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Ask HN: Freelancer Rates in the US

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Re: Ask HN: Freelancer Rates in the US

#41

Post by duxup »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #37
duxup wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if you do that it becomes really hard to compare a lot of things. So health insurance is a cost ... albeit not the same for everyone, at some companies you pay surprisingly little and that is compensation ON TOP OF your pay... Other places not. It's really hard to get good 1:1 comparisons. Taxes and etc in the US are widely unevenly applied depending on the situation compared to what seem to be 'more' standar…

This topic is concerning freelancer income, so it doesn’t involve an employer paying for a portion of an employee’s health insurance premiums. It’s also very easy to compare even if you are an employee, as health insurance premiums are shown in box 12 code DD of an employee’s W-2. And health insurance premiums don’t vary that much between healthcare.gov and ACA complaint insurance that employers subsidize. What is cl…

Valid point, I lost track of the freelancer situation.

As for the differing costs of insurance outside of the freelancer world, I've found the costs in the US can vary wildly. Those tax boxes aren't the only way / shouldn't be the only comparison for US healthcare costs.

Re: Ask HN: Freelancer Rates in the US

#42

Post by lotsofpulp »

duxup wrote: post #41
lotsofpulp wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This topic is concerning freelancer income, so it doesn’t involve an employer paying for a portion of an employee’s health insurance premiums. It’s also very easy to compare even if you are an employee, as health insurance premiums are shown in box 12 code DD of an employee’s W-2. And health insurance premiums don’t vary that much between healthcare.gov and ACA complaint insurance that employers subsidize. What is cl…

Valid point, I lost track of the freelancer situation. As for the differing costs of insurance outside of the freelancer world, I've found the costs in the US can vary wildly. Those tax boxes aren't the only way / shouldn't be the only comparison for US healthcare costs.

I don’t understand why they can’t be used to reasonably estimate healthcare costs. ACA compliant plans are pretty standardized, as well as the metal levels indicating expected healthcare costs.

Some plans will cover some providers and some won’t, and rural areas will have issues with even having providers at all, but for most major urban/suburban regions, it should be comparable, +/- 10%, even 20%.

Either way, you know that healthcare costs are in the thousands and $10k+ per year per family, which is a lower bound you can add to calculating US tax rates.

Re: Ask HN: Freelancer Rates in the US

#43

Post by Ididntdothis »

aaronm67 wrote: post #40
Ididntdothis wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who pays >150? I always hear about this but neither as freelancer or as employee who hires freelancers I have ever seen somebody making that much as freelancer. Sometimes consulting companies charge that much but the freelancers probably get paid only a fraction of that.

Where are you? In NYC and SF, you'd never fill your contract if you were trying to pay < 150.

I was freelancer in Maryland and then worked at a company in LA.

Re: Ask HN: Freelancer Rates in the US

#46

Post by sourc3 »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #19
sourc3 wrote: post #3

Expected? Yes. Normal? Yes. Only thing there is out there? No. For every $30/hr posting on the net, there is another one for $100. I also personally know of folks who are making +$150 with Django. It really depends on who you work for. Although you will see a lot more of `build Uber for $5K` type of one off jobs, there are some reputable companies who need more capacity on new projects. If I were you I would cast a w…

Who pays >150? I always hear about this but neither as freelancer or as employee who hires freelancers I have ever seen somebody making that much as freelancer. Sometimes consulting companies charge that much but the freelancers probably get paid only a fraction of that.

Industries where money comes in by the bucket have no problem spending it with a shovel for specialized knowledge they don't have.

If you're a contractor, your best bet is to focus on an industry to understand the needs of that industry better. Rather being a Python developer, you can be a contractor who builds usable solutions that happen to use Python.

Industry knowledge, referrals, good prior work and marketing are important. These $150/hr jobs won't fall into your lap unless you put an effort to position your lap that way :)

Re: Ask HN: Freelancer Rates in the US

#47

Post by ibudiallo »

When I started freelancing, I did extremely cheap jobs because I didn't have experience and didn't know better. I did what you are currently doing, I went online to find answers. And the answer is, there are no fixed rate. The rate you are seeing, is perfectly reasonable for someone who charges this rate.

At some point, my fee was $40 an hour. I freelanced through a 3rd party who found gigs for me, and took their cuts. One day, I found out that they charged these companies $100 in some cases, while I was still only getting $40.

