seek out these lessons.

nfm3• 13 years ago

Obligatory pro tip: Don't bill hourly. Bill weekly whenever possible, and anchor your consulting rate to the outcomes you can achieve in a week instead of to 60 minutes of your attention.

zerr4• 13 years ago

Thanks, but hourly billing is kind of defense for overtimes - I bill at the end of the months, but with the total number of hours worked.

When you bill weekly - initially, a fixed 40 hr/week is assumed. But the client might push as much work as possible for that week...

Another option could be: Weekly (or monthly) billing + hourly for overtimes.

nfm3• 13 years ago

Good point - weekly billing implies 9-5, which isn't always going to be the case. It'd be prudent to negotiate overtime rates in the contract.

alainbryden• 13 years ago

I've been billing daily but yeah, in my limited consulting experience hourly is way more stressful and it isn't practical to have to account for your work at that level of granularity. Especially since this is a question specifically about long term work.

That being said, this question is more useful as an hourly rate since some people set their daily/weekly rate different because they work more or less than an 8 hour day / 40 hour week.

hermanhermitage4• 13 years ago

I make a half day the minimal billable unit for support of old projects. This helps control the problem of odd hours popping up here and there.

For companies that send you around the place internationally, I charge full days for international travel time - giving them the choice of sending you Business or Economy (and the corresponding amount of work that would be possible to undertake in flight).

EDIT: Re the last point - If they are paying by the hour/day/week, they are buying my time irrespective of whether I am able to work or not. Eg If they put me on economy, or put me through a day of meetings - they are going to be charged the day.

mrschwabe• 13 years ago

Recently started booking by the month. Same thinking, but decided to pitch the sale per month instead of just one week. And I ask for 50% payment up front as a term to confirm the booking.

Hansi• 13 years ago

Actually I think daily might work out better for most people since it allows for smaller projects and also taking single day holidays etc. when on a long contract. I used to charge £500/day until I went permanent. I only went perm. because of the additional benefits etc was higher than the tax benefits.

samtc• 13 years ago

What's wrong about billing hourly? Sometimes a client ask me to check something that's not working as expected, it could take less than 10mins, I won't do it for free nor bill a week, I'll bill an hour. I'm happy and he is. If it takes longer I go with half-day, full-day increment.

I do document parsing/data grooming so it's a lot of tweaking/fix as the client do the Q&A on the data.

Actually I overbook myself and offload some work to reliable part-time employees (the client is happy to known that not only me but other people are working on the project).

redler• 13 years ago

It may be counterintuitive, but sometimes it's better to bill nothing at all for something like this than to get involved in the minutiae of billing in small increments for specific tasks. This enables you to remain psychologically anchored with that client as a daily or weekly high-value consultant, and doesn't undermine your ability to maintain an optimal billing rate and substantial minimum increment.

nfm3• 13 years ago

I think that's a good scenario for a retainer. You have a long term maintenance relationship set up that typically doesn't require chunks of work at a time.

The overheads to doing a 10 minute fix are massive: they email/call you to make a request, you change work contexts, fix the issue, test and release it, notify them that you're done, keep track of the time you spent working, send an invoice at the end of the month, keep an eye out for payment, thank them for paying etc.

Rounding up to the hour mitigates this, but unless you're doing several maintenance requests per client per week, or are charging very high ($250+) hourly rates, your business is probably losing money by keeping this client on the books.

I think it's better to negotiate a monthly retainer that ensures making tiny updates is worth your while, and then just have a set-and-forget invoice that gets sent automatically every month for that amount. Even better if you can get paid by direct debit.

kfcm• 13 years ago

Was placed in such a situation many years ago by an old boss before I struck out on my own. Never, EVER again. My workload was more than the regular employees, and definitely more than hourly contractors/consultants.

sricola• 13 years ago

100

tptacek7• 13 years ago

(a) This poll tops out way way too low. Put the plus sign on $400.

(b) Based purely on statistical intuition a lot of you people are undercharging.

