Is 20$/hr enough for frontender in LA?

[forgez]

Hey, working in a broad types of front-end development jobs, I am hearing a much words like starting rate is 25$/hr netto, less is for newbies who don't know what is OOP is and can only make GOTO spagetti code. Others are saying that 20$/hr is normal rate worldwide for any developer. Calculating wage with 20$/hr it is 3200 USD per month on hands which is good for most cities, maybe not for SF / LA due to rent costs. So which rate is fair for you %username%?

[seikatsu]

Median LA developer salaries on full time basis (https://teleport.org/cities/los-angeles/salaries/) seem to be 66k for web developer (for the lack of FE in taxonomy) and 78.7k for software engineers in general.

Without knowing your personal tax situation it is hard to deduct your net hourly income from this - so probably more useful to discuss and compare gross (pre-personal-tax) billing rates when trying to understand the market?

Two more LA cost & quality of life, as well as salary comparison research links for you: * https://teleport.org/cities/los-angeles/ * https://teleport.org/salaries

[jt2190]

You can find lots of resources on typical salaries online. [1]

A better question to ask: What value do I bring to a company when I do work for them? I refer you to the comments of HN's resident expert on value: patio11. [2] Patrick has written about this very topic on his blog. [3]

[1] salary.com, for example.

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=patio11

[3] http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/09/21/ramit-sethi-and-patrick-...

[Also, it's good form to prefix this subject with "Ask HN:"]

[jermaustin1]

As a full stack developer in NYC, I wont entertain a job for less than $130k/yr + bonus. I have bills and a family to support. Before I left Houston (3 years ago), the going rate was $35-40/hr for contract work. My first job out of Highschool was $18/hr in a mom and pop consultancy, but that was 11 years ago now. I can't imagine working for hourly for $20/hr and having bills that I have to pay.

[1_player]

Definitely too low for US or anywhere in the western world. It depends how much experience do you have, and if you're talking about full time or consulting positions.

I'm based in London, so prices here are a little different (and lower), but I wouldn't consider anything less than $40/h.

For reference, I have 10 years experience and the lowest I can go, as a freelancer, is $60/h -- full stack engineer.

[thefastlane]

no.

not sure about contractor rates, but in major centres (NYC and SF), a starting salary for top tech firms is very approximately $100k/yr (within a standard deviation). now, even a front-end dev would be expected to know algorithms, big-o notation, (maybe OOP as well), etc, etc, to get through the interview process at a top firm and secure such as a salary, but it gives us a reference point.

so, just using that, extrapolate from there depending on:

1) firm you work for (not everyone works at Google [or wants to] ...) -- if you go work for a non-profit, maybe that's more like 70k or 80k, or whatever.

2) where you live -- but salary does not go up/down linearly with cost-of-living, so don't shave off too much just because the cost of living is lower somewhere else.

[forgez]

Thanks a lot for your comments guys, it is really awesome information. I hope you are talking about amount after tax aka clear money?