41–50 of 123 posts
I'm a ruby contractor working in London, charging £400 per day, but I know others that are charging £500. Having such a high day rate means that I can afford to work part time as to have enough time to work on side projects too. I earned just shy of £50k last year, not all the time was part time so this year will probably be less.
You're showing your bias with the ranges you've chosen. Capping the poll at "$200k+" is effectively a statement that you don't believe in the existence of consultants who charge north of $100/hr and work close to 2000 hours per year. A fair chunk of your initial datapoints are challenging that assumption.
As _delirium[1] mentioned, I can't detail every range (there are more people making $20k or less). At the moment, people making $200k or more are 15% only. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6464829
Stick a >$300k on there, and I wouldn't be surprised if a big slice of that group shifts right over to it.
Incidentally, in response to _delirium, we really need to stop thinking of $200k as "a lot of money". That's an achievable wage for a good developer. Describing it in terms normally reserved for fantasy rather than reality is not particularly helpful.
I turned over ~$80k in my first year freelancing. This year will be substantially higher. Battling against imposter syndrome and finding out how much your worth to a company/business is one of the hardest things about freelancing. I still today believe I'm undercharging for my skill set. Especially when I compare my ability/experience to those I'm working with who are earning a similar amount of money. At the same ti…
What is imposter syndrome?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
$50k in India won't get you far in Mumbai, especially if you are married and have kids
That's a little more than 2.5 lakhs a month. There is no part of India where you can't live comfortably in that much money. Bear in mind that living in Mumbai doesn't mean living in Pali Hill. The suburbs are significantly cheaper.
I would love to see a distribution among different technologies, such as .NET, Rails, iOS, Android, etc...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Living expenses are presumably different though. So it's a bit hard to just compare salary directly.
They aren't anymore. I've lived both in Poland and countries in western EU, Netherlands be one example, and honestly everyday product prices are very similar. The major difference is housing although Poland is very similar to Berlin housing wise, now compare the average salaries...
Imagining I take a week or two off this year then that works out to about 200k usd
How to achieve this? Find a gap in the market, upskill in it, don't be shy about asking for more money than you think the client will offer you (if they're desperate, they will pay)
First year of freelancing, so I can only give a projected income, but it should be accurate as I'm on a long term contract until the end of the year: $80k. It's been a very variable year of course. I consider myself as having had a successful year, but I think most people not on long term contracts will have highly variable monthly incomes. My lowest monthly income: EUR 457 (in January too. That month was difficult).…
Beware of having only a single long term contract, please diversify. If your contract ever falls through you need instant back-up, not after the 3 months or so that it will take to get your order pipeline filled. You need several customers in parallel to be stable as a freelancer, not one big one.
If you have a long contract you can make up a big enough buffer in your business account so you can go months without any business income and still pay yourself a decent salary.
Other bonus is giving yourself a massive dividend now and again :}
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, it is hard but not "incredibly" hard. Not all clients there are bottom feeders, even though the majority probably are. Even then, it still definitely beats being an employee on a fixed salary in most "developed" countries. Someone told me that the average programmer in Poland makes 800 EUR/month. That doesn't sound spectacular either ;-)
850 EUR is average salary in Poland (before taxation). Programmers would usually get more, at least in big cities.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As _delirium[1] mentioned, I can't detail every range (there are more people making $20k or less). At the moment, people making $200k or more are 15% only. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6464829
It's still your second largest group. At the time I wrote the above, it was 70% of your respondents. Stick a >$300k on there, and I wouldn't be surprised if a big slice of that group shifts right over to it. Incidentally, in response to _delirium, we really need to stop thinking of $200k as "a lot of money". That's an achievable wage for a good developer. Describing it in terms normally reserved for fantasy rather th…
Sure, you can make more than that, but in a general discussion about freelancing, it's not all that interesting to break down fine gradations of the upper-middle-class, which can be usefully bundled into the category of "people who are very successful at consulting/freelancing". Heck, I'd probably put the cutoff at $150k+ if I were designing a poll, since above that threshold you are no longer trying to make it as a full-time consultant who can support a good lifestyle.
I do think it could be interesting to break out the truly wealthy, adding a separate category for $1m+. But there isn't really any interesting difference between $200k and $300k.