USNetizen7• 13 years ago

No offense, but my lawyer doesn't even charge me $400/hour. Who is paying that much and for what? I've been in the contracting game for almost a decade now and have rarely, if ever, seen anything like that for programming work.

I'm not disparaging, I'm really just curious. Thanks.

46Bit• 13 years ago

> No offense, but my lawyer doesn't even charge me $400/hour.

Just as with developers, if you're getting $400/hour you're not an ordinary lawyer working with ordinary people. You can get that if you've experience and knowledge in a particular domain.

jacques_chester14• 13 years ago

It wouldn't be for programming work qua programming work. It'll be soft skills, specialist services and consulting related to that work.

Eg, penetration testing. Software project management advice. Audits of IT processes. Requirements gathering workshops. Etc etc.

Also, $400/hr would be high for a general suburban lawyer / solicitor. It's low to mid for a specialist. And suspiciously cheap for a barrister / trial lawyer (multiply by ten).

tptacek7• 13 years ago

(a) Your lawyer makes you less money than a lot of software developers make for a lot for a lot of companies. Your lawyer is also considerably less scarce than a lot of software subspecialty practitioners are.

(b) Your lawyer is also cheap. Sell a company and see what they charge.

(c) I'm not saying it's wrong not to be charging $400/hr; I'm saying, if you want a representative sample of the spectrum of hourly rates consultant, $150 is much too low. There are technical subspecialties --- not business or vertical-focused --- that routinely beat $150.

wglb3• 13 years ago

The last time I used a lawyer that was less than $400/hour it was for some routine real-estate closing.

A routine contract review is $700/hour.

photorized• 13 years ago

My lawyer's standard rate is $950.

patio11• 13 years ago

Who is paying that much and for what?

There's a cottage industry of firms specializing in conversion rate optimization for X. (My consulting practice was in no small bit doing this for B2B software firms. "Conversion optimization for e-commerce", "conversion optimization for insurance industry", etc etc are also common specialties.)

If you were hypothetically a client desiring top-tier talent, and you asked what $400 an hour would buy you, I'd say "One journeyman at a boutique firm... if you can find anybody with availability at that price." I was priced rather north of that for some of my consulting career. There were likely folks priced at a substantial premium to me.

There are substantial programming/design skills implicated in this, obviously. (At some firms there is specialization of labor but at boutique firms typically all consultants do everything required to ship.)

Edit to add: You asked who is buying this sort of thing. In my case, largely B2B software companies with revenues in the $10 to $X0 million range. In broader terms, almost every company which either does direct transactions or collects leads with value over $1 million per year should probably be buying this sort of consulting, and many of them do. What's your guesstimate on how many insurance companies there are which sell direct-to-consumer products in the US, for example? All of them are potential customers are this.

pvnick• 13 years ago

>(a) This poll tops out way way too low. Put the plus sign on $400.

I actually think the $150 point is a sufficient number standard deviations from the the mean to warrant a cutoff point. Sure some developers are making much more, but not enough to be interesting.

tptacek7• 13 years ago

You are wrong, in that HN myopic "what is a typical bill rate" way. I don't find it difficult at all to be blunt and rude in making the point that you're worth more than you think you are. :)

wglb3• 13 years ago

Disagree.

Draw your poll answers on a graph, and you will notice that the top number at 150 is not all that much below the peak.

quantumpotato_• 13 years ago

re (c): Why don't you like hourly charges?

zura• 13 years ago

I'll keep in mind your points if I ever apply to Matasano.

rjknight3• 13 years ago

The op was asking about contracts of 6 months or greater, full-time. $400/hour may be your billing rate but I doubt you'd be billing that to the same customer for 8 hours per day for six months or more. Or am I really wrong about that?

zerr4• 13 years ago

You are absolutely right. I was asking exactly that, because all the previous polls were tailored for non-long-term freelancers/consultants, including what tptacek might thought about.

tptacek7• 13 years ago

You really are wrong about that.

dennisgorelik• 13 years ago

Does Matasano pay full-time developers more than most popular answer here is

"$71 - $90" range is the most popular in this poll. Let's use $80/hour number.