If that's how much I was worth, then it would be perfectly reasonable for me to charge just as much.

If you want more details, here is the full story: https://idiallo.com/blog/how-much-do-you-charge-for-your-wor...

Re: Ask HN: Freelancer Rates in the US

#48

Post by ryandvm »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #19
sourc3 wrote: post #3

Expected? Yes. Normal? Yes. Only thing there is out there? No. For every $30/hr posting on the net, there is another one for $100. I also personally know of folks who are making +$150 with Django. It really depends on who you work for. Although you will see a lot more of `build Uber for $5K` type of one off jobs, there are some reputable companies who need more capacity on new projects. If I were you I would cast a w…

Who pays >150? I always hear about this but neither as freelancer or as employee who hires freelancers I have ever seen somebody making that much as freelancer. Sometimes consulting companies charge that much but the freelancers probably get paid only a fraction of that.

Normal start-ups (i.e. not Valley Bubble) and small shops are almost never able to pay that much, but medium and large clients will easily pay that rate for established senior engineers WITH REPUTATIONS.

As much as we like to think technology is a meritocracy, at the end of the day, it always comes down to who you know. The charitable interpretation of that fact is that there aren't a lot of ways to gauge reputation, so it's mostly about who can vouch for you.

Source: I co-founded a software and design consultancy co-op (https://www.fountstudio.com/about).

Re: Ask HN: Freelancer Rates in the US

#49

Post by K0SM0S »

Arubis wrote: post #17
AzzieElbab wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

150/hr sums up to 200k/year if you work 30 hours a week for 11 months. ----- Fixed typo

Tl;dr: I charge a fair amount (effectively well into $three digits/hr) and making what I have previously at a w2 is a real fight. Presuming you meant $150/hr: indeed, and if you’re freelancing, you almost certainly don’t have that high a proportion of billable time. Prospecting, marketing, deliberate learning, and other overhead are all necessary parts of the deal and can easily take half your available time. I tend…

I'm wondering if it's also not heavily dependent on the business structure that you set up for yourself, as a freelancer. It's a one-man company (for the most successful), a self-employed job (for the majority, or so I hear). The former eventually makes "products", while the latter may entertain a permanent rat race, wheel spin.

Difference in point: how much of what you do leads to higher value at fixed cost (notably in time, how long does it take you to deliver), or same value for lower cost (same idea).

I'd wager that, for the one-man company mindset, you tend to think not task but process, automating progressively etc. (need-to-basis optimization, ad hoc 'frameworks' that speed up your particular niche projects, heck just taking work from client A and refactoring it for client B and building an informal "product" eventually from there, that's the story of all freelancers who've been at it for 5+ years as I see it)

How much of the past work (self and tooling improvements) is factored in present value? Can we decorrelate X years of history of a company and estimate its cost/value production simply YOY? I think not. I think the greatest (companies, freelancers) incrementally raise the bar— making the threshold for competition much too high for a newcomer, hence commanding much higher value.

[At the highest end of that spectrum, meet Apple. Even tech giants struggle to meet that bar, whatever goes in it (tech genius? marketing? craftsmanship? whatever. $ at the end of the day)]

Doing the [work hours × $rate × utilization] equation only says so much about what actually goes into your rate (years of being more efficient at "it", those things you do).

Say you begin at $75 in the US after a ramp up of 3-6 months to establish yourself on the market. You survive for 2 years like that, reach ~$100. You realize it's only $50 real, and your newfound expertise is priced higher in the salary job market. So you either raise your rates or go get that money elsewhere. That's why IMHO an "expert freelancer" market only makes sense north of $100-150 in the US (adapt numbers for any country, minus perhaps the "tech not sexy" effect e.g. in Europe where it's not better paid that other intellectual activities).

Right now, you are worth much more than whatever you did this year, and presumably (hopefully for market sanity) it shows in how much you earn.

Re: Ask HN: Freelancer Rates in the US

#50

Post by AzzieElbab »

davidmurdoch wrote: post #23
AzzieElbab wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

150/hr sums up to 200k/year if you work 30 hours a week for 11 months. ----- Fixed typo

Assuming you meant 150/hr... Freelancers have costs that W2 employees do not, like self employment taxes and the full cost of health insurance.

Fixed typo, thanks. A good percentage of those costs is tax deductible along with expenses you will not have the luxary to deduct as an employee.
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