for contractors the day rate is the key metric not yearly income as you will want to manipulate that to optimize your tax situation.
Poll: Freelancers/Consultants – What's your yearly income?
61–70 of 123 posts
Re: Poll: Freelancers/Consultants – What's your yearly income?
#62You'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.
I know an ex CTO (in the mobile space) who has charged several thousand dollars for an hours work.
Re: Poll: Freelancers/Consultants – What's your yearly income?
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Why do we "need" to start doing something that's false? $200k+ is a lot of money. It's a top-5% household income in the U.S. (and that's including dual-earning households). You can live a very good life just about everywhere with it. I live a very good life in an expensive city on less! Heck, it's a very good income even if you limit yourself only to technologists in the Valley, a rather rarified social milieu: most…
its 50% and long term in terms of retirement and savings an extra 100k makes a hell of a difference.
Re: Poll: Freelancers/Consultants – What's your yearly income?
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do we "need" to start doing something that's false? $200k+ is a lot of money. It's a top-5% household income in the U.S. (and that's including dual-earning households). You can live a very good life just about everywhere with it. I live a very good life in an expensive city on less! Heck, it's a very good income even if you limit yourself only to technologists in the Valley, a rather rarified social milieu: most…
its 50% and long term in terms of retirement and savings an extra 100k makes a hell of a difference.
Sure, it's more money, but it's more or less the same social class and economic position. It's enough to be teetering on the top end of upper-middle-class (compared to engineers making $100k-$150k salaries), but not enough to be truly wealthy, like people who cash out large IPO shares, or consultants/lawyers/etc. raking in 7 figures.
Re: Poll: Freelancers/Consultants – What's your yearly income?
#65Earlier 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...
Right, world commodities such as oil only differ by government taxes or subsidies. And of course, oil is the lifeblood of any industrialized nation.
Anything imported (which is probably a lot for most nations) is going to be about the same. In the Philippines, a lot of cheap stuff gets imported from China that you may not even be able to find in the U.S. because it's total crap. So, that can opener might be cheap, but it won't last more than three cans.
Land prices is another big modifier. In the Philippines, rent is generally cheap even if the land is expensive. There might be a lot of demand for buying your land, but a business isn't going to pay you much for rent if it's having to work off margins from selling cheap products in an economy where most people are making less than $6 per day. The same goes for residential. Jack up your rent and the only people who can afford it are the top few percent and foreigners.
Where you save a ton in developing countries is on labor, which affects the prices of everything just like oil does. And then of course you have savings from services provided to you directly such as medical.
Re: Poll: Freelancers/Consultants – What's your yearly income?
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Why do we "need" to start doing something that's false? $200k+ is a lot of money. It's a top-5% household income in the U.S. (and that's including dual-earning households). You can live a very good life just about everywhere with it. I live a very good life in an expensive city on less! Heck, it's a very good income even if you limit yourself only to technologists in the Valley, a rather rarified social milieu: most…
The difference between $150k and $200k is often home ownership. Personally that's a pretty big difference to me. I'd like to see numbers about consultants who can support a family of 4 and a mortgage on the peninsula.
Re: Poll: Freelancers/Consultants – What's your yearly income?
#67Last year I charged $64/hour to do embedded software development. I made around $75k, but i only worked about half the time (75k/64 = 1172 hours). I lived in Chicago and my client was 3 hours away in Fort Wayne, IN.
Good money, low overhead working in the attic (pun intended!), and worked on site about half the time (stayed with a friend who lived there).
That dried up earlier this year and I was getting tired of Chicago, so I applied to a bunch of full-time jobs in California and took a 110k/year embedded software job in San Diego. I miss contracting and working on my own hours, but this larger salary, awesome benefits, and stable income are nice too. Though I just started working on a hardware start-up on the side. I'm hoping this will get big.
Re: Poll: Freelancers/Consultants – What's your yearly income?
#68Earlier 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…
I did. Two hours later, only one person upvoted it and around 20 person upvoted the $200k+.
Re: Poll: Freelancers/Consultants – What's your yearly income?
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was doing Perl. I assume it's pretty similar: go to jobserve.com, type in Ruby contractor, hit enter.
Then, £400 a day is pretty standard for London? I frequently get offers under that value, hence my belief that this kind of pay doesn't come through normal channels. Edit: Wrote this before coffee. Thought we were talking hourly rates. Nevermind.
Depends what you do. If you work in the City you should reasonably expect £600 and up. No other sector in London pays as well.
Ruby is quite commoditised now. Take a look at, say, Scala on jobserve.com and you'll see rates are double Ruby. The only way you'll make big money as a Ruby consultant is by differentiating yourself somehow. Better go write a book. All that said, I would be very hesitant about accepting work below £400 a day. A good rule of thumb for consulting is you'll work 100 days a year. At that rate you are making about the same as a mid-level FT employee.
Also note the OP said he was a contractor. There is a fuzzy but real distinction between contractors and consultants. A contractor is typically treated like a FT employee, without the permanent job. This means working from the client's office, longer jobs (usually 6 months - 1 year), and no simultaneous engagements. Contractors typically get paid less than consultants, but there is more work going.
Re: Poll: Freelancers/Consultants – What's your yearly income?
#70You'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.
Also hourly rate is infinitely more useful. Working full time at $50/hr is a completely different lifestyle from working 20 hours/week at $100/hr.