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Expert Networks: A Secret World of $500 per Hour Consultations

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Re: Expert Networks: A Secret World of $500 per Hour Consultations

#11

Post by arcticbull »

tschwimmer wrote: post #9
mattzito wrote: post #8

I don’t do this anymore, due to my employer looking unfavorably towards it, but I was charging between $600-900 an hour for my industry advice on spaces I’d worked in. I could have charged less and done more hours, but I found there was a lot of cancellation and rescheduling and misunderstanding at lower rates, and charging more just limited things to high intent clients. It was never a significant percentage of my i…

Damn, what segments did you work in? The firm I'm working with maxes out at like $100 an hour.

$100/hr is really low in the bay area; most SWE generalist contractors can walk in and get $150 no questions asked, anywhere. $200 if you're more experienced in the specific area and $250+ if you "have a name for yourself" online.

Rule of thumb at least around here is take your base salary in thousands per year, and that's your hourly rate. If you're getting $200K base, charge $200/hr for your contracting time. The extra that yields is to help you offset the fact you won't always have work and the extra you have to do to keep your pipeline full. Many startups pay $150K for senior engineers so have no problem paying $150/hr for contractors.

Re: Expert Networks: A Secret World of $500 per Hour Consultations

#12

Post by mattzito »

tschwimmer wrote: post #9
mattzito wrote: post #8

I don’t do this anymore, due to my employer looking unfavorably towards it, but I was charging between $600-900 an hour for my industry advice on spaces I’d worked in. I could have charged less and done more hours, but I found there was a lot of cancellation and rescheduling and misunderstanding at lower rates, and charging more just limited things to high intent clients. It was never a significant percentage of my i…

Damn, what segments did you work in? The firm I'm working with maxes out at like $100 an hour.

It was just various software spaces where I had first hand knowledge. I just kept asking for more money, and they kept trying to talk me down, and then I would offer to walk away, and we would negotiate something. I also made it very clear to a few platforms where I was unwilling to work with them due to price.

In general, in my very limited experience, if you have experience in spaces they are getting inquiries about, you can make a strong case.

Re: Expert Networks: A Secret World of $500 per Hour Consultations

#14

Post by kumarski »

I've frequently been paid $1k/hour regularly for insights on expert networks on how to grow companies, manufacturing know-how that's inherently rare based on my specialty, and more.

I've had companies reach out from all over the world, but I'll tell you, when I first moved to San Francisco, I lived in my car for ~2 months, then in a bunk bed in a run down hacker house, and was more than ecstatic to make 30 USD/hour. This post would be incomplete without mentioning that sometimes it takes many failures in a niche to develop great depth in it.

One area of expertise that regularly has been paying me for 1-2 hours every month for the past few months is new manufacturing plant startups or relocations. I'm one of a handful of engineers with know how and experience in material flows and operations research.

I had one company buy 10 hours of my time and flew me out of the country to help them navigate a facility location based on an ever modulating set of market variables.

When I studied polymer-textile-fiber engineering and operations research though, it was never exotic, I didn't want to work in the middle of nowhere, but was utterly fascinated with the subject matter.

I'm thankful for expert networks, my one qualm is that some networks like GLG etc ask for resumes, but I think that's the wrong approach. I really love sites like clarity.fm where you can just o-auth quickly and tell your story.

Generally, "game knows game" is something I believe in, I also believe marketing and brand don't always correlate with substance. I love finding people with performant dark horse talent who should be paid 1k/hour on expert networks but never pass the "branded" corporate filter of the sites themselves.

Re: Expert Networks: A Secret World of $500 per Hour Consultations

#16

Post by randogogogo »

joe_the_user wrote: post #7

The actual world of super-high paid consultant would be interesting to hear about. This is either a niche-within-a-niche or a scam, depending on whether you believe the page. The thing is, maybe there are circumstances when someone who's just quite well informed about an otherwise boring industry can get an "information download" gig as described but I'd also guess those are very occasional - only so many investors n…

We do similar or related work at the firm I'm in quite frequently. Mostly we have people that understand Mergers and Acquisitions really well, sets of people that understand industries really well, and people that know technology really well (IT operations, business process and applications, infrastructure, app architecture, etc.). These groups of people put together along with methodologies for quick turn-around on analysis afford us higher rates. There's also an element of these types of engagements where clients almost seem to expect higher rates and expense fees; otherwise we may give the perception of a less than serious service provider while involved with high dollar transactions.

Re: Expert Networks: A Secret World of $500 per Hour Consultations

#18

Post by josephjrobison »

joe_the_user wrote: post #7

The actual world of super-high paid consultant would be interesting to hear about. This is either a niche-within-a-niche or a scam, depending on whether you believe the page. The thing is, maybe there are circumstances when someone who's just quite well informed about an otherwise boring industry can get an "information download" gig as described but I'd also guess those are very occasional - only so many investors n…

“Information download” is a genius term. In the right industry a company can save years of failure by paying the right person for X amount of hours to glean a ton of knowledge very quickly, assuming they can’t just outright hire them.

Re: Expert Networks: A Secret World of $500 per Hour Consultations

#20

Post by [deleted] »

arcticbull wrote: post #11
tschwimmer wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn, what segments did you work in? The firm I'm working with maxes out at like $100 an hour.

$100/hr is really low in the bay area; most SWE generalist contractors can walk in and get $150 no questions asked, anywhere. $200 if you're more experienced in the specific area and $250+ if you "have a name for yourself" online. Rule of thumb at least around here is take your base salary in thousands per year, and that's your hourly rate. If you're getting $200K base, charge $200/hr for your contracting time. The e…

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