May I ask where you find clients?
It’s all organic. Salesforce is hot right now. Mostly LinkedIn.
Ask HN: Contractors, what is your hourly rate?
41–50 of 242 posts
Re: Ask HN: Contractors, what is your hourly rate?
#42My rate is 165 USD/hr, but I’ll drop it as low as 135 for a long contract (6 months+). I do custom software for the refrigeration industry (mostly simulations, sensor data logging, a lot of web apps, etc.). But yeah like another poster mentioned, I just raise it every time I work with a new customer. Imo hourly rates are kind of bogus because not every hour is the same and hours can’t determine value. Generally I neg…
How do I get into your work?
Assuming you're looking for contract work in general and not specifically refrigerators, he sets a good example for how specialization gets you consistent work.
Basically, find a niche industry (refrigerators, greenhouses, toy cars, whatever), find an audience, think about what they could use, and acquire the skills to give it to them. I used to be an actuary before I did software, I plan on going back to my old companies and contracting myself because I know they have data analytics needs I can meet.
If you want an excellent book on this topic, read "Soft Skills" by John Sonmez. Excellent book for shaping your career.
Re: Ask HN: Contractors, what is your hourly rate?
#43My wife handles NetSuite and some Salesfoce outside developers as part of her role. She says they pay agencies $180-$230/hr for devs, depending on the person, seniority level, task, etc. I know that many times the developers are in India, or other countries with lower wages, and often they need a lot of oversight. IMO your rates are too low, assuming that you are talking about US-based customers and you are US-based…
I can’t seem to break $130 hr. I have about 7 years of experience.
Re: Ask HN: Contractors, what is your hourly rate?
#44Depends on the customer. The largest rate I used to take was $500/hour (for a 10 hours project, so it haven’t made me a millionaire). The smallest is of course free, but the actual commercial smallest was probably $80/hour (for a long-term project). (I live in Switzerland, which is quite expensive).
It goes without saying that there are times when I don’t have any projects in the pipeline, so I have to spend some time on finding another set of clients. The longest such interval has been about 6 months.
Re: Ask HN: Contractors, what is your hourly rate?
#451/1000 of what I would accept as a yearly salary
This is really interesting. What's the reasoning? It turns out this is _very_ close to my own rate, by chance.
1/2000 is what your actual hourly rate is as salary.
Doubling that to 1/1000 accounts for downtime, unpaid pto, paying for facilities, paying for your own insurance, etc.
Re: Ask HN: Contractors, what is your hourly rate?
#46The 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?
Doesn't sound like good advice. When the market drops suddenly, lots of the people on the top rates won't get any work due to demand. Could you drop them at that point? Possibly but not if your mortgage would become unaffordable.
An alternative is to consider what lifestyle you think is fair for society and work it out from that. We don't all have to perpetuate the worst of capitalism that I should be paid whatever people will pay me.
My dad was a house painter and charged a pretty low rate and had work coming out of his ears which meant more choice of what work he wanted/how far away it was. He could afford to live on it and that was OK for him.
Re: Ask HN: Contractors, what is your hourly rate?
#47[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Contractors, what is your hourly rate?
#48It used to be $225/hr. But I don’t have an hourly rate anymore and I basically never will. You need to understand that as a contractor clients value more than just your time and the work you do. They value flexibility in staffing, getting an outsider’s opinion, their own time, working with a true expert, and making progress on projects which they can show off to their boss. That’s why for all my work I scope project…
> project fees plus monthly retainers
I am new to the contractors game, could you elaborate a bit more on what that means?
Do you charge hourly + some monthly flat rate? Is it for short term contracts?
Re: Ask HN: Contractors, what is your hourly rate?
#49OT, 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.
Re: Ask HN: Contractors, what is your hourly rate?
#50It depends on the job. I prefer charging a flat fee over an hourly rate when possible, but in either case, the rate varies depending on the nature of the job and the company.