300/hr
Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?
171–180 of 328 posts
Re: Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fair. Thank you. You’ve just inspired me to fire off a round of emails announcing a 500% rate increase, listing the pretty significant accomplishments I have achieved for each client, and underlining the point that their businesses would likely not exist were it not for my support over the many years I have worked with them. I don’t exaggerate - many of them would never have got off the ground without me dragging the…
If you scare off 80% of your recurring clients, you've drastically lowered your workload without penalty. If you scare off just 50% of your recurring clients, you've halved your workload and are making more money. The downside is if you scare off more than 80% of your recurring clients.
Unless there is a massive recession, I would consider scaring off more than 80% an opportunity to spend time prospecting for better clients. I can’t speak for the UK, but I really suspect you can find them.
Also don’t forget that some fraction of the clients who balk at the increase from their anchor-bias price will come back to you after they see the low quality they get from other vendors at that price. Just be gracious when they leave.
Re: Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are definitely companies in the UK that will pay competitive rates for tech. $70/hr is lower than the median contracting rates for the UK, and I'd be suspicious if someone with 20 years experience was that cheap. I'd expect at minimum to be paying 1000 GBP/day.
I had 15 years of experience when I last updated my rates - and I chronically undervalue myself. I’m responsible for the better part of a billion pounds of revenue, without exaggeration, across my clients, over the decades. Part of the issue I’ve faced is that I usually start working with folks when they’re 2-3 people, and I grow them - but my rates end up stuck at the 2-3 people company level, not at the 1000+ perso…
Have you considered finding somebody to act as your “talent agent“? I don’t know exactly how this would work, but with so much money being left on the table I think it makes a ton of sense to be creative. I totally understand how awkward it can be to ask for more, but if part of the block is your own personality, there must be someone out there who would have less of a problem asking for what you deserve. The ROI would almost certainly be huge regardless of their cut.
Re: Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ironically, I've found it's easier to charge higher rates for longer engagements.
Although I charge a flat fee, I've found that companies tend to be more accepting to my pricing when it's a longer engagement than a shorter one
Yeah, the fixed “cost“ (in effort) of bringing someone in can totally dominate the financial cost for smaller engagements. Especially when a manager is spending their large company’s dollars.
Re: Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?
#175Do you guys charge the same rate no matter the task ? if a customer wants a quickfix or some trivial change do you adapt ? On the other side of the spectrum, if you spend way longer than thought on a feature, do you stop charging or do you consider your work is still worth for them ?
I only work on the products I've built myself. Bug fixes are always free, even if the project has been delivered years ago. Trivial changes are sometimes free if I have a good relationship with the client. Mostly I group the work for a day and charge my daily rate. For the 2nd question, if it's a fixed budget project, I bear the cost myself and take it as a lesson for the future to do estimates better. If it's not, I…
Thanks a lot for your input :)
Re: Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?
#176It varies widely based on how much I think I gain from your project (experience, learning, networking etc). I'm an AWS specialist DevOps ish person, and bill around 1k/day on retainer and a bit more for "live" work. In general, if your aws bill is smaller than my invoice, we do something short term and results focused and I bill at a higher rate, if your aws bill is higher, you get a lower rate, but keep me around on call because when someone really fucks up, it balances in the wash when you're back online in hours instead of days.
Re: Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?
#177I 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.
FYI, first load of your personal website (redirected from Twitter) was surprisingly slow. Subsequent reloads were fine however. Could have been something on my end though or likely just Twitter redirection(s?) process taking its sweet time..
Re: Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?
#178Most recently my floor was USD$300/hour but billed in weeks, and sometimes I didn't do full weeks (like four day weeks during good weather). Usually minimum engagement of four weeks, 25-50% upfront (longer engagements get the lower end).
I increase the rate with respect to beurocracy and scope. If I'm working with a small, single digits shop then the lower rate usually holds. If it's a larger shop and I'm going to be in a ton of meetings all the time, I usually start doubling the rate. For a F500-type company I'd never drop below $500/hour, and minimum engagement would probably grow to eight weeks.
I'm a generalist. I've actually signed a number of contracts on "I will fix ~all your hard to fix bugs".
Re: Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?
#179You need to define your question better. What is a generalist? I would have considered myself a generalist but thats with a focus on embedded/systems programming and an ability to make a shitty website/database backend. Other folks may consider themselves generalists because they handle front & backend web design or because they write applications from start to finish. What sort of information are you looking for?
Re: Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?
#180Most recently my floor was USD$300/hour but billed in weeks, and sometimes I didn't do full weeks (like four day weeks during good weather). Usually minimum engagement of four weeks, 25-50% upfront (longer engagements get the lower end). I increase the rate with respect to beurocracy and scope. If I'm working with a small, single digits shop then the lower rate usually holds. If it's a larger shop and I'm going to be…
How much does that come out at per year? Do taxes eat up a large amount? Are you continuously employed or are there dry spells?