$80/hour * 165 hour = $13200/month which translates into $158,400/year

keithwarren2• 13 years ago

It varies by client and job. 12+ years on my own mostly doing asp.net web stack stuff, SQL Server etc. Mobile with Xamarin quite a bit now.

Rate between 125 and 195 depending on various terms.

Also more interesting, I have been able to convert nearly all my projects to a retainer based - pay ahead - model. Usually in 100 hour blocks.

In Louisville KY and most of my clients are elsewhere. 5-7 years ago the expectation was largely on-site. Now 100% remote save the occasional meeting.

tocomment• 13 years ago

That's really cool. Can you explain the retainer thing a bit more?

keithwarren2• 13 years ago

In 12 years I have had 3 clients go bankrupt on me and as a contractor you are simply an unsecured creditor. Good luck getting anything. I explored invoice factoring but the companies who do that want 3-5% which over the years is quite a lot of money.

I also learned that the net payment terms on my contracts with clients were as meaningful as toilet paper. Getting paid in 30 days was surprising, 60-90 was more the norm.

Ultimately I just started changing the terms with new clients - telling them that we could work on a typical net 30 arrangement at a top tier rate or I would give them a discount to buy hours ahead of time in 100 hour blocks and I would burn down against this. Most heard 'discount' and nothing else mattered. It is difficult to change a client to this model but if you can start a relationship from this perspective things get much easier.

jacques_chester14• 13 years ago

I've done prepaid hours. It's good for cashflow and gives a lot of safety.

And I greatly dislike it. For some reason I don't understand, I am bugged by having to work down hours rather than simply work hours.

chc• 13 years ago

I'm guessing you're the sort of person who doesn't like debt in general. Because that essentially what it is: a debt that you can't immediately repay.

colemorrison• 13 years ago

Keith - off topic - I'm in Louisville KY as well. I'd love to get in contact with you (fellow developer/designer).

powersurge360• 13 years ago

Hey! I am a developer based in Louisville, Ky as well. I don't know what sort of things you develop/design for, but we have this thing called build guild that a lot of us attend each month. It's mostly for web, but there's been a handful of mobile guys there as well.

You just missed it this month (it was this last Tuesday), but maybe you'll consider coming next month? I hope so!

http://louisville.buildguild.org

jacques_chester14• 13 years ago

I did the usual thing and wound up working for a former employer at a much higher rate. It took two months to set up, including getting insurance. I bill hourly because that's what their A/P department requires.

My problem is that their chosen technology is not mainstream. I'm currently at a dangerous local maxima: they pay me very well for what I'm doing, but it's not very transferrable.

mattdanger• 13 years ago

What kind of insurance?

jacques_chester14• 13 years ago

Two kinds:

1. Professional Indemnity

2. Public & Product Liability

As I understand it, one of them gives my clients assurance that they can collect from me if I mess up; the other protects them from lawsuits arising from stuff I wrote. And I'm buggered if I know which is which -- just that I needed both.

DanBC2• 13 years ago

It would be interesting to see the results of the poll run at another time, to capture more people from different countries. Sometimes there are more people from India on HN.

USNetizen7• 13 years ago

I think the purpose of this particular poll is mainly for this one person's edification and pertains to their own situation and location, not the world at-large. However, I understand your suggestion.

geekymartian• 13 years ago

I don't see any location specification. And today that doesn't matter very much due to telecommuting.

vonseel2• 13 years ago

What about the low end of the scale for a multi-skilled full-stack developer proficient in one or more server-side scripting languages and frameworks as well as JavaScript/CSS? What's the minimum pay that would be acceptable?

Edit: I am a 1 year exp developer working for a consultancy focused on obtaining business through a major SAAS. We develop applications on said SAAS platform, and I am paid to integrate and use scripting with the API for this companies clients. I am moving towards an independent, freelance compensation model as I feel I would be underpaid otherwise and have no time to pick up my own clients if I don't.

