Poll: Freelance developers in London, how much do you charge per hour?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6573796

by basicallydan • 13 years ago

100 83 13 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

splatzone• 13 years ago

Will this not vary wildly depending on skill level/niche/region?

basicallydan2• 13 years ago

You're right. I've changed it to London, since that is what I am interested in.

Sorry, non-Londoners!

mgl• 13 years ago

You didn't mention any speciality so the rates will vary depending on the skillset but I would expect the median to be at least around 50 GBP - this is why we started an organized company providing solid software development services at more competitive rates (see codedose.com)

TamDenholm2• 13 years ago

Im an average PHP developer, im good at what i do but im nothing special, my client list is excellent however.

I charge £400 a day and am constantly in demand and turning down work. I am however moving into something totally different business wise and will be retiring from contracting because ive plateaued rate wise using my skills in this way.

basicallydan2• 13 years ago

Thanks for your honesty and frankness. Good luck with your totally different business :)

meowface• 13 years ago

On average, how much work are you requested to do for each project?

Also, do you only develop the backend, or do you have to do the entire frontend as well?

I would love to have a job that's just freelance backend (application logic and database setup) web development.

iamben• 13 years ago

Find a partner :-)

It's much easier when two people can look for work, and on getting the jobs, you know that you can split it based on the bits you like doing.

Especially good if you both have an understanding of backend and frontend.

narcissus• 13 years ago

I might be confused, but doesn't the fact that you're turning down work mean that you haven't yet plateaued rate wise? I mean, if you're turning down work doesn't that mean that you can increase your rate and still be doing the same amount of work?

tobyjsullivan• 13 years ago

It would be intuitive to imagine that the rates companies are willing to pay vs demand would form some continuous curve. i.e., as you increase your rate, the demand would steadily decrease allowing you to find the optimal balance point.

However, my experience, though limited, has offered a very different picture. The vast majority of companies have a number in mind that they consider to be the standard rate for development work in their city. It looks like in London that's about £50/hour. Once you attempt to exceed this rate, regardless of qualification, the number of companies willing to hire you drops significantly to the point where you would have trouble finding steady work.

There are exceptions to this rule on both sides but most freelance developers will face this ceiling until they master the skills to overcome it (which, as you can probably guess, are sales-related, not technical).

logicallee• 13 years ago

you're gonna love learning this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_demand

aidos• 13 years ago

I have a startup now that's consuming all my time but over the last year I've done a few different contracts. I actually charge differently depending on the work I'm doing. Want me to build a python app that scraps and aggregates gambling data feeds? I'll charge more for that than a responsive Wordpress site. I guess it comes down to a rough estimate of the (percieved) value I provide.

sbashyal2• 13 years ago

Shameless plug - visualize this or any other hacker news polls using HN Charts http://hnlike.com/hncharts/chart/?id=6573796

catilac• 13 years ago

Awesome. You should feel no shame.

tomasien5• 13 years ago

I appreciate your desire for humility, but I hate the "shameless plug" thing. Let's all try to avoid it - showing people something you built that, in any imaginable way, could be useful isn't shameful - it's awesome. If the person doesn't understand it, they can ask you - it's the best way to ever get intro'd to anything.

Great stuff!

avalaunch2• 13 years ago

Doesn't shameless plug mean that he is in fact unashamed? Or does it have an implied meaning opposite of the literal meaning? Or perhaps somewhere in between, that he believes he should be ashamed but is not? I've always been a bit confused about this particular idiom.

lucb1e• 13 years ago

I appreciate your desire for humility, but I hate the "shameless plug" thing.

Though I don't hate it myself, I see your point. I think affiliation should always be mentioned though, e.g. by "(full disclosure: I made this)".

hawkharris• 13 years ago

I've seen a few cases of people posting their own projects on HN without a disclaimer and receiving some really rude comments. Saying "disclaimer: I made this" instead of "shameless plug" sounds better IMO, but that doesn't seem to make people respond in a better way.

All of this seems a little funny and counterintuitive. We are a community of people who love coding for fun and developing these types of side projects, yet in comments, where the majority of us are heard, sharing your own relevant projects isn't exactly welcomed.

