Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: How much are you earning as a freelance app developer?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 121 posts

Re: Ask HN: How much are you earning as a freelance app developer?

#81

Post by simon83 »

dmilicic wrote: post #79
simon83 wrote: post #78

I'm not freelancing, but I'd love to hear advice from other freelancers. I have 11 years working experience as a full stack web developer and I think I'm pretty good at it by now. I'm currently employed and underpaid, and I live in Germany. I have no idea how I'd go about freelancing. What would be your advice to get me started?

I actually wrote a comment which may help you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14791665

Thanks a lot!

I saw toptal mentioned in another comment, and their "Why 3%" page is quite unnerving. I don't work at Wharton, MIT, CERN, or Google, and I'm not a Top 100 Django or Rails contributor. Or is this just the 3% of the 3%, and the remaining 97% are more mortal?

Re: Ask HN: How much are you earning as a freelance app developer?

#82

Post by amingilani »

simon83 wrote: post #74
amingilani wrote: post #32

I don't want to share my exact rate, but I easily make a month what a Silicon Valley engineer at a seed startup can.. and since I live in a developing country it's an order of magnitude more than most people my age. If you're a brilliant engineer and are looking to work for a freelance app developer, I recommend Toptal[1]. While I now work at Toptal, I first joined the company through their freelance network, got a p…

From their website[1]: The Top 3% "Everyone at Toptal has a proven track record and elite industry experience. There are Toptalers from Wharton, MIT, CERN, and Google, as well as Django committers, Top 100 Rails contributors, leading global designers and art directors, professors, founders and more." Holy crap man I'm not even going to bother, I'm none of that. Impostor syndrome intesifies [1] https://www.toptal.com/…

Don't let that get to you, they have an intense screening process but after you pass it, that's just it.

I'm 25, I have a degree in Economics and Finance, and no formal computer education. All I have is my self-taught experience.

The first time I tried, for all my confidence, I flunked it really bad, which came as a shock to me. I mean, I knew I was good. The recruiter gave me a timeout and said I could reapply later. The next time I'd studied my butt off, solved advanced level coding exercises and reached 4 Kyu on codewars.com

At that point, I breezed through the exercises, and when I was asked to build a live project, I had fun learning and creating my first React web app.. I'd been meaning to learn React, but never had time before.

Of the dozens (dozens!) of people I've referred to Toptal none have passed the screening process. However, I strongly believe it's because they didn't push through it. I know the screening process itself can be beat if you take the time to improve yourself.

Besides, on the other side of the screening process is the greatest community of Ninja developers I've ever seen in my life! Anything I have trouble with, I can discuss on our community chat. I've never been part of a community like this before. And the clients are absolutely brilliant, since Toptal screens clients too!

Re: Ask HN: How much are you earning as a freelance app developer?

#83

Post by srednalfden »

bintreethrow wrote: post #28

I have 3 API services, 2 desktop apps & 3 iOS+Android apps that I have developed over the course of 7 years after my CS engineering degree in a third world country, pretty much like the @throwawaytree here. My earnings are at average rounded converted to 6000 USD/month less server/misc. costs. I live with my parents(no rent) in a village in this state in India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerala . I am 29. I think I…

What technology did you build them all with?

Re: Ask HN: How much are you earning as a freelance app developer?

#84

Post by simon83 »

amingilani wrote: post #82
simon83 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From their website[1]: The Top 3% "Everyone at Toptal has a proven track record and elite industry experience. There are Toptalers from Wharton, MIT, CERN, and Google, as well as Django committers, Top 100 Rails contributors, leading global designers and art directors, professors, founders and more." Holy crap man I'm not even going to bother, I'm none of that. Impostor syndrome intesifies [1] https://www.toptal.com/…

Don't let that get to you, they have an intense screening process but after you pass it, that's just it. I'm 25, I have a degree in Economics and Finance, and no formal computer education. All I have is my self-taught experience. The first time I tried, for all my confidence, I flunked it really bad, which came as a shock to me. I mean, I knew I was good. The recruiter gave me a timeout and said I could reapply later…

Thanks a lot for sharing your experience. You are working purely remote, I assume? I'd be curious to see how I'd fare in their screening process.

Can you tell me roughly how many hours in total the screening process takes? (excluding the time you took to study) And how many hours did you spend on the live project? Was it an actual project, or just a dummy one?

I'm asking because I'm working full time, and the whole screening process sounds very time intensive. Not sure if all of this could be done after work hours, or if I'd have to take a couple of days of vacation.

Re: Ask HN: How much are you earning as a freelance app developer?

#85

Post by 10dpd »

mthomasb wrote: post #9

Hey all, Matt from Bonsai (YC W16) here. We provide contracts, proposals, invoices, and other tools to freelancers, mostly developers and designers. We used our anonymized data to break out what freelancers earn with different experience levels, skill sets, locations, etc: https://www.hellobonsai.com/rates

Hey Matt, love the idea but your rates for England are completely wrong.