Is <$40/hr too low? This is what I've been offered.

jacques_chester14• 13 years ago

If you need it, take it. But don't stick with it. Regularly ask to raise your rate (I do so every 6 months).

vonseel2• 13 years ago

Yes, but what would the suggested rate be? I studied finance and worked as an accountant before programming, although at a top school, a different subject.

wwweston• 13 years ago

I think it depends on where you're working and the client. I have certainly turned down work at < $40/hr (particularly in metro LA or Bay Area).

On the other hand, I've also taken work at near $40 and even less some non-metro areas (even with 10+ years of experience at the time), just because I was available and that seemed pretty closely dialed in to both the general market and/or what the client could pay.

In my mind, the biggest thing to work out is:

1) Can you work a reasonable amount of time at the current rate without having to worry about money? Some places you can rent a decent 2 bedroom apartment for less than $700/month, and $30-$40/hr will be fine.

2) Are you sending the right signal about your value? And are they sending signals about how they're likely to treat you?

Once I made the mistake of pricing myself at $45/hr in a middlin'-sized California town. I later learned that other contractors were being paid in the neighborhood of $60-$75. I wasn't terribly dismayed by this fact alone (though it's always disappointing to know you left potential income on the table), but my perception was that my contributions and opinions ended up being less valued than some of the other more highly paid contractors, none of which seemed to be demonstrably more productive or skilled (and some less).

A year or two later I had another contract gig come up in the same area, and the presented an absolute ceiling of $40/hr (if they were perfectly happy with me). I already knew that was on the low side for the area, so I said no. I later found out an acquaintance had done some time there and said it was a very high pressure situation without much respect for either work-life balance or the professional opinions of contractors.

I've heard it said that you make money as much on the business you don't do as the business you pick up. Try to find out as much about market value for your location as possible. If it seems low -- if you're not sure you'll have enough money or that your contributions will be respected -- keep looking, unless you absolutely need a bird in hand.

TheAcen• 13 years ago

Website developer, 16NZD/hour

te_chris• 13 years ago

Woah, dude, you need to push that if you're a contractor. I'm ding a longer term role at the moment an charging $45 but only because they're happy for me to work 3 days and be left alone for the rest while I work on my startup. 16 is crazy! What skill set do you have? You are certainly worth more than that, even in NZ.

samhoggnz• 13 years ago

Wow, I would have to say that seems completely unreasonable, even if you were in the smallest of towns in NZ. I don't know of anyone (inc. students) who charge less than $40/hour for development freelancing.

nathan_f77• 13 years ago

I was in your shoes a few years ago (in Auckland). Great experience if you're still learning, but get out of there as soon as you can. Auckland is terrible unless you're working remotely. There are much better opportunities down in Wellington or Christchurch.

X42• 13 years ago

OK, OK, enough talk.

    Where can I learn everything required to become a domain expert in "finance"?

I have 12y exp. in Webdevelopment and 7y in Systemadministration, with 4y exp. in Design and 1y in Penetration Testing.

And I'm still pretty underpaid, ranking in the low mids.

jacques_chester14• 13 years ago

Textbooks! Good textbooks strike a balance between coverage, depth and compression of reasonably current knowledge. They're not cheap brand new, so consider buying $current_ed-1.

When I want to learn a topic, I literally buy a textbook and plow through it. Sometimes I'll buy a handbook or student's guide or pop. account of the subject to go alongside.

I took an accounting unit at university. One of the smartest decisions I've ever made. I even crack the book from time to time to refresh my memory about something.

Start with a financial accounting book intended for freshmen students in your country, and then management accounting (which is largely universal), and branch from there. A lot of accounting is actually about adjusting for imprecision; meanwhile, finance is about uncertainty.

There's even a software-focused management accounting / finance book: Return on Software by Steve Tockey[1]. It's good.

