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Ask HN: Compensation across EU/US and freelancing opportunities

5 points| dionys | 5 years ago

I'm a Python backend engineer with around 5 yrs of freelancing experience. My current gig pays me £20/hr and since I'm living in a low COL European country, that's pretty good. The job might be coming to an end soon and I'm considering my options.

I want to hear your thoughts in terms of compensation. First, is £20/hr on-par with other companies based around London for my level of experience? Does it differ for employees/freelancers? Are there countries/specific industries across the EU which do remote work and pay well? Or should I focus more on the US market and specifically SV companies?

Thank you for your thoughts.

6 comments

rubin55|5 years ago

Insanely low theft-level thievery, crooks involved. ~5 years experience in popular programming language working on serious things for large environments/organizations should start at ~EUR 85, upwards to ~EUR 120ish in my experience.

Note: that's an hourly rate you're paid. A salary and the guarantees you would have as an internal employee are out the door of course. Similar employee salary rate for this role could be ~48000 to ~60000ish annually.

dionys|5 years ago

In my mind I knew the hourly rate was a bit lower than what the company would pay a local person, but I didn't expect it to be that much lower. Most of my colleagues are from Eastern Europe, so I think the company is pretty much outsourcing the work and getting it very cheaply.

So thank you for this info, my next job hunt will be different. I'm hoping that with this pandemic, more companies switched over to remote, so it should be easier to find bigger/better paying opportunities. Do you have any tips on good sources for jobs like these? Should I just use linkedin/job boards?

wikibob|5 years ago

Wildly too low.

London is £650/day minimum.

Do a lot of googling all the information you need on contracting has already been posted. Check out Patio11.

dionys|5 years ago

Thanks! Yea, I think I'll need to research this a bit more myself.

ElectricMind|5 years ago

what "low COL European country" means? Some kind of local slang?

dionys|5 years ago

Sorry, I just meant a low cost of living country.