Yes, there are "ShowHN" posts, which are great, but it's more difficult to be heard through this avenue unless you're lucky enough to make it to the front page.

sbashyal2• 13 years ago

I used shameless plug more as a means to imply I am associated with the project. The phrase probably roots from the general tendency of hackers to feel ashamed of promoting their own work?

weirdcat• 13 years ago

Nice, thanks! I didn't find one on your page, so I made a quick bookmarklet to open the chart:

  javascript:id=document.location.href.match(/id=(\d+)/)[1];document.location='http://hnlike.com/hncharts/chart/?id='+id

Edit: rewritten to open it in a new tab:

  javascript:(function(){var id=document.location.href.match(/id=(\d+)/)[1];url='http://hnlike.com/hncharts/chart/?id='+id;var w=window.open(url, '_blank'); w.focus();})()

lifeisstillgood• 13 years ago

not trying to hijack this thread but how many folks find their work through recruitment agencies as opposed to old Collegue networks, direct sales, inbound marketing etc?

In short, how many freelancers are a business vs a well remunerated job?

edit: apologies for steering you off course - have added a seperate poll - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6574752, of course at the perfect time of day for London !

powertower• 13 years ago

If you have to ask, then you can't afford me.

drewblaisdell2• 13 years ago

Even with the stack from your bio!: Working on server software that uses Apache, MySQL, and PHP on Windows

frenger• 13 years ago

Man that's depressing! I've been working as a freelance iOS & ruby dev in London for a year (experienced iOS dev, 10 moderately complex apps in the store) but really struggle to get above £50/hour whilst still attracting interesting work. Mostly the startups apologetically can't afford more than £40-50/hr.

Those earning £100+, any tips?

bobz• 13 years ago

Don't work for a startup. At least, not as a "developer for hire" to work on whatever they need.

In my experience (albeit in U.S./ USD), those rates come to people with solid programming reputation, IN ADDITION TO a deep domain knowledge in a market with a lot of money.

(knowledge of the finance world like HFT algorithms, marketing skills like conversion optimization, high security clearance, etc.)

enko2• 13 years ago

Mostly the startups apologetically can't afford more than £40-50/hr

Ha! That's what they tell you. To the right kind of startup, time is everything and they will pay good money for someone they think of as an asset who will demonstrably help them execute.

I am guessing here - but it simply sounds like you are coming to the table with the wrong attitude. "Please sir, give me some dev work". Well, under these circumstances you will of course be treated as "just" another outsourced programmer.

Don't be like that. Be a partner. Turn up in a suit. Show your business savvy, list your successes, and matter-of-factly tell them that they are excited about their plans, you can likely help them achieve their execution goals, and your rate is £600/day (or more). Give them your business card and tell them to call you when they're ready to start. You're a pro, you can and will manage yourself, and you will deliver - you're not a teenager looking for a part-time job.

Startups aren't really interested in bargaining over your hourly rate. They want to execute! Frankly, they are bargaining you down only because you allow them to. That obviously means you are selling the wrong thing. Instead, make them understand that you are the guy who is going to take ownership of their mobile app and help them get it out by the end of next month. Now you're not an outsourced programmer, you're a partner consultant who takes ownership and has real commitment. Your rates double. Try it.

And of course, once you make that promise and gain those rates, you gotta deliver!

tlarkworthy• 13 years ago

take my money!

31reasons• 13 years ago

What about the competition from other developers that are willing to work for low rates ?

vidarh• 13 years ago

Why are you going after startups? That's the first problem. There are so many established companies in London. Many with deep pockets.

For example, here's an idea for you: look at minicab companies with their own apps; "everyone" wonders what companies like Hailo and Kabbee will do to their business, yet apart from the huge ones like Addison Lee, every single minicab company specific app I've seen looks like crap and most are horrible to use too. In this case, an app has a clear and direct monetisation for them, and as long as you do contracts right they can to a certain extent be "cookie cutter" if you manage to land multiple clients. If they think you quote too much, you focus on how few extra bookings it will take to earn it back - and you can even offer to take part of the payment based on performance (but then make sure to make that high enough that you are likely to make more, because you are taking risk).

Secondly, if you are going after startups, seek out networking opportunities for startups that are actively going after investment. Once a startup has closed a major financing round, there's a ton of pressure on to deliver and deliver quickly, and people understand that short, urgent jobs will cost a lot more. Many of them will also be a lot more willing to spend money on polishing things up right before they go out to seek investment - everyone wants to make a great impression.

