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Poll: Freelancers/Consultants – What's your yearly income?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Poll: Freelancers/Consultants – What's your yearly income?

#81

Post by giarc »

csomar wrote: post #31
jasonkester wrote: post #2

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

It's important to have equal bin sizes as they are called. When you produce a visual representation of the data, unequal bin sizes produces visual bias.

Re: Poll: Freelancers/Consultants – What's your yearly income?

#82

Post by barrkel »

acallaghan wrote: post #77
jhspaybar wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't rents in London for even a modest place in a nice part of the city north of £500 a week though? Seems rather touch and go if you're only doing that part time.

I live outside of London and commute in via a high-speed rail link - take me about an hour to get into the office. The rents are about half the price and the 'quality of life' is about the same, especially since friends in London are still quite close. I used to live in London, was paying £1050 a month for a shitty one bedroom apartment miles away from the center - had no spare money and took just as long to commute!

My GF and I pay 1150 a month for a 3-bed house in Bow. Commute by scooter to Camden is about 12 minutes without traffic, 18 minutes with.

Rush hour public transport takes about an hour. Unless you have a serious podcast addiction or an enormous reading list, it's not worth it. Two wheels - motorized or not - are the way to go in London.

Re: Poll: Freelancers/Consultants – What's your yearly income?

#83

Post by gotrecruit »

kevingadd wrote: post #25
jacquesm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This 100x. I had four solid long-term contracts lined up as of a few months ago, scheduled so that I could make adequate progress on them without overloading myself, with the overlap set up so that I'd be protected if any one of them fell through. So far, two of them have fallen through (in the non-paying fashion) and one of them is in the process of actively falling apart. I ended up sinking a ton of energy into try…

have you ever considered the reason your deals/clients fall through because you're not dedicating enough time and energy to each one? i've had significant experience working with freelance developers and it's very obvious which ones are working with multiple clients and which one is working with only 1 or 2.

Re: Poll: Freelancers/Consultants – What's your yearly income?

#84

Post by barrkel »

dataminer wrote: post #80
troels wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Berlin is a bit of a special case though. Living expenses are very low compared to other "rich" EU countries.

What is the reason for such low living expenses in Berlin?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Berlin_population2.svg

Re: Poll: Freelancers/Consultants – What's your yearly income?

#85

Post by jacquesm »

gotrecruit wrote: post #83
kevingadd wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This 100x. I had four solid long-term contracts lined up as of a few months ago, scheduled so that I could make adequate progress on them without overloading myself, with the overlap set up so that I'd be protected if any one of them fell through. So far, two of them have fallen through (in the non-paying fashion) and one of them is in the process of actively falling apart. I ended up sinking a ton of energy into try…

have you ever considered the reason your deals/clients fall through because you're not dedicating enough time and energy to each one? i've had significant experience working with freelance developers and it's very obvious which ones are working with multiple clients and which one is working with only 1 or 2.

If a freelancer works just with 1 customer they should simply be hired.

A good strategy: 1 background job that is long running and has a reasonably low price tag because it can be pre-empted, one high priority, short bursts of work that are paid top rate and maintenance on a number of old clients that still bring in a part of the income.

That way everybody gets value for their money and the freelancer gets a good mixture of income. You're mistaken if you think that having a freelancer with only 1 or 2 customers is good for you, in the long term you'll need to rebuild your relationship with new people because your old ones will go out of business when you don't need them for a while.

Re: Poll: Freelancers/Consultants – What's your yearly income?

#86

Post by [deleted] »

walshemj wrote: post #74
_delirium wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Class is not the same as how rich you are :-) there are plenty of poor DAR WASPs who will look down on these immigrant billionaires (some of whom are sons of Abraham nudge nudge ) Bill G would be seen as "one of us" Larry Ellison much less's so.

[deleted]

Re: Poll: Freelancers/Consultants – What's your yearly income?

#87

Post by zafka »

goldscott wrote: post #67

Last 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 Chi…

Goldscott, I would like to compare notes with you. Would you send me an email? Regards, Jim

Re: Poll: Freelancers/Consultants – What's your yearly income?

#89

Post by crucialfelix »

walshemj wrote: post #60
ashray wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that work out after tax ? I imagine 200k USD would attract a ton of tax. Is there a more tax efficient way to structure it ?

You do it as a company pay your self minimum wage and take the rest as dividends is the basic idea.

really, as dividends ? I need to figure out how to do this.

does your (own) company also pay social security ?

Re: Poll: Freelancers/Consultants – What's your yearly income?

#90

Post by moopmoop »

crucialfelix wrote: post #89
walshemj wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do it as a company pay your self minimum wage and take the rest as dividends is the basic idea.

really, as dividends ? I need to figure out how to do this. does your (own) company also pay social security ?

That's pretty much correct. Dividends are tax free (at least in the UK) and you can structure things so your corporation tax is minimised (maximising various allowances, taking a cut of VAT you charge, buying lots of equipment, etc etc).

You just need a decent accountant who understands how to play this game...

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