[josephmosby]

I've seen $600/hour rates for individual engineering work on mission-critical systems or high-revenue systems.

There are two massive factors impacting rates: sophistication of the buyer, and sophistication of the contractor.

I used to make $200/hour doing Drupal development for really small outfits: tiny real estate agents, restaurants, etc. My budget rarely went over $4000 and the sites were templated enough that 20 hours was honestly doable. They didn't want much and therefore wouldn't pay much because the return on investment for a website honestly isn't much for some of those places. Restaurants derive more foot traffic off Google Reviews than their own websites.

If you're dealing with a mission-critical system that costs you $100,000 per hour that it's down, then paying $1,000 per hour for someone to do it right is a no-brainer. However, that also means that the consultant has to inspire the confidence that they can get it under control. BCG/Bain/McKinsey/Deloitte/etc are masters at inspiring that confidence which is why their rates are so high.