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My salary as a full-stack developer

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Re: My salary as a full-stack developer

#71

Post by transparency21 »

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?

8 years of experience, doing mostly frontend dev, some UX design, and occasionally some full-stack.

Rule of thumb: Whatever you were making as a full-time employee, divide your annual salary by 2,000 to get your hourly rate, then multiply by 2-3x to cover your overhead costs (rent, equipment, health insurance), as well as client uncertainty (won't pay (on time), time between projects, etc.).

Contracting for public tech companies / big entities, I shoot for $250/hr and am happy with anything above $175/hr. Contracting for smaller companies / startups, absolute minimum $75/hr, and only if I really like them.

Re: My salary as a full-stack developer

#72

Post by meragrin_ »

delphinius81 wrote: post #53
the_only_law wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but is someone making $6k a month in the top bracket in these places?

No, but as a contractor you have to pay the full payroll tax (15%) + all the other SS / medicare costs (usually comes to about 2-3%), plus income tax (progressive and varies, but for this bracket is probably federal 15-20%, and up to 10% state). So, add it all up, and it's ~40-45%. Then they have to cover their own health insurance, which again, depends on state, but could be 400-700/mo. So yeah, it's easy to end up…

There are cities which take their own cut and then you can also have school income taxes. I wonder if any counties have an income tax.

Re: My salary as a full-stack developer

#73

Post by brianwawok »

pc86 wrote: post #65
happytoexplain wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Yah exactly. A scrum master will also say never try to equate points to hours, its a losing game.

But being able to look back in May and say we logged 32% of all development hours on bugs is a very useful metric for me the business owner / dev lead.

(In addition we don't do story points on bugs. I am so far away from the by the book agile thing, I don't even know if this is correct or not anymore).

Re: My salary as a full-stack developer

#74

Post by moshmosh »

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?

Your rate would be about normal for someone just starting out in their career, in a 3rd- or 4th-tier city with a local employer. On salary, not contract. So give them another, oh, $15-20K/yr to account for 7.5% employer-paid FICA and benefits.

IOW it is very, very low for a contracting rate just about anywhere in the US. It's under normal for a junior in flyover country. If you're getting a bunch of free time out of this gig, consider going part-time without changing what you're asking. $6k/m is what you could charge for a per-week commitment of 10-20 hours (depending on your experience, stack, et c). Then either officially slack off during your down time since you're not "on the clock" at all, or take other gigs. Or jump ship. You can easily beat that rate somewhere else, with a remote job, and probably locally unless you live nowhere near anything resembling a city. Most jobs that'd pay you double that (or more) won't have you killing yourself with work, either, though your workload might be higher than it is now.

Re: My salary as a full-stack developer

#76

Post by lowercased »

Solvitieg wrote: post #6
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?

> I'm currently making 6,000 USD per month. After paying my taxes, this leaves me around 3,000 USD to spend each month. Just curious, why is your blended tax rate 50%

It's USD, but is OP based in the US? There may also be some other deductions (retirement, etc) that are being taken out which mentally gets lumped in as 'taxes' but aren't taxes.

Re: My salary as a full-stack developer

#77

Post by wooque »

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?

It's fine if you are in Eastern Europe or something like myself, I have ~$5400 monthly salary (don't log hours, so don't know hourly rate, also logging hours is a red flag for me). But if you are in the US that is very low for your experience.

Also look into lowering taxes, 50% is super high. I manage to pay low (flat) tax in my country because I registered self-proprietorship/registered entrepreneur company and have flat tax rate (it's an option if you meet some conditions). Maybe something similar exist in your country, do the research, contact professional accountant if needed.

Re: My salary as a full-stack developer

#78

Post by notJim »

throwaway567855 wrote: post #25
notJim wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IME if location is a factor, it's usually a different of 10-15%, so it's not like you're making $200k in SF and $80k in Ohio. More like 200k in SF and 180k in Ohio. YMMV of course.

I think it can range to a lot more than that. I make 400k as a senior eng in a big tech company in the Bay Area with 6 years of experience. I don’t think I’d make 340k-360k in low cost of living areas.

I'm speaking (from experience) about working remotely for big tech companies, not working for local companies. Based on the levels.fyi reference, I assumed that's what the parent post was referring to.

Re: My salary as a full-stack developer

#80

Post by trulyme »

pc86 wrote: post #44
qeternity wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

50% effective at $72k/yr. I genuinely cannot figure out the geography for this.

Candyland, maybe. There's no jurisdiction in the world that I am aware of where you can both 1) be a remote developer, 2) pay a 50% effective rate on $6k/mo. Even marginal rate is pushing it for that low of an income.

Let me introduce you to Eastern Europe then. Lots of smart and well educated people, western-like culture, big taxes and fees (50% sounds right), and the rate sounds right for a capable developer, especially if he is a quasi-employee, as this sounds. Remote work is an option, but the US companies that do that often skip EU altogether and hire in "cheaper" places (India comes to mind).
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