When you have the basics of this stuff, lots of business chatter becomes much more comprehensible. Your clients will appreciate that you speak their language and understand their pain points (cashflow is the biggest pain in any small business).

[1] http://www.construx.com/Thought_Leadership/Books/Return_on_S...

dmmalam6• 13 years ago

TBH I would recommend not doing any textbook learning. This aplies to most enterprises, not just finance, but your 'domain expertise' comes from work experience in that domain. Hence the obvious chicken/egg problems, so the best way to crack it is to hustle your way into getting ANY contract in that domain. You may have to exaggerate, do 'boring' work, undercut, whatever, but once you got 1 contract under your belt, then you can position yourself for the more desirable ones.

I have to ask if actually want to work in finance, or just want more money. If it's the latter, then all you may need to do is sell yourself better (see my other comment); the rates in finance are not what they used to be, and unless it's a highly specialised skill, pretty much most enterprises pay the same range for similar roles.

If you actually want to work in a deep speciality in finance (which also are the most interesting roles), then get a contact close to that target, and then hustle your way in. In both cases you still need to sell yourself.

Also, if your not in a major financial center, then move.

dmmalam6• 13 years ago

Forgot to mention that the specialised learning will naturally happen on the job, when your speaking daily with the experts. Though a bit of wikipedia learning can't do you wrong just to talk around the subject.

jacques_chester14• 13 years ago

Textbooks are not mutually exclusive with learning from experts.

coldcode• 13 years ago

Boy am I underpaid compared to these numbers as an experienced lead iOS programmer. Sadly I live in a dreadful place to do anything but be glad I have a job.

seivan• 13 years ago

Where do you live?

dmmalam6• 13 years ago

I've quite a bit of finance tech experience in London, and my brother is a SAP recruiter, and the biggest thing I've learned is that most developers undercharge. There are many good devs paid $600/day, being marked up to $1500+ by agencies. Often it may go through several different agencies because one isn't on the preferred list and get marked up at every stage.

If you want to make $200/h+ and your a decent hacker, my advice would be to perfect selling yourself. Like any other sales, learn you anchor it on the value they get not your cost. Use the fear of them not meeting deadlines because they got an 'inferior' cheaper dev. Most recruiting managers are not spending their own money and have budget, but THEY will be the one the line if their project f's up.

The value to them is important. They don't pay you to be a great programmer, they pay you because they have a problem which needs code to fix. This explains why Excel VBA devs with some domain knowledge can charge $1000/day at investment banks for being a 'tactical problem solver' ie quickly hacking up neat spreadsheets for traders/analysts.

The big consultancies entire business is sending out £2000/day 'experts' who are just fresh out of college CS grads. It's absolutely insane how much big enterprise/ government are paying for substandard tech contractors.

If your specialised and that speciality is in vogue, then double up twice. Kdb specialists were being paid $10k a day by several investment banks. Many algo trading devs can charge that high, especially if they have low level (FPGA/GPU) experience.

lsc4• 13 years ago

>If you want to make $200/h+ and your a decent hacker, my advice would be to perfect selling yourself.

so... my understanding? your first line explains why this selling is so hard:

>Often it may go through several different agencies because one isn't on the preferred list and get marked up at every stage.

The thing is? if you are on that 'preferred list' you essentially have a licence to print money, because it's goddamn difficult to get on those lists. I've seen consulting companies that are run out of some guy's house with no assets sell for substantial money because they had somehow gotten on to a preferred vendor list at a large company. As you point out, at that point you get to act as a gatekeeper, and impose significant markup on all labour.

dmmalam6• 13 years ago

Selling is hard because most devs aren't used to it. That's why agents exists; they can often get you a higher rate even after their 20-40% cut.

Most companies have a preferred list of agencies/consultancies, but they are not obliged to use them. If they find the perfect person, they can hire them.

