So You Want to be A Freelancer • Hacker News Board

Re: So You Want to be A Freelancer

#81

Post by zdw » Fri, Jul 12, 2013, 10:26 PM UTC

bdunn wrote: post #35

zdw wrote: post #21

Anyone charging less than $100/hr is probably underselling themselves. The only time you should charge less than that is on very long term contracts with hundreds or thousands of hours, and then, only hesitantly. People make assumptions based on what you charge - frankly, I've found that people tended to blow me off when I charged much less than this, and actually listen when they know they're paying a decent amount…

When we link freelancing rates with salaries, we can easily get led astray by: "OMG $200 an hour — that's like $400k a year full-time! That's insane!" If you're looking to augment staff as a contractor, whoever hires you is going to want to compare your hourly rate with what they're paying their team — so it's going to be tricky to break through that ceiling. But if you're working with clients who have problems to so…

My reply to this line of reasoning is:

"Yeah, think of the break you're getting - where else could you buy a 400k/year caliber employee for the handful of hours you need them? It's a great bargain!"

Re: So You Want to be A Freelancer

#82

Post by boothead » Sat, Jul 13, 2013, 3:54 PM UTC

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #77

boothead wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree except for recommending SJD. They are a good accountancy firm but when I was with them they would only do my accounts through a really horrid excel spreadsheet. This time round I've gone with http://www.nimblejackaccounting.co.uk/ who bundle an account with freeagent (which is probably the best contractor accounting package out there) AND the set up of your limited company in their monthly fee. If you're going…

Is that spouse-as-a-director trick legal ? (The idea is that if the company bills 100,000 pounds it pays corp tax of 20,000. Then the director can withdraw the profit of 80k as a dividend. Since a tax has already been paid on the 100k the 80k is free of income tax. However income tax is charged at two levels in the uk (25% and 40%). The govt says that the first level of 25% has already been paid (by corp tax at 20%).…

Perfectly legal! I get most of my tax info from taxcafe.co.uk. The best book they sell is called "using a company to save money".

By the way we met at one of the find a tech job meet ups recently. I'm interested in your OSS in government idea. How about you drop me a line next time you're in the city? I'm ben at perurbis.com (no website yet)

Re: So You Want to be A Freelancer

#83

Post by lifeisstillgood » Sat, Jul 13, 2013, 9:32 PM UTC

boothead wrote: post #82

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that spouse-as-a-director trick legal ? (The idea is that if the company bills 100,000 pounds it pays corp tax of 20,000. Then the director can withdraw the profit of 80k as a dividend. Since a tax has already been paid on the 100k the 80k is free of income tax. However income tax is charged at two levels in the uk (25% and 40%). The govt says that the first level of 25% has already been paid (by corp tax at 20%).…

Perfectly legal! I get most of my tax info from taxcafe.co.uk. The best book they sell is called "using a company to save money". By the way we met at one of the find a tech job meet ups recently. I'm interested in your OSS in government idea. How about you drop me a line next time you're in the city? I'm ben at perurbis.com (no website yet)

Thanks Ben - have both dropped you a line and ordering tax books.

And of course wasting no time plugging the Open Source campaign - http://www.oss4gov.org/manifesto

Cheers

Re: So You Want to be A Freelancer

#84

Post by flyinRyan » Mon, Jul 15, 2013, 12:13 PM UTC

mathattack wrote: post #80

flyinRyan wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But $800/day is still significantly more than $100k/yr even after taking those things into account. For me both those numbers were higher but it came to a 45% increase if I only took 6 weeks vacation.

It was a little more than 100K, but I'm being purposefully vague on the exact #s. But let's do some back of the envelope math: $800 day * 250 days (10 holidays) * 75% (3/4 billable) = 150K - 10K ? Social Security - 5K No more 401K match - 10K Health Insurance (Multiply for a family) - 5K Training - 5K Other benefits (leave, sick days, life insurance, etc) ------ 115K Some of these numbers may be off, and I've missed…

Wait a minute. When you said $800/day I assumed you must be talking contracting [1]. Freelancing would be more like $300/HOUR, not $800/day. That would be an utterly insane rate for consulting.

[1] Consulting would be more like 9/10 billable or even more. Some contractors take the absolute minimum required time off since they're paid by the day (I've heard of guys who haven't had a consistent week off for years), which would put them at 11+/10 relatively.

Re: So You Want to be A Freelancer

#85

Post by flyinRyan » Mon, Jul 15, 2013, 12:15 PM UTC

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #76

flyinRyan wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Head hunter. It's really, really easy. Remember, they don't make money unless you're making money. Just be careful that they don't screw you on the rate (you should always try to find out from the company what they're paying for you so you can see what the agency is actually taking because they will lie about it).

Head hunter or "recruitment agent"? As in a specialist looking for top notch talent or just a cv mover? Mostly because I have never met one of the former ;-)

They want to be called agent, but "pimp" or "head hunter" is closer to what they do. The parallel with a Hollywood/sports agent doesn't really exist, and to be fair we wouldn't realistically want to pay enough to justify such a model.

They are just CV movers but they often know key individuals within different companies and even provide kick backs. As slimy as they can be at times they have connections that a sterile CV in a pile of sterile CVs just can't have.