271–280 of 328 posts
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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…
Virtually all contractors in the UK are operating through a LLC and paying themselves in dividends This hasn't been entirely true for a long time and it's almost the opposite of true today. The vast majority of contract work in the UK today is now forced under umbrellas where you'd be an employee of your umbrella firm and not working through your own Ltd. There is still outside IR35 work around but close to 100% of l…
I left the UK about 2 years ago, and I still get recruiters emailing me about all kinds of contract opportunities. Not a single one of those opportunities were inside IR35.
Sure, for an IR35 work you're better off with an umbrella company, but it's definitely not the case for outside IR35.
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And there are lots of expenses.
Contracted for a few years. Almost zero expenses (a new laptop, an accountant, some PL insurance).
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Virtually all contractors in the UK are operating through a LLC and paying themselves in dividends This hasn't been entirely true for a long time and it's almost the opposite of true today. The vast majority of contract work in the UK today is now forced under umbrellas where you'd be an employee of your umbrella firm and not working through your own Ltd. There is still outside IR35 work around but close to 100% of l…
> There is still outside IR35 work around but close to 100% of larger (and typically better-paying) clients don't want to get near it because of the risks since the recent changes in the rules. I left the UK about 2 years ago, and I still get recruiters emailing me about all kinds of contract opportunities. Not a single one of those opportunities were inside IR35. Sure, for an IR35 work you're better off with an umbr…
I get recruiters emailing me about all kinds of contract opportunities too. Many of them are probably just trying to harvest a CV. Many more want silly things like a senior Java engineer with a decade of enterprise experience for £350/day (which is a type of work I've never done and never enquired about or listed on any profile). You really can't read anything into what recruiters casually email you about or send to you on LinkedIn or list on sites like JobServe. The only thing that counts are the gigs that real developers are actually getting.
Sure, for an IR35 work you're better off with an umbrella company, but it's definitely not the case for outside IR35.
You're never better off using an umbrella. The client is. Umbrellas are just a vehicle to dump all the tax obligations that were supposed to fall on them onto you instead while pretending they're offering a much higher rate than the effective rate you're really getting paid. And with large clients they are mostly now used as a blanket policy even though they're supposed to assess each gig individually. This is a big change in the market in the last year or so because the IR35 rules changed to make the client/intermediaries responsible for determining status and liable if the determination is wrong.
I know more than one person who was independent for years but has given up and gone permanent again now because once you're getting hit with umbrella arrangements you usually get all the downsides of full employment anyway plus the extra costs that should be met by the employer and with none of the perks and protections of real employment. There are still a few umbrella gigs with rates high enough to make up for that but from the discussions I've been having it looks like the vast majority aren't now.
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£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.
If you're consistently managing to finish one gig on Friday and have a new one ready to start on the Monday without any downtime or excessive interviewing disruption then it seems you're doing better than several contractors I know at the moment. I think they typically do charge rates a bit higher than £500 though so maybe there's just less work available at that level or more competition for each gig.
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 said contracts like that in my case were short term and tightly scoped, usually 6 months long and with very specific objectives. Areas of expertise I've hired people for were security/cryptography, custom database development/optimizations and network optimization (ie. Infiniband).
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.
Everyone here is so incredibly focused on money as the primary motivator, which I guess given the thread question makes some sense. But I'd like to just put in a little word for money not being everything, and client type / work type actually being a really important part of the equation. 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 r…
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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…
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When you come back around to missing client work, remember that some guy on HN begged you to raise your rate. Doesn't matter where you are located. value == value; value != location.
I totally agree that value != location, but clients' budgets absolutely depends on the location. I only work with local clients, and my rates are on the expensive sides of the scale. For comparison, my rates are about 25 times of minimum wage. I know that I could make more working internationally, but I was happy in my comfort zone. If my indie maker/single founder adventure doesn't work out (happened in the past), I…