For an iOS developer in England with 3-5 years experience, the mode is £120-£140 per hour?

Please show me one single contract advertised in England where the daily rate is £1k.

Re: Ask HN: How much are you earning as a freelance app developer?

#86

Post by trub »

throwawaytree wrote: post #11

I make $7 US dollars an hour designing and developing apps as a full-time employee. I’m paying off a new car, pay rent, and live quite a good life compared to others in my country (third-world country). Compared to other countries salaries, mine is awful. Compared to local salaries, it’s actually about 4x the minimum wage. The cost of living here is quite low (I pay 150$ per month for a single bedroom with bathroom).…

Anyway I could connect with you about app development? I can offer over 7$/hr

Re: Ask HN: How much are you earning as a freelance app developer?

#87

Post by throwawaycash »

neuronsguy wrote: post #71
throwawaycash wrote: post #27

I make about 0-300k/year fixing apps that others either weren't able to finish or where they architected themselves into scaling issues. Aside from that, I am a part time programming consultant who makes about 80k a year (I have a chronic illness so I spend a lot of time not working, and it's helpful for me to work in intense bursts with rests in between. It's difficult for me to have normal full time employment in t…

This sounds cool. Two questions: 1. Without giving away secrets, how do you find such clients? 2. You must have some great stories. Would you care to share any?

1. I found my first few clients literally through happenstance -- people were describing problems they were having with enough clarity that my 20 years of dev experience made it fairly clear that the problems were recoverable. Now, I mostly find customers through referrals and by attending networking events and talking to people who sound like they have both money and problems.

2. My customers have the expectation of confidentiality. I will make these generalizable statements though: understanding ORMs and understanding SQL are related but not identical; CAP is hard; picking keys is hard; confounding your data model and your interface is painful for users; sharding is hard; pick UX libraries based on how consistent they are not on how new they are; developers that are producing 10x the code may not be producing 10x the value; if week on week, your project is consistently n/n+1 * 100% done, you have a estimation problem and just the fact that you're agile doesn't help with this; the whole point of tags was that not everyone agrees on categories; queuing theory is real; your spreadsheets aren't as consistent as you think; the fact that an engineer can figure out the bigO of a sort doesn't mean they understand efficiency in real life.

Re: Ask HN: How much are you earning as a freelance app developer?

#88

Post by throwawaycash »

neuronsguy wrote: post #71
throwawaycash wrote: post #27

I make about 0-300k/year fixing apps that others either weren't able to finish or where they architected themselves into scaling issues. Aside from that, I am a part time programming consultant who makes about 80k a year (I have a chronic illness so I spend a lot of time not working, and it's helpful for me to work in intense bursts with rests in between. It's difficult for me to have normal full time employment in t…

This sounds cool. Two questions: 1. Without giving away secrets, how do you find such clients? 2. You must have some great stories. Would you care to share any?

(2 cont) your PM may only be paying attention to the user interface and not what lies beneath it; changing plans all the time isn't agile, it's just chaos; you have to keep an eye on whether you're doing TDD or just architecting mocks; n+1 queries are hard once you start encountering real data sizes.

Re: Ask HN: How much are you earning as a freelance app developer?

#89

Post by dmilicic »

simon83 wrote: post #81
dmilicic wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually wrote a comment which may help you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14791665

Thanks a lot! I saw toptal mentioned in another comment, and their "Why 3%" page is quite unnerving. I don't work at Wharton, MIT, CERN, or Google, and I'm not a Top 100 Django or Rails contributor. Or is this just the 3% of the 3%, and the remaining 97% are more mortal?

Don't worry about that number. If you have ever passed a typical technical interview then I believe you can also get into Toptal.

Re: Ask HN: How much are you earning as a freelance app developer?

#90

Post by amingilani »

simon83 wrote: post #84
amingilani wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't let that get to you, they have an intense screening process but after you pass it, that's just it. I'm 25, I have a degree in Economics and Finance, and no formal computer education. All I have is my self-taught experience. The first time I tried, for all my confidence, I flunked it really bad, which came as a shock to me. I mean, I knew I was good. The recruiter gave me a timeout and said I could reapply later…

Thanks a lot for sharing your experience. You are working purely remote, I assume? I'd be curious to see how I'd fare in their screening process. Can you tell me roughly how many hours in total the screening process takes? (excluding the time you took to study) And how many hours did you spend on the live project? Was it an actual project, or just a dummy one? I'm asking because I'm working full time, and the whole s…

Yes, I work purely remotely.

The screening process shouldn't be that tough. It's broken into multiple stages. The first three are short sessions. The longest of which was around (I think, don't hold me to it) an hour.

The project is a confidential project you make according to specifications, but they give you enough time to pull it off, even with a full-time job.

Post reply on HN