As a career contractor you need a really good agent, or ideally master the skills of a really good agent (ie sales). You need to build and maintain a network of previous managers who know how good you are, and actually call you for work. It takes time, but is by no means impossible for the average HN user.

ruswick• 13 years ago

Front-end developer in Chicago, $20/hour.

dos1• 13 years ago

As an independent contractor, one thing I feel I need to point out is that the hourly rate that the consultant gets, and the hourly rate the company gets charged for the consultant's time, are two VERY different things.

For example, my rate is between 90 and 110 dollars per hour for long term work. I would like to think I could charge more, but this is what the market will bear where I live. HOWEVER - there's almost always a vendor, and sometimes several vendors, between myself and the company. To the company I work for, my hourly rate looks about 10-40 dollars higher depending on the layers I go through. So for me to make 100/hr, it's likely the client is being charged 130/hr.

rorrr2• 13 years ago

Unless your client requires approved vendors only (usually big corps), you can just register your own corporation, and ask your client to rehire you via your corporation at a better rate for both of you. Even at a $15/hr difference it adds up to $30K/year.

EDIT: read your contract with the vendor before you do that.

uniclaude• 13 years ago

Wow.

I shouldn't have clicked on this link. Now, not only I feel underpaid, but I also feel incredibly confused. How will I find people willing to pay me $400 an hour, for more than six months? I mean, mm I really reading about 800k per year? I had no idea I could one day bill that much. I honestly thought this type of annual income was reserved to large corp CEOs, hedge funds people, lawyers, and the like. Turns out I was wrong.

Time to switch from distributed systems and databases to finance and SEO, and cryptography (& crypto sound very interesting!) fast!

SeoxyS2• 13 years ago

I think you misread the poll. The highest bracket is $150+/h, it doesn't even go near $400.

nilkn• 13 years ago

I think he's referring to the discussion in the comments, where some posters are saying that it should top out at $400+, not $150+.

derrida• 13 years ago

I am sure there are plenty of SEO people working for $10/hr.

SeoxyS2• 13 years ago

I did not answer the poll, since I rarely do consulting these days. But when I do (short gigs, usually <50h), I charge $125/h.

zerr4• 13 years ago

The poll is not about consulting, but your regular income expressed in a hourly rate.

notdrunkatall• 13 years ago

Jesus, I'm busting my balls going back to school for engineering to make $40 an hour. Looks like I'm working towards the wrong goal.

monkey26• 13 years ago

I've found myself in a rather unique position contracting/consulting for a single customer. Basically I charge $8333.33/month whether I work or not. Some months there are only a few days, and others I'm quite busy.

While I could probably juggle other things on the side, I take the extra time to spend with my kids. But as they will both be in school next year I'm thinking of upping my game a little.

Basically I specialize, networking monitoring type apps.. When things on the wire needed to be decoded and made sense of. I've always wondered if there is much out there contracting for that (protocol analysis, etc).

djerry• 13 years ago

Running a web&mobile devshop in India, $20/hour

bifrost• 13 years ago

To add some additional scale - CCIE/JNCIE (Network Engineering) contractors often bill out at well over $300/hr.

winter_blue3• 13 years ago

I'm working out of Bangalore as a consultant, charging $29/hour, and making about $5000 per month. I should add, I have a way of avoiding taxes -- so that amount is exactly what I get.

However most people here seem to be working for $5/hour. The vast majority (80%) are terrible at what they do, and speak very poor English. However there's the rare talentd few that still work at $5 or less per hour.

I feel bad for them. Is there any way to help these guys out?

And more importantly, HNers: What are your thoughts on these (rather unlucky) lowly-paid programmers? I kid you not, you can find a bajillion of them in poor countries.

EDIT: been living in the US for the past several years. This is just a temporary sojourn while I get visa issues sorted out.

locusm2• 13 years ago

I love potential clients that have gone down the "offshore everything to India" route, whether it be SEO or development. Their experience usually borders on a complete basket case of a project - usually turn out to be a slam dunk sales wise.

winter_blue3• 13 years ago

> Their experience usually borders on a complete basket case of a project - usually turn out to be a slam dunk sales wise.

