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My salary as a full-stack developer

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Re: My salary as a full-stack developer

#61

Post by dawnerd »

aqme28 wrote: post #27
dreyfan wrote: post #5

If they're suddenly asking you to log your hours, they're looking for a reason to terminate/replace you.

Don't attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. A previous job made us track our hours so that we could "improve estimates," but mostly it only made people unhappy.

It’s important if your billing against a clients retainer or per an hourly contract. There’s also cases where some time might be able to count as part of the R&D tax credit.

We ask all of our employees and contractors to track time against tasks. Yes it can be a pain but it helps prevent people from spending way more time on a task than there was budget for.

Re: My salary as a full-stack developer

#62

Post by jaywalk »

xtracto wrote: post #14
misterremote wrote: post #2

Is my salary fine or should I ask more? I feel like I should ask more. Would be helpful to hear about your salary and hourly price?

Toptal salaries for Sr. software engineer range between 41/hr and 75/hr gross, so I think yours should fall within that range. https://www.glassdoor.sg/Salary/Toptal-US-Salaries-EI_IE8820... Edit: See also X-team salaries: https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/X-Team-Salaries-E1274500.ht... between 40/hr and 60/hr.

Why did you pick Toptal? From those numbers, their technical people are grossly underpaid. $85k/year for their Director of Engineering? That's laughable.

Re: My salary as a full-stack developer

#64

Post by flatline »

paxys wrote: post #19

To put things in perspective, based on recent experience my company has had getting specialists with 15-20 years of technical experience to work on a fixed-term contract (anything from 6 weeks to 6+ months), $250/hr would be considered a steal.

$250/hr is a reasonable ballpark figure. Working as a contractor, providing own benefits. I've worked with a lot of people in this position. He should expect to pull about $300k/yr gross, which is about how a company is going to allocate costs for a full time employee. He needs to be setting aside money for retirement, paying for health insurance, paying all relevant taxes, compensating himself for his own expenditures such as laptop, and paying himself a comparable wage for the industry.

Re: My salary as a full-stack developer

#65

Post by pc86 »

happytoexplain wrote: post #57
pc86 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if you want it to be accurate.

In my experience, points are more accurate than hours, since most people work with high variability in productivity over time that can't be captured by a mechanism as crude as a stopwatch, so a corollary metric creates a more accurate number than an absolute metric.

We're also talking about measurement after the fact.

"How many points did you spend on that story last week?" is not something anyone is going to accurately answer (and it doesn't mean anything, anyway).

Re: My salary as a full-stack developer

#66

Post by falcolas »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #41

Are those pre-tax and post-tax numbers correct? That's a tax rate of almost 50%, which sounds nuts. You should definitely be getting more than 37 USD/hour as a contractor. That's wildly low.

For a contractor, where the employer is not paying half of the employment taxes, it's not too out of line.

And yes, as a DevOps developer a few years back, I was able to charge $120 an hour without an issue. My roughly desired pay per hour, times two to cover the un-billable, yet still required, work to be an independent contractor, and another 2x for taxes and health benefits.

Re: My salary as a full-stack developer

#67

Post by jaywalk »

msbarnett wrote: post #45
xtracto wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Toptal salaries for Sr. software engineer range between 41/hr and 75/hr gross, so I think yours should fall within that range. https://www.glassdoor.sg/Salary/Toptal-US-Salaries-EI_IE8820... Edit: See also X-team salaries: https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/X-Team-Salaries-E1274500.ht... between 40/hr and 60/hr.

Toptal gets away with massively underpaying Sr Devs by hiring them from relatively cheap countries where that money goes a long way. A US-based Sr Dev contractor working remotely, making 75/hr, is being massively ripped off if they're capable of working with any even remotely commercially viable technology.

I think the numbers on Glassdoor are representing actual Toptal employees, not their contractors.

Re: My salary as a full-stack developer

#68

Post by jaywalk »

imustbeevil wrote: post #31
oh_sigh wrote: post #18

I bet OP could get a job at a FAANG maybe a level lower than they are expecting, and then just coast while making $200k+/yr with little chance of burn out. I'm not recommending it but it works for me.

I would imagine if someone had the desire and ability* to get a job at a FAANG they'd have a job at a FAANG. FAANG jobs are, quite frankly, an insignificant fraction of the market. The overwhelming majority of developers are like the OP.

> I would imagine if someone could get a job at a FAANG they'd have a job at a FAANG.

Why would you imagine that? Plenty of highly skilled people do not hold a FAANG job up as some kind of holy grail of jobs.

Re: My salary as a full-stack developer

#69

Post by temp329192 »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #41

Are those pre-tax and post-tax numbers correct? That's a tax rate of almost 50%, which sounds nuts. You should definitely be getting more than 37 USD/hour as a contractor. That's wildly low.

I'm on the low end, but still at about $70. I think $37 brings across a wrong signal to the other party as well.

Re: My salary as a full-stack developer

#70

Post by hinkley »

paxys wrote: post #29
dreyfan wrote: post #5

If they're suddenly asking you to log your hours, they're looking for a reason to terminate/replace you.

To me it's bizarre that a contractor wasn't logging their hours in the first place, so it sounds more like fixing their earlier mistake rather than something malicious.

Still, stay sharp.
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