161–170 of 328 posts
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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)
Ten-some years ago I started at $100/hour and I thought that was a good idea. "Great, I'll make $200k a year and pay 45% in taxes, that's fine, I can live on that." I thought that being attractive to more people was a better way to find clients. I didn't have a problem finding clients, but they were clients that I didn't see panning out — they gave me vibes of being poor executors. I looked for a way to filter out th…
This resonates having done contracting for the past 5+ years and at times, lately, feeling lonely.
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Wait wait, is it really possible to get that big of a seed round WITHOUT an MVP??
Not now. It probably was from 2018-2021. Probably will be again at some point. But don’t take that to mean you can just walk in and ask for money. People still want to know who they’re investing in. Prior track record is key.
A lot of these threads do boil down to the few making $350 per hour, the many making $100 per hour, and both cohorts seeking to make more. I can’t actually tell you how to do that while contracting, I can tell you my story and perhaps it will help someone :-)
I pursued contract roles for a few years typically resulting in me making £100-250k gross per annum range, typically billing at £1000/day or £15-20k/month and optimizing UK tax using all the usual and perfectly legal means. That’s a good income and my family had an okay standard of living.
These roles were anything from software development to systems engineering, mostly a “make problems go away” situation - clear connection for the client to business value. I worked for everything from US startups through to UK financial services.
Before that I’d done some full-time roles with big and small companies typically in the £80-150k range. Striking out as a contractor was partly the desire to try something new and partly a particularly interesting opportunity arose.
Eventually, I ended up going back to what I’d still consider generalist roles with larger FAANG or FAANG-adjacent employers, that’s something of a “loss of freedom” versus contracting, the nature of growing a “career” with them (not the same employer necessarily, just the same set of companies).
For me, long term goals were twofold:
1. To have interesting work and problems to solve, ideally to engage with smart people;
2. To make money, lots of money, I’d like to retire at some point, and I’d like my standard of living to be high, I’d like to never really worry about money.
In outcome terms, making that jump back to FTE and “getting in the door” of FAANG, which took effort both to get in and then to excel in the new roles, it has paid off in ways where generalist consulting could never take me, I relocated, now take roles that are FAANG or FAANG-adjacent executive-level roles in “Engineering”, these involving a multi-disciplinary mix of duties — Product, Software and Program Management, the full spectrum of working out what the customer needs and what that means for the business, building that technology often with a large team, enabling the field to sell it, feedback loops to improve it.
I’ve had several years of W-2 employment in the $2-4M USD range, that’s >10x from contracting rates, achieved in In my humble opinion, it is much harder to sell yourself as a contractor when applying to FTE roles (particularly those at bigger companies) and to tell the story in ways a Hiring Manager will appreciate and see your value. Therefore you really need to consider whether the “hustle life” of contracting is something you want to do through retirement, what’s it mean for you when 35+ or even 45+ and is it setting you up for the endgame you want in life?
HN is a forum where increasingly I see posts every single day about the high level of misery in tech / how can I get out of this rat race / high levels of stress / undervalued / etc etc.
I charge £500 a day. It's not much compared to some of the rates on here, but I work with lovely, interesting clients in the non-profit sector. My clients love what they do and I do good work for them so they love what I do. I have long term, low stress, friendship-like relationships with my clients, not shouty / nasty / high stress ones. I've done this work for 12 years, and had to work with maybe a handful of assholes during that time.
FWIW I think there is a "lower budget bar" under which demands are insane for the money being offered, and we should all avoid this work unless we actively want to take a race to the bottom. But - I think there is undoubtedly a "higher budget bar" over which the stress level and expectation is made exceedingly high. This (I would imagine; I don't know, I've worked in non profits my whole life) is probably also equated with sector - if you're in a FinTech environment I would imagine you're looking at high budgets but also an insane number of highly pressured assholes shouting at you all the time.
What am I basically saying? I guess - yes, charge enough (and this is probably more than you think it should be) - but also, look at the bigger picture of your work / sector. Think about happiness, work-life balance, client motivations, etc - and use this to inform what you charge and how you charge for it. That'd be my advice.
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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!
If they remember you as dependable and all-around competent, they would be thrilled to be able to deploy their budget against the problem nearly instantly.
in the uk, everyone wants to work on daily rates. 600pd-650pd as a devops engineer. So, £75, or $86 an hour. This is 5 days a week, 40 hours a week. I bill around £14k a month and after taxes i walk away with about £7k a month.
> I bill around £14k a month and after taxes i walk away with about £7k a month. You should employ some sort of a tax-reduction strategy. Paying 50% of your gross in direct taxes is absolutely batshit crazy. I used to contract for £350-450 per day as a PHP backend dev and paid an effective 30% tax rate. Which is still crazy insane high, but it's not 50%. Does your 50% figure includes VAT? Because if that's not VAT in…
One thing I don't more of and it surprises me: There's no reason to charge all clients the same rate. If you're solving a five-figure problem for one client and a seven-figure problem for another using basically the same solution, why charge them the same?
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…
Forgive me if this is obvious but how do you get speaking opportunities? Are you applying to calls for presentations at conferences?