Not sure what you mean here. Could you elaborate?

bubbleRefuge• 13 years ago

What is yourself tax avoidance hook? Irish entity?

virtualwhys2• 13 years ago

Shit, that's depressing, I have one main client, and a couple of fill-ins each year, averaging about $30K total, $50K on the high end.

I charge a lump sum per project, never hourly.

So, $30K / (50 weeks per year * 40 hours per week) = $15/hour, wow, that's absurd.

10+ year web developer, front end, back end, I do absolutely everything short of whatever banner/color scheme an artist puts together.

What's worse is that I've been on the JVM for 3 years, developing in Scala, loving it, and making nothing extra in return.

Clients are hosted on my purchased 2X Dell R610 (not cheap) ESXi virtualization servers living in colo, getting crazy performance for $30/month.

Pretty clear I'm horrible at selling myself and/or looking for work. Every client I've had has been via word of mouth (probably something like, hey, this guy is a GREAT deal).

Kudos to those raking it in, impressive to make $150+/hour. Working remotely doing web development I would assume is on the low end of the spectrum re: what one can charge given Wordpress and/or outsourcing options (e.g. India $5/hour).

RyanZAG• 13 years ago

Lump sum per project is good - and the key for you in the short term would be to take projects very similar to ones you have already done. You have hopefully built up a nice library of projects you can draw on, so if you take a new project that has 90% similar workings to a project you've already done, you could cut that 50 weeks down to 5 weeks - and $30k/5weeks isn't bad at all.

virtualwhys2• 13 years ago

Thanks, I've been telling myself that for awhile -- the problem is I don't look for gigs.

Has been over ten years since I worked a 9 to 5 (where yes, I made more $$), all remote freelance work since I departed the cube.

In the end I enjoy coding and creating to the exclusion of all else -- need to work on the business front, marketing, putting myself out there, etc.

porker• 13 years ago

I would always like to see breakdown by country too. I have a theory that rates here int he UK are lower, not just because we have a supposedly lower standard of living but because we don't pay private health insurance.

Be interesting to group by country to get the median for that country, not a silicon valley inflated amount.

mediascreen• 13 years ago

I work as a web developer in Sweden, usually charge around $100/hour and only take assignments longer than 1 month.

That rate lets me take 45 days off to travel and work on my own projects for every month of work I do for someone else. Since the marginal tax rate is around 60% in Sweden it makes more sense to exchange higher income for more free time.

Since I am a lousy negotiator I almost always work as a subcontractor though agencies. They suggest assignments and I choose which ones to accept.

dante_dev• 13 years ago

why is everyone saying that 150+ is too low, if it receives so few votes?

jleader• 13 years ago

There's a couple ways to look at this.

1. If the end bucket has more responses than the next bucket, you're probably cutting it off too soon. In this case, on the low end, the "15 or less" bucket currently has 17 points, the "15-30" bucket has 57, so that's OK. On the high end, "121-150" has 86 points, "150+" has 130, making it the 3rd largest bucket. Normally, you want the highest and lowest buckets to hold only the outliers, and not a significant fraction of the responses.

Another way to look at it is that the median currently lies in the "71-90" bucket, so there are 4 buckets below the median, but only 3 above.

For that matter, the buckets should probably have all been the same width. The lower buckets are 15 to 20 dollars wide. The higher buckets are 30 dollars wide, and as a result contain more responses.

Of course, it's hard to know how the buckets should be distributed until you have some data!

Incidentally, buckets should be non-overlapping, so "15 or less" should have been "less than 15", and "150+" should have been "151+".

bendauphinee• 13 years ago

I'm rating $33USD/hr for a open-ended contract out of the US, working on e-commerce and warehouse systems (PHP/RabbitMQ and LAMP stack).

Where would I find an agent, or does anyone have any agent recommendations, since I see a few comments mentioning them.

Poll: long-term contractors, what is your hourly rate?

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