If all else fails, there's the risky path of fixed price contracts. If you work quickly, and can estimate your effort well, price it out based on what you want to make per hour with a substantial buffer for risk, and give a delivery date consistent with a lower per hour price. Just be sure that exactly what you are offering is nailed down in excruciating detail, and that you know how much time you are actually spending on things - developers are notorious at under-estimating own effort.

cs02rm02• 13 years ago

Learn Java, work for a big company. Give it 5 years and then go and do your own ruby startup.

codeoclock4• 13 years ago

£20. I'm a student, and I work part time, remotely, for a company in SF. It's good experience, which is added value, but I still think it's a bit low.

gedrap• 13 years ago

Same situation here, just I'm in Manchester now.

craigedmunds• 13 years ago

Good on you. Getting experience is so important; I see too many compsci grads with little experience and little actual programming exposure on their degrees that they're almost unemployable.

dreen3• 13 years ago

I would kill to earn £20/hr when I was a student in London (finished last year, now at a full time job)

codeoclock4• 13 years ago

Yeah, it's great to be earning money, but I put a lot of work into it, and I feel like there's a huge opportunity cost. I don't have time to socialise. I don't mean "oh, I can't go to the SU pub every night", I mean I haven't had any time for any recreational activity in the past 7 weeks, apart from one hackathon. I don't have time to go to the gym, I barely have the opportunity to go shopping (which has led to me putting on weight because of takeaway meals and fast food).

So yeah, it is great to have an income as a student, particularly in London. I wouldn't be able to pay my rent otherwise, the student loan is totally insufficient for even rent alone, let alone other expenses on top of that. But there is a major downside as well.

codeoclock4• 13 years ago

I should contextualise why I feel this is a bit low - I met a 16yo iOS developer last week who was telling me how he had to turn down a £50,000 3 month contract because he wanted to focus on his A Levels.

petethepig• 13 years ago

I am wondering, where do you find clients?

tomasien5• 13 years ago

Shhhh nobody has mentioned this won't be statistically significant, nobody jinx it!

singingfish2• 13 years ago

actually it's will be statistically significant (you can already see the bimodal distribution). The problem is with sampling bias, and the fact that the data is a self report measure (unknown reliability). Could adjust using recruiter supplied stats in an attempt to correct the self report. The self selection however is insurmountable. Personally I find these things interesting because I assume the data is at least somewhat reliable for the sample that choose to reply to the poll.

Choronzon• 13 years ago

Looks about right to me. Thing is with stats you want to tell a story and ideally create testable hypothesis based on it.It might be a wrong story but mouthing off "Correlation does not imply causation or the plural of anecdote is not data"(statistical tourettes anyone?) adds no useful insights and qualifies as not even wrong(adds no new information and is intrinsically untestable) . We see price stickiness around the £50 mark with some very high paying jobs for some clients with deep pockets who aren't so price sensitive (London finance most probably),even if we assume half of the +100 people are lying it still represents an interesting view of the market.

Im in the 50 an hour band myself,would be interested in scaling up a bit.

eriksank• 13 years ago

At least 50% of my gigs come from London but I don't live in London. I have to give a discount for the fact that I will not be visiting any time soon. But then again, if someone who does live in London feels like partnering up, I am definitely willing to hand over half of the physical-presence premium to that person. You can seriously charge extra for putting up a good dog-and-pony-show ...

shasta• 13 years ago

Polls should always include a honeypot for trolls. Especially ones that only seek response from a small percentage of the community.

noelwelsh4• 13 years ago

Rates are mostly meaningless without knowing sector and technology. There are vast differences in what, say, education and finance can pay. There are vast differences between what a PHP developer and a Scala developer can expect.

For context, here are some of my experiences:

- Finance jobs as a long-term contractor seem to start at about £600 per day for Java developers, with £700pd being more typical. For Scala you can probably get a £50-100 more. For short term work or a good candidate you can easily get >£800.

- Ruby / PHP and other commoditised work of the like seems to top out at around £400-500 pd. iOS might get you a bit higher, but I think the shine is coming off app development.

As always, the key to a high rate is differentiating your offering. Update: This doesn't have to be by offering rarer skills, though this is an easy to a higher rate. Being better known in your community, by writing blog posts, speaking at conferences, and so on, will allow you to command a higher rate as well.

sdmn2• 13 years ago

Do you have any advice on how a Java developer without public profile could try to get 700pd in the City?

noelwelsh4• 13 years ago

Apply for finance jobs. If you can't get them, make yourself more attractive in future. How to do this? Some suggestions:

- Do you interview well? If not, improve this. Take interviews to practice.

- Banks prefer people with experience in finance. If you don't have any, join a consultancy or a company like LMAX that can get you that experience and which are more open to outsiders.

- Go to meetups. Make connections.

- Learn Scala.

benjaminwootton• 13 years ago

This thread appears to be mixing up 'contracting' and 'freelancing'.

Contracting - generally on site, fixed term contract, paid by the day, working alongside the team.

