To put things in perspective, based on recent experience my company has had getting specialists with 15-20 years of technical experience to work on a fixed-term contract (anything from 6 weeks to 6+ months), $250/hr would be considered a steal.
$250/hr is a reasonable ballpark figure. Working as a contractor, providing own benefits. I've worked with a lot of people in this position. He should expect to pull about $300k/yr gross, which is about how a company is going to allocate costs for a full time employee. He needs to be setting aside money for retirement, paying for health insurance, paying all relevant taxes, compensating himself for his own expenditures such as laptop, and paying himself a comparable wage for the industry.
Usually the buyer company paying this rate is paying for immediacy in addition to the expertise and there’s an agency or consulting company taking a spread, as a market maker would, for providing this immediacy.
To me it's bizarre that a contractor wasn't logging their hours in the first place, so it sounds more like fixing their earlier mistake rather than something malicious.
What? My company recently added it to help us measure % of time on bugs vs features, and by section of the code base. This is a very very big assumption to make.
For a contractor, where the employer is not paying half of the employment taxes, it's not too out of line.
And yes, as a DevOps developer a few years back, I was able to charge $120 an hour without an issue. My roughly desired pay per hour, times two to cover the un-billable, yet still required, work to be an independent contractor, and another 2x for taxes and health benefits.
They're correct! But I forgot to mention I'm in Europe not in US. So yeah, I pay around 50% for taxes (biggest of them is social security tax of around 30%).
FWIW I make similar, less pre-tax but more post-tax, though with maybe a third of the experience.
I’ve seen the comments about “just go to FAANG” and it’s one of those odd dualities I see on HN. On some threads, I see comments full of how their interviews are IQ proxies and how FAANG only hires the best or top X% so it’s not viable for most devs. On the other hand there are plenty of comments that just suggest casually walking into a FAANG job. So which is it?
You are paid a pittance (assuming US). I have 4 YOE and earn 1.5x your hourly rate, and I don't live in a coastal state. (disclaimer: I'm only backend; I don't know which way that should sway things).
When I first started I charged $40/hour and met a developer who was working for a new client who told me I was crazy, that I was underpaying myself and that by charging too little I was giving reasons to clients not to take me seriously.
I then started charging 100$/hour and I got better results when looking for clients, ended up being more respected by those same clients and was less overworked so happier overall.
Over the last 10 years, I've steadily increased that rate until it's now 300$/hour. I don't charge that all clients, in some cases I worked for a lot less in exchange for equity (which has proven to be a very good idea) but having a high rate allows me to have the flexibility to offer that with some clients.
I'll go on a tangent to most of the comments I read here. In my opinion it's mostly based on your location. Some would say it shouldn't and I tend to agree, unfortunately it usually is. In the US your rates are (no offence) laughable, and not even taking SV rates into account. For some parts of Europe they would be far too low (e.g. Scandinavia). For some parts of Europe (eastern mostly, e.g. Poland where I work) they would be okay-ish, that's about what I get (senior-ish position) but in a stable situation, not as a contractor. In Belarus or Ukraine I believe this might be quite good money (e.g. Belarus in 2019 I found around $1500 to be the average pay in this industry, as far as I could google this).
tl;dr: it depends.
Nice that you brought up the location. I'm in Europe.
There are two sides of me when I think about the salary and location:
1) you write code and produce stuff and it doesn't matter where you live. you can live anywhere you want, just do the job and get paid. from that POV it seems weird to think that one person gets a lot more money than the other for the same output, the same work
2) another POV in me is that your costs are different depending on where you live. so while the salary's number on paper can be the same for people working from different countries, the "worth" of the money is different.
But mostly I tend to agree with POV number 1 I think.
But I can't. I mean... okay I can. I can just say: "no, I don't track my time for you. this is who I am and I just don't track time."
And then they ask: "why?". What should I say then? :|
Well, there are a few real reasons why I don't want to track my time:
1. I just don't like to track time. I know that I'm good at what I do and can finish tasks very quickly. I guess it's a bit like my ego thing I admit. I somehow hate when people measure my every minute...
2. Some days I work very little. Just a few hours maybe. But I do everything that's asked of me. It's just I can finish the necessary things really quickly. And I don't want them to know that. Because then they say: "you are working only 2h per day and you should be working 8h per day".
The top US bracket of 37% + 13.3% in CA (for example) will get you roughly there. NYC has an even higher tax rate.
Of course, this doesn't take into account that it's a progressive tax, etc., but I regularly take home only about 50-60% of what I make, after benefits.
Why fascinating? :) My reason for not thinking about my hourly price was that I had a very flex schedule. I knew that I got paid very little for my experience, but I finished my tasks really quickly and had a lot of free time.
But when I needed to log my hours, yes – this got me thinking about my hourly price. Because now I just don't do a flat $6k invoice every month, but have to present the hours...
[+] [-] paxys|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flatline|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] carlsborg|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justsomeuser|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] avmich|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dreyfan|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paxys|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aqme28|4 years ago|reply
A previous job made us track our hours so that we could "improve estimates," but mostly it only made people unhappy.
