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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?

#261

Post by tyurok »

throwaway74829 wrote: post #190
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.

Have you gone down this route? I think the biggest issue deep generalists fall into is that they can be above average in the entire stack, but not exceptional enough to make the cut for a specialized role in any single thing (i.e the vast majority of publicly advertised roles). Going down “specialized in boot-strapping startups” route is an interesting remedy. I would imagine the only way to find these opportunities…

I didn't go through, but have seen quite a few. It's indeed a less advertised position since it might be more common in smaller companies (less money/reach) and it might be a founding opportunity (less pay, higher risk), so it goes under the radar compared to very specialized positions.

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

#262

Post by Silhouette »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #213
davedx wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Startups! They love generalists.

The downside of a startup is that they don't have as much money to pay you, and as a contractor you don't get equity. (On the upside, you don't get equity, and for most startups the money they pay you will be worth more than any equity ever will be.)

They don't have money at first. The ones who hit product-market fit and then want to scale quickly used to be a gold mine for good generalists though.

A few startups are run by veterans of several previous adventures who can spot when the real game is about to kick off and it's time to ramp up hiring. But almost no-one without that prior experience can hire a bigger permanent team as fast as they want to during that period of rapid growth.

Also these companies often have relatively inexperienced teams as they start to scale just because of the earlier budget limitations. They benefit from having some more experienced hands on deck for a while to stop them making dumb mistakes and help them train up their early hires who stick around and suddenly find themselves operating a level or two up the ladder as the head count grows.

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

#263

Post by EddySchauHai »

was_a_dev wrote: post #224
karamanolev wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

I think any contract developer will be on the 95%+ percentile. When I started contracting in my mid-20s I was in the UKs 1% for a 40 hour gig done from my bedroom desk. It’s pretty mental.

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

#264

Post by spaetzleesser »

candiddevmike wrote: post #118
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.

For those drooling at this: you probably don't want this work. The clients who pay this amount are typically soul crushingly bad to work with, and you're under the gun to deliver 10k worth of value both to secure future work with the client and ensure your reputation stays clean. One bad experience can sink you with other clients, folks talk. IMO, build something for you and sell it vs building something for other pe…

That wasn't at all my experience when I was doing contract work at higher rates. The more I made the better I got treated and the more forgiving things were. The worst contracts were with penny pinchers. As soon as something cost $500 more they were gone.

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

#265

Post by hnthrow29475792 »

eatYourFood wrote: post #183
hnthrow29475792 wrote: post #165

I’d actually go at a different argument than generalist versus specialist, some fairly commonly heard wisdom in UK was if you were risk-tolerant you could “always make more contracting”. What you also hear is “charge more”. I would instead say to both of those things that one should seek to understand where they want to be in 5-10 years, earning what and doing what? A lot of these threads do boil down to the few maki…

Best comment yet but zero replies. Would love to hear about how you jumped into 2m$ roles after working at FAANG. Is that still consulting?

I haven’t done any significant consulting since moving to FAANG. Occasional due diligence on M&A. Occasionally a Board Advisor. Nothing that creates conflict with the day job.

So, I’m a W-2 employee now in an executive-level role, have been for several years, and this is my second such role (meaning two companies now have hired me in from outside as a senior leader). Right now I’d say FAANG-adjacent, it’s not a company in the acronym, it’s still a huge employer. They’re paying highly competitively and matched the deal offerer by a FAANG when I moved jobs in 2020. I would expect this is probably what I’ll be doing until I “retire”.

Retirement to me doesn’t actually mean entirely ceasing doing work but I’m only going to be pursuing interesting problems with interesting people in a few years.

Overall my point though was you’re doing something today not just to make a paycheck this month, but hopefully to lead up to something next year or the year after, and you should have an endgame. Evaluate whether generalist consulting/contracting really supports that endgame for you, and don’t just focus on how do I get from $50/hr to $200/hr and then have a “Oh, crap, this skillset and my resume now makes it even harder to get to the endgame that I’m seeking”.

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

#267

Post by jollybean »

joshmanders wrote: post #140
candiddevmike wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those drooling at this: you probably don't want this work. The clients who pay this amount are typically soul crushingly bad to work with, and you're under the gun to deliver 10k worth of value both to secure future work with the client and ensure your reputation stays clean. One bad experience can sink you with other clients, folks talk. IMO, build something for you and sell it vs building something for other pe…

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.

Yes and no.

Big Cos pay high rates often with less aggressive demands, however, the quote above is 'build a business from start to finish' which is something else entirely.

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

#268

Post by jollybean »

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.

If you say the word 'business' you're hustling a bit ...

... if you say 'product', then ok.

The 'product' part for many businesses is often very easy to do; sales, channel development, marketing etc. which lead to making a 'business' is the hard part.

If you're opening up major clients, or large numbers of small clients through channel sales then you're really worth something.

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

#269

Post by Nextgrid »

Silhouette wrote: post #244
phphphphp wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

£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…

£500/day is the rate for software engineering contractors in the UK that guarantees a continuous stream of work That might have been true pre-COVID but is even that rate a guarantee of much in a post-COVID world with the economic uncertainty we have now and so much pressure to do everything inside IR35? So many of the offers being made in the UK contract market now fall through and so many of the gigs are relatively…

Python contractor here - in the current market, 500£/day is low enough that you can still bill the entire year if you’re not too picky as to what kind of work you take - just like the parent post, I have to turn down work constantly.

Indeed, the IR35 debacle and general downturn given the current events have put a damper on business, but at 500/day it’s still doable.

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

#270

Post by Nextgrid »

trhoad wrote: post #212
elliekelly wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And there are lots of expenses.

Contracted for a few years. Almost zero expenses (a new laptop, an accountant, some PL insurance).

Not an accountant, but I believe if you’re working on a side-project you can expense a lot (essentially, the side project is just another service your company offers) and thus you can “expense” (not technically expensing because it’s paid by the company in the first place) a lot of stuff - hardware, cloud bills, software licenses, etc.
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