1700 dollars per day, minimum 5 days
Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?
221–230 of 328 posts
Re: Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve seen some companies charge very little ($2-$5k) for a pen test. How are you able to charge $350/hour for essentially the same work? Is there some pitch or playbook you’re using to justify the price for doing the same work?
A $5K is pentest is just some guy running a couple of off-the-shelf, open source, or scriptkiddie tools and handing you the reports. For $350/hr you get - someone knowing which pentest tools to start with - someone knowing how to follow up with more focused attention on problem areas and run additional tests - someone analyzing the raw reports to understand the causes of the vulnerabilities - a multi-page written for…
I've seen a couple of the cheap pen tests by a few German companies.
The whole thing looked like a 1-2 days of work and the person doing it was doing the basic stuff, but definitely conducted by a knowledgeable person and when problems were found reasonable suggestions were offered in the report. The apps were standard - frontend in Angular, backend in Spring Boot on Tomcat.
basic DoS, XSS, SQLi, token abuse, open ports with not up to date services, generic vulnerability scanner, basic password brute forcing
Re: Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not accurate at all. I've found people who pay these rates are better to work with and demand less. You know that trope all startup people say "raise your prices and get rid of the low value high cost customers" Same thing.
Now I'm very curious how you find clients and what software stacks you work with.
I've replied below on various other comments asking similar, but for easier use, I'll repeat here:
> how you find clients
Word of mouth & referrals from existing clients
> what software stacks you work with
Next.js
React-Query
Prisma
Tailwind CSS
Kubernetes
PostgreSQL
Caddy
Re: Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah I exhaled slightly when reading they're in the >97th percentile for UK salaries. Modest earnings
This is apples to oranges and therefore false. Contracting has much much more deductions from the base rate than salaries. At the very least, with 20 days (1 month) off, you start off with a 11/12 coefficient. Then there's buying your own benefits, dealing with your own accounting, i.e. maybe paying an accountant or otherwise investing the time to do it yourself, which in turn reduces the number of hours you have to…
Fair.
Let's be realistic, or even conservative.
90th percentile? (£58k)
Re: Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?
#225$2k per day. hourly always invites discussions, for example how are phone calls with mixed topics billed?
i assume that invites a discussion about what a day is. is that an easier discussion? how does it go? or does it not invite discussion?
Re: Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?
#226Most 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?
I'm at a full time gig right now for various reasons but it depends on how many clients I want to have at once. I tried to limit to a handful per year, and the last year in which I did contracting I was working less than half of the year -- but by choice.
Dry spells are planned, as otherwise it's difficult to line work up as often times scope changes during an engagement.
Re: Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
I seriously doubt parent is earning that much. I expect they probably bill avg 10-15 days per month at that rate. Most contractors like them in the UK that I know operate this way most of the time.
£500/day is the rate for software engineering contractors in the UK that guarantees a continuous stream of work: it would be trivial for someone to bill 100% of billable days in a year at that rate. I don't know anybody who only bills 10 - 15 days per month, I personally bill ~21 on average per month and I am always fully booked (I turn down work). All you need is a profile on LinkedIn and you'll get a constant strea…
I'm not suggesting they are unable to bill 20 days per month if they want to, I would say they probably choose not to on average across the whole year. I certainly don't like working absolutely every weekday, and I take time off periodically. Working a bit less is one of the huge perks of being a contractor.
Re: Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?
#228Most 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…
..What's your main stack?
If I'm developing services, I just write Go. I have a lot of Linux experience as well. I'm comfortable reading and patching pretty much any language.
Re: Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Yes now. Series A is harder to raise but 2M seed rounds are still happening. 1M seems pretty standard now.
Re: Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean this in the nicest way possible, but it's easy to say money isn't everything when you're already earning £120k/$140k pa.
That’s assuming they can work 240 days a year, contracting normally has significant unpaid downtime and of course zero benefits.
Not really, the rule of thumb most contractors talk about is plan around 220 days per year (44 weeks).