Freelancing - generally off site, project based, paid by the hour, working more autonomously.

You do find exceptions such as a work from home contract or a freelancer who bills by the day, but this distinction definetly hold true in the mind of companies and agencies.

Making the good rates in the poll is relatively easy as a contractor, but fiendishly difficult as a freelancer.

I suspect freelancing is more appealing to the HN crowd for the autonomy and location independence. I know I would swap £100+ hr of what I call 'contracting' for a consistent stream of £50 hr 'freelancing' in a heartbeat, but the work is difficult to source reliably.

(As an aside, I'm glad to see we have the same rate inflation on the London polls. At the time of writing approx 30% of respondents are on £100 + hr. There's no way the London market supports that at volume.)

cs02rm02• 13 years ago

There's only 27 people saying that. I only know the Java market and mostly outside of London at that, but £750/day for a reasonable Java developer doesn't seem outrageous in London to me.

noelwelsh4• 13 years ago

I probably know at least 27 people earning that or more as contractors in the City.

patio11• 13 years ago

There's no way the London market supports that at volume.

It's sort of a dangerous thing to assume that one's view of the market is the totality of it. Not to say that you're wrong, because I have never sold a gig in London, but I have heard the same about geographies/specialities with which I'm intimately familiar, and usually the claim comes from someone who has sort of fallen into a particular style of customer/acquisition channel/work and is not aware that large parts of the market exist in such a way that they'd never hear of them.

For example, rather frequently on HN we'll have people quote the going rate on Craiglist or RentACodeMonkey.com quoted as the maximum available for (without loss of generality) Rails programmers in Chicago, despite it being at an 80%+ discount to rates routinely charged by people whose clients wouldn't be caught dead on Craigslist.

MattBearman2• 13 years ago

Difficult to say, as I work from home in Devon (South West England, out in the sticks), and charge by a hybrid value/daily/hourly rate depending on the client and the job, but the last job I did for a London company worked out at about £100 / hour.

My standard hourly is actually a fair bit lower than that, but then that's on-going projects and/or not for clients in London (so I voted £100+)

Edit: And of course to UK companies that's excluding VAT - If you're a UK freelancer and you're not VAT registered, do it now.

A lot of people think you have to turn over £79k / year before you can be VAT registered, but that's not true, £79k / year is when you have to become VAT registered. My first ever business had a turnover of exactly £0.00 when I VAT registered it.

If you're selling to other businesses (and not the general public) it's always better to be VAT registered :)

deutronium• 13 years ago

What's the advantage of being VAT registered out of curiosity?

MattBearman2• 13 years ago

You claim the VAT back on all your business purchases - essentially a 20% discount :)

martin-adams2• 13 years ago

Make sure that all your clients are VAT registered business, otherwise you work out 20% more expensive.

TamDenholm2• 13 years ago

If you register for vat and go on the flat rate scheme you charge 20% and only have to pay 14.5% to the vat man. If you charge £50 an hour, you get an extra £110 a week for simply being registered. Also, it makes you look like youre big enough that you need to be vat regged.

Also you get an extra 1% in your first year.

cjg• 13 years ago

Shame you clipped the distribution at the top with your ranges. More experienced developers, with financial markets expertise, who are reasonably good at negotiation are making £100+ an hour. More if they have some specialist technical skill (which might only be knowledge of some third party software).

Maximal• 13 years ago

What type of freelancer, because the rates can differ by a large margin for different roles? Web designer, technical writer, developer, architect, SAP, Oracle DBA, etc.

I also find that generally, in Europe, today's rates are daily. With the assumption that the working hours are at a least the same as those of an employee; but, often expected to be one or two hours more (banks, I'm looking at you).

ssaunier_• 13 years ago

I did the same study for French ruby on rails developer on Monday. Here is my report (in french): http://sebastien.saunier.me/blog/2013/10/17/realite-financie...

jwblackwell• 13 years ago

I'd be interested to hear who's getting genuine "freelance" jobs, as in remote, charging per hour and where you're getting them from. I I think a lot of these votes are from contract devs working on site.

ChristopherMoss• 13 years ago

If you are looking for someone to work with collaboratively and are a Symfony 2 / PHP dev, I would be really interested in hearing from you.

For reference I am a php contractor specialising in Symfony 2, working predominantly remotely (where possible, seeing my family is very important to me!) and am based in the NW of the UK.

You can find me at mossco.co.uk, or christopherdmoss at googles mail. Thanks :)

Poll: Freelance developers in London, how much do you charge per hour?

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