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

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

#91

Post by aantix »

madaxe_again wrote: post #63
bubblehack3r wrote: post #17

I'm a cyber security specialist (in web application security) with a few certifications and 10+ years of experience. I charge usually $350 an hour unless it's something I estimate will require the help of an outsider to which I may go as high at $1k an hour. Answering everyone asking how we find clients - I love public speaking and so I try to do as much as I can. 80% of my clients saw me speak, the other 20% come fr…

Man. I (CISSP, CISA), 20 years of experience, everything from development to dev management to sales and marketing to finance to fundraising, the whole shebang, do ISO27001 ISMS’s and coach through certifications… for $70/hr. But then, my clients are based in the U.K., where technology is still generally seen as worthless.

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.

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

#92

Post by lumost »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #64
ccvannorman wrote: post #3

I recommend Weekly Rate Consulting[0] About four years ago a friend of mine, who specializes in personal brand consultation, suggested whatever my hourly was that I double it. I didn't believe her. I doubled it and landed the first proposal. You're probably worth more than you think. Specialization can increase your rate, but business sense, communication, and ability to articulate and contribute value at the executi…

> About four years ago a friend of mine, who specializes in personal brand consultation, suggested whatever my hourly was that I double it. I didn't believe her. I doubled it and landed the first proposal. Doubling your rate is really only an option when you’re already charging too little or if you’re dealing with clients who have no idea what market rate actually is. I encourage everyone to explore incrementally hig…

You just highlighted why doubling the rates might work for many people. If you charge $100/hr, the client may simply assume you can't handle the higher level/harder work. If you potentially can.. then doubling the rate will make the client feel comfortable giving it to you.

The same pattern happens in salaried work, A manager needs to show that the expensive new senior hire was worth the money. So they give the new hire all the good projects and leave the (cheaper) current employees high and dry. Further, management is incentivized to show the new hire's work in a positive light during performance review as they would be admitting that the manager made a mistake otherwise.

Understanding this dynamic will make you happier at work. Sometimes you need to leave so that you can be the great new hire, sometimes you need to demand more money/promotion so that management sees your worth. People inherently assume that you are worth something approximating your salary.

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

#93

Post by mxuribe »

scrollaway wrote: post #24
ryanSrich wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great rate. I’d love to know how you find clients willing to pay this amount. Most people I’ve come across that need a new site/app built have extremely low budgets. Like $10,000…total for an app. Certainly not $10,000 for a week.

Simply put: Talk to people who have more money and higher expectations, and highly value efficiency (OP's selling point of being a "single person" means not dealing with a whole team, back&forth comms, etc). Don't talk to your local barber who wants a website to show up on google maps. I have a similar weekly rate but $200 hourly; How I bill depends on the client (though yes, gravitating more and more towards weekly…

Would you kindly share some examples of the types of people/orgs to seek out, then? For example, if not the barber shop, then the owner of a barber shop franchise, or owner of a chain of barber shops? Genuinely interwested in learning the archetypes of people to seek out here. Anything that you could share would be greatly appreciated!

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

#94

Post by [deleted] »

rtlfe wrote: post #48
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.

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.

[deleted]

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

#95

Post by quietbritishjim »

rtlfe wrote: post #48
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.

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.

$500k + benefits? Are you sure? Especially since you don't really know anything about the parent commenter (for example: their location)

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

#96

Post by lumost »

ryanSrich wrote: post #76
scrollaway wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simply put: Talk to people who have more money and higher expectations, and highly value efficiency (OP's selling point of being a "single person" means not dealing with a whole team, back&forth comms, etc). Don't talk to your local barber who wants a website to show up on google maps. I have a similar weekly rate but $200 hourly; How I bill depends on the client (though yes, gravitating more and more towards weekly…

This doesn’t answer my question. How do you find people “who have more money and higher expectations, and highly value efficiency”? > “Don't talk to your local barber who wants a website to show up on google maps.” The specific case I was referring to was a series seed funded startup that needed to build an MVP. Even for them $10,000 was too much. They ended up finding someone for half that to build their entire V1.…

A tech seed round can easily be 7 figures these days. A new initiative at a non-tech fortune 50 could start in 8 figures. Hiring someone at 10k per week who can kickstart the project to working production system isn't a bad deal at these budgets.

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

#98

Post by tekkk »

sgjohnson wrote: post #62
tekkk wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's net after pension and everything it's not really that surprising. In Finland for example the employee pension rate is 25% of gross. Then tax and employer insurance on top of that and you're left with about half of the total paid sum. Of course, as independent contractor you can set your own pension rate as low as you want but that's a different debate.

Virtually all contractors in the UK are operating through a LLC and paying themselves in dividends, so there's no pension at all, and legally they are not even employees of their businesses (because board members can provide the business with whatever services without being employees). If you go through PAYE, you make yourself an employee, and you must pay yourself a pension. But going through PAYE is a net loss, bec…

The difference between taxation schemes between countries seems to be a wildly heterogenous bunch - thanks for the explanation!

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

#99

Post by tyurok »

leetrout wrote: post #72
tyurok wrote: post #66

Generalist can be a specialization in itself. Imagine someone that can do a bit of front-end, backend, infra, design, would be a specialist in bootstrapping a startup. Don't get too attached to market/industry defined roles. Another way to raise rates is to take risks (like deadlines, promises) but every person had their own risk profile.

Excluding design this is me and what I enjoy doing. I named my operation "engine ignite" because I like helping startups start. I LOVE getting folks leveled up on team process and procedure to support SOC2 and such.

It's a fairly rare set of skills. People in these positive usually are bad in most of them and it becomes harder to ramp up the team later (mentoring, quality).

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

#100

Post by tyurok »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #71
tyurok wrote: post #66

Generalist can be a specialization in itself. Imagine someone that can do a bit of front-end, backend, infra, design, would be a specialist in bootstrapping a startup. Don't get too attached to market/industry defined roles. Another way to raise rates is to take risks (like deadlines, promises) but every person had their own risk profile.

Or change the language. Instead of 'generalist', sell yourself as a senior developer, architect, lead developer, etc. Nobody asks "what programming language are you an architect in", because the job is supposed to be much broader than that.

Yeah, poliglots are difficult to find as well, maybe not as in actual difficulty to be but more of a preference for a subset of techs.
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