Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?

#141

Post by joshmanders » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 4:51 PM UTC

osigurdson wrote: post #77

rtlfe wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried asking for more? If you're actually good at everything you say, you could be making the same amount of cash plus benefits at a FANG, so I'd expect the contracting rate to be much higher.

OP didn’t say they were good at competitive programming.

Less that and more that I don't play the FANG game of being under pressure to whiteboard the process of unlinking a doubly linked list or show bubblesort algorithm stuff for a position where all I am doing is stringing some divs together in a React codebase.

I mean if you enjoy that stuff by all means do it, but I prefer to build real stuff that make impact not practice showmanship.

Re: Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?

#142

Post by nevi-me » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 4:54 PM UTC

joshmn wrote: post #131

hakanderyal wrote: post #124

I build web apps from start to finish by myself (architecture, design, development, database, servers, marketing page etc.). I bill $500/day, but do project based billing, with 50% payment up-front, 25% on first preview, and 25% on delivery. For improvements and new features on existing projects, I estimate the avg. monthly work and we do monthly retainer agreements. I usually work with seed stage startups (usually r…

When you come back around to missing client work, remember that some guy on HN begged you to raise your rate. Doesn't matter where you are located. value == value; value != location.

Sometimes you're limited to local work. I contracted for a while, a few times when I got US based gigs, they'd raise my rate to what's acceptable for them, which was often way more than my local rate.

If I tried to use that rate locally, I'd likely not get much work.

A good analogy was from a real estate agent recently. She had 2 apartments of same size in a complex, one had been vacant for 2 months, and one had just become available.

She said that the owner of the vacant one wasn't willing to lower their rent, and every month that the apartment remains vacant is an 8% loss to their short-term annual rental.

The one that had become recently avaiable got a tenant in days, because even though it's better, its owner offered the same as the first vacant one.

So I'd often consider time to next gig and take shorter term jobs at low rates so I'm not idle.

Re: Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?

#143

Post by holler » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 4:57 PM UTC

joshmanders wrote: post #5

I specialize in the ability to competently and fully build from the ground up your whole business from design, development, system administration, deployments, testing, seo and other stuff as a single person. My rate is $10,000/week pre-paid monthly.

What's your go-to tech stack? Do you find a lot of your work is crud apps?

Re: Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?

#144

Post by acjacobson » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 4:57 PM UTC

ehnto wrote: post #115

aantix wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to get out of Europe. For whatever reason, Europeans just don’t seem to value software engineering and it shows. Great engineers. Zero money to show for it.

Venture Capital and FANG pay obscene money because their business models can afford to, they just happen to be powered by software. The actual work of software development isn't somehow worth more to society than your average white collar job, at least in my opinion. It's just another job, and it would be better for the world if the pay came down rather than everywhere get inflated, so that software could thrive in o…

Their business models can afford to pay a lot because these companies generate that much cash. They drive that much cash because software can be highly leveraged (whereas plumbing cannot). Having salaries come down to means shifting where the profits are distributed and allowing the company owners and investors to capture more in comparison to the employees. I don't see how this is better?

Re: Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?

#145

Post by sarchertech » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 4:58 PM UTC

jononomo wrote: post #57

hollywood_court wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should probably charge more. Automobile repairs techs in Alabama charge more than that. But I’d like to know where you find work because I haven’t found many clients in the SE that wish to spend money.

Repairing an automobile is a more difficult and valuable skill set, however.

I’m not going to debate the difficulty but looking at the median and mean salary for both, it’s certainly not more valuable in a monetary sense.

Re: Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?

#146

Post by birdyrooster » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 4:59 PM UTC

ehnto wrote: post #115

aantix wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to get out of Europe. For whatever reason, Europeans just don’t seem to value software engineering and it shows. Great engineers. Zero money to show for it.

Venture Capital and FANG pay obscene money because their business models can afford to, they just happen to be powered by software. The actual work of software development isn't somehow worth more to society than your average white collar job, at least in my opinion. It's just another job, and it would be better for the world if the pay came down rather than everywhere get inflated, so that software could thrive in o…

In order for pay to come down it must be inflated first so that people are motivated to saturate the open positions.

Re: Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?

#147

Post by joshmanders » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 5:00 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #79

rtlfe wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried asking for more? If you're actually good at everything you say, you could be making the same amount of cash plus benefits at a FANG, so I'd expect the contracting rate to be much higher.

Why's that? Large companies generally don't need single generalists; what they mostly have is teams of specialists, people who can get much deeper into a subject than a generalist can. Is there some role at a FAANG where generalists would thrive?

> Is there some role at a FAANG where generalists would thrive?

No, generalists typically get pigeonholed into being specialists, and typically not the field they were the strongest.

For example I'm stronger in backend/devops than frontend, but because I do most of my work in Node.js, more specifically Next.js I'm always billed as a frontend dev, so typical companies just want me to do one thing.

Contracts like generalization because I cover more surface area with relatively smaller costs than paying $150k+ for each role I can do.

Re: Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?

#148

Post by joshmanders » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 5:02 PM UTC

TruthWillHurt wrote: post #133

joshmanders wrote: post #5

I specialize in the ability to competently and fully build from the ground up your whole business from design, development, system administration, deployments, testing, seo and other stuff as a single person. My rate is $10,000/week pre-paid monthly.

I'm assuming you do Frontend? What else? What frameworks would you suggest? I feel I could definitely build a project myself, but I find FE to be very time consuming.

I do it all. Have for 25 years. Frontend is actually my weakest skillset (but I'm still awesome at it)

Re: Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?

#149

Post by joshmanders » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 5:02 PM UTC

moneywoes wrote: post #29

joshmanders wrote: post #5

I specialize in the ability to competently and fully build from the ground up your whole business from design, development, system administration, deployments, testing, seo and other stuff as a single person. My rate is $10,000/week pre-paid monthly.

How did you get your first client

I offered to build someone a website for $100 in 2001.

Re: Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?

#150

Post by joshmanders » Sat, Sep 03, 2022, 5:03 PM UTC

kishinmanglani wrote: post #7

joshmanders wrote: post #5

I specialize in the ability to competently and fully build from the ground up your whole business from design, development, system administration, deployments, testing, seo and other stuff as a single person. My rate is $10,000/week pre-paid monthly.

How do you usually find clients?

100% word of mouth and when I was looking, the "Freelancers to be hired" monthly threads here have brought in a ton of money for me too.