[+] [-] Gravyness|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brianwawok|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ameister14|4 years ago|reply
I think you should double what you're charging. I'd shoot for $100 and not go below $50, probably end up with 70-80.
[+] [-] bluefirebrand|4 years ago|reply
You should definitely be getting more than 37 USD/hour as a contractor. That's wildly low.
[+] [-] falcolas|4 years ago|reply
And yes, as a DevOps developer a few years back, I was able to charge $120 an hour without an issue. My roughly desired pay per hour, times two to cover the un-billable, yet still required, work to be an independent contractor, and another 2x for taxes and health benefits.
[+] [-] misterremote|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] temp329192|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] the_only_law|4 years ago|reply
I’ve seen the comments about “just go to FAANG” and it’s one of those odd dualities I see on HN. On some threads, I see comments full of how their interviews are IQ proxies and how FAANG only hires the best or top X% so it’s not viable for most devs. On the other hand there are plenty of comments that just suggest casually walking into a FAANG job. So which is it?
[+] [-] the_jeremy|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sudhirj|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] valbaca|4 years ago|reply
2011 - Graduated with double degree B.S. in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science from Texas Tech University
Software Engineer @ Raytheon II&S in Garland, TX
2011 $61k/year (all # values are in $k)
2012 $63
Software Development Engineer I (SDE1) @ Amazon in Seattle
2013 $90 salary + $20 signing bonus + $53 stock bonus (vested over the next 4 years)
2014 $117 Total Compensation (TC) = $92 base salary + $13 2nd year bonus + $11 stocks value
Promoted to SDE2
2015 $138 TC = $105 + $33 stocks
2016 $171 TC = $108 + $63 stocks
2017 $195 TC = $110 + $84 stocks
19% bump after switching teams within Amazon and getting a new manager
2018 $251 TC = $131 + $119 stocks
2019 $245 TC = $150 + $96
2020 $255 TC = $157 + $97
Promoted to SDE3 (Senior Software Engineer)
2021 $309 TC = $160 + 149
I'm currently a full-stack engineer, as in I've worked with or currently work with:
- Backend service development: Java, Scala, & C++
- Front-end development: CSS, JavaScript & Typescript
- Server-side rendering: Perl & Java
- App Development in Android (Java & Kotlin) & iOS (Objective-C & Swift)
- Script development in Java, Ruby, Python, & SQL
- System design, design reviews, AWS, etc.
- DevOps (Oncall, CD/CI, Integration testing, Chaos testing, Agile process improvements etc.)
- Interview candidates, mentor new hires & teammates, promotion recommendations & reviews
[+] [-] nicolas_t|4 years ago|reply
I then started charging 100$/hour and I got better results when looking for clients, ended up being more respected by those same clients and was less overworked so happier overall.
Over the last 10 years, I've steadily increased that rate until it's now 300$/hour. I don't charge that all clients, in some cases I worked for a lot less in exchange for equity (which has proven to be a very good idea) but having a high rate allows me to have the flexibility to offer that with some clients.
[+] [-] 4by4by4|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] terminalserver|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] misterremote|4 years ago|reply
But they basically said that they don't have any more money to pay me, so we just need to get by with what we have as a team.
I was like, what should my motivation be in this? It's not my startup...
[+] [-] ahD5zae7|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] misterremote|4 years ago|reply
There are two sides of me when I think about the salary and location:
1) you write code and produce stuff and it doesn't matter where you live. you can live anywhere you want, just do the job and get paid. from that POV it seems weird to think that one person gets a lot more money than the other for the same output, the same work
2) another POV in me is that your costs are different depending on where you live. so while the salary's number on paper can be the same for people working from different countries, the "worth" of the money is different.
But mostly I tend to agree with POV number 1 I think.
[+] [-] misterremote|4 years ago|reply
Would be helpful to hear about your salary and hourly price?
[+] [-] nerbert|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] misterremote|4 years ago|reply
And then they ask: "why?". What should I say then? :|
Well, there are a few real reasons why I don't want to track my time:
1. I just don't like to track time. I know that I'm good at what I do and can finish tasks very quickly. I guess it's a bit like my ego thing I admit. I somehow hate when people measure my every minute...
2. Some days I work very little. Just a few hours maybe. But I do everything that's asked of me. It's just I can finish the necessary things really quickly. And I don't want them to know that. Because then they say: "you are working only 2h per day and you should be working 8h per day".
[+] [-] notyourday|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] misterremote|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eruci|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qeternity|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sidlls|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] borski|4 years ago|reply
Of course, this doesn't take into account that it's a progressive tax, etc., but I regularly take home only about 50-60% of what I make, after benefits.
[+] [-] seattle_spring|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] steve_adams_86|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mensetmanusman|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RobRivera|4 years ago|reply
fascinating
[+] [-] misterremote|4 years ago|reply
But when I needed to log my hours, yes – this got me thinking about my hourly price. Because now I just don't do a flat $6k invoice every month, but have to present the hours...
[+] [-] pm90|4 years ago|reply
Location seems to be a factor for some companies but not for others. It’s best to have multiple offers on hand when deciding.