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Ask HN: Contractors, what is your hourly rate?

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Re: Ask HN: Contractors, what is your hourly rate?

#111

Post by Escapado »

I am located in germany, work as a fullstack dev with frontend focus (react/vue). I have about 6 years of total dev experience[1].

For full time projects I charge 90-100€/h (+19% VAT) and I exclusively take on remote projects. When I started out at as a freelancer at the beginning of 2020 my rate was 80€/h.

If I was approached with short term projects(as in less than 160h of work) I would charge significantly more but that hasn't happened yet, usually I get booked 3-12 months.

As it turns out my yearly net income is significantly higher than that of my employed peers in every single project I have worked so far since the market is so starved for devs and I never had any downtime between projects. Sometimes I wonder if I could ask for even more given the market situation but I also feel somewhat overpaid tbh.

[1] I learned programming on the side during my bachelor's in physics. During my master's I started working for a consultancy at night doing webdev while researching quantum computing and machine learning for my master's thesis. After I got a job as a full stack engineer after I finished my degree but I quit that job after about a year to go freelance.

Re: Ask HN: Contractors, what is your hourly rate?

#112

Post by Willamin »

biztos wrote: post #88
tptacek wrote: post #49

OT, but important: don't bill hourly. Do a day rate. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4103417 You can benchmark day rates by your hourly rate, if that's easier for you to think or talk about. Your benchmark hourly rate should probably start at 150%-200% of your salary (backed out to hourly). It can reasonably go much higher. It can't reasonably go much lower.

> your salary (backed out to hourly) Is there a standard rule of thumb for "hours worked in a year" at companies? Off the top of my head I come up with ~ 1700 for my last salaried job: 365 - 104 (weekends) - 32 (vacation) - 10 (holidays) - 5 (sick) = 214 days or 1712 hours @8/d. Also I think for "your salary" you should use your total compensation but maybe that's what you meant.

The rule of thumb estimation number I've always heard for calculating a salaried job's hourly rate is 2080:

365 / 7 ≈ 52 (weeks) * 5 (work days per week) * 8 (hours per day) = 2080 hours per year

Given that very estimated number, vacation, holidays, and sick time all count as extra benefit.

One convenient aspect of this number is that if you go ahead and factor in 2 weeks of PTO/holidays/sick days, then the number of hours actually worked drops to 2000. That makes the mental math tremendously simple, albeit not 100% accurate: 100k salary / 2k ≈ 50 per hour

Re: Ask HN: Contractors, what is your hourly rate?

#113

Post by koolba »

goethes_kind wrote: post #15
simonw wrote: post #7

The best advice I ever got about freelancing was to increase my rate for every job and keep on doing that until people refused to hire me. How else can you figure out what you're worth?

Would that not end up hurting your reputation after a while?

A blind man was shopping for carpets. Another shopper noticed him and asked:

"How do you discern quality?"

"I look at the price."

Re: Ask HN: Contractors, what is your hourly rate?

#114

Post by Darmody »

tpxl wrote: post #27

I do backend Java development as a mid-senior engineer (~10 years of experience). I have a good grasp of SQL, git, Spring, ... I do 35€/hr in central/southern Europe, working for a local fintech company (2-3x what I'd get as wage). I plan on rising my rates later this year. I was in talks with a US company, and they balked when I requested 42$/hr as that was what they paid their employees from the US.

My uncle who's a mechanic, bills 35/40€/h and it's not expensive. If you go to any retail mechanic the rate won't be lower than 70€/h.

Re: Ask HN: Contractors, what is your hourly rate?

#115

Post by silent_cal »

Escapado wrote: post #111

I am located in germany, work as a fullstack dev with frontend focus (react/vue). I have about 6 years of total dev experience[1]. For full time projects I charge 90-100€/h (+19% VAT) and I exclusively take on remote projects. When I started out at as a freelancer at the beginning of 2020 my rate was 80€/h. If I was approached with short term projects(as in less than 160h of work) I would charge significantly more bu…

Where did you go to find your first freelancing gigs?

Re: Ask HN: Contractors, what is your hourly rate?

#116

Post by czbond »

tagersenim wrote: post #102
edent wrote: post #68

I have three rates. You are a charity, or other worthy cause, or someone I really want to work with - 50% - 100% discount. You are a normal client - 100%. You are either an arsehole or have asked for something very last minute - 150%-200% depending on the mood I'm in. The last one, colloquially known as the fuck-off rate, is probably the best bit of contracting advice I ever got from a colleague. He hated the gig we…

Oh, to be able to charge by the hour would be such bliss as a lawyer. We charge by 0,1 hours: every 6 minutes need to be accounted for.

I've always thought that was weird. What is the underlying reason do you think? I get 6 minute phone calls, but to then pivot to another 6 minute+ task is too granular

Re: Ask HN: Contractors, what is your hourly rate?

#117

Post by Nick87633 »

k__ wrote: post #58
goethes_kind wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would that not end up hurting your reputation after a while?

It filters clients quite good. When I started freelancing, I only took multi month projects that paid thousands of dollars. I never had to discuss money with any of these clients. A friend of mine focused on per hour contracts, in the hopes they would be ongoing. His clients constantly haggled.

Does that mean you bid a fixed price?

Re: Ask HN: Contractors, what is your hourly rate?

#120

Post by anovikov »

I am in Cyprus, run a small agency, and charge $130 an hour but willing to go down to $100 for long term contracts. Also have one legacy $90 an hour project for which rate increase is simply not possible, but i won't take any new client at that rate. We specialise in video.
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