Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's your go-to tech stack? Do you find a lot of your work is crud apps?
Next.js React-Query Prisma Tailwind CSS Kubernetes PostgreSQL Caddy
any chance you have open source codebases?
Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?
311–320 of 328 posts
Re: Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?
#312Earlier 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.
That's true in theory but the software market has been pretty good for the last 15 years. The only holidays I took were when I was an employee and I wasn't quitting that year (you get them in cash otherwise).
Re: Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?
#313Earlier 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…
What's your LinkedIn profile?
I don't get any offers on mine.
Re: Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?
#314Earlier quoted context omitted.
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!
With the caveat that I charge a bit less, and have only had two clients (but kept them each >1y, and have gotten other client interest I did not have bandwidth for): Keep up with the talented people you worked and want to school with. If you are in your 30s, some significant fraction are managers with budgets. At any given time, a few will have a need which is too time-sensitive for the whole hiring cycle (which can…
That's great advice, thanks!
Re: Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?
#31512,500 / week for general work (design, prototyping, sometimes building). Startups won't pay this, but large firms will.
Currency?
Re: Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?
#316£75/hr was my last freelance rate for some PHP dev work I did. Got a few too many plates spinning at the moment though so only doing oldschool Linux sysadmin stuff (pets vs cattle) outside the day job. I'd probably bill cheaper for that as it's less of a time sink and the tasks are either easy fixes or interesting.
Why charge less for something that's interesting? The client gets the same value whether it interests you or not.
Re: Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?
#317Most 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…
Could you give some examples of these hard-to-fix bugs?
Re: Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?
#318Re: Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?
#31995/hr, doing "web stuff" for small businesses
95 what? £, $, Euros?
Re: Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?
#320$2k per day. hourly always invites discussions, for example how are phone calls with mixed topics billed?
Exactly. Using a day rate has several more advantages. You can skip a lot of the bookkeeping. And companies are a lot more mindful of your time when they buy it by the day. If I have to join a 15 minute meeting, I lose more than just those 15 minutes. It's a context switch, I might want to prepare before hand, reflect on it afterwards. Etc. If I bill by the day, than that's fine. I'm yours for the day. Neither of us…
So - if that 15 minute meeting is all that you do in that day, would you still bill the client for the entire day? Or I have understood it wrong. Just curious how this model works.