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Ask HN: What is your daily rate?

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Re: Ask HN: What is your daily rate?

#91

Post by xpto123 »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #90
xpto123 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me charging 25% to the contractor for the live of the contract is completely unjustifiable just for posting a job in some site and some emails and phone calls.

You may not like it, but there's no justification needed other than both parties to the agreement being happy with it.

I dont think anyone would be happy with such a lopsided agreement. Its borderline extorsion, it does not happen at this scale in many more professions. Developers are really taken advantage of by these intermediary companies that add no value after the initial contact. Their margins are growing thinner and maybe in a few years many of these companies are out of business.

Re: Ask HN: What is your daily rate?

#92

Post by xpto123 »

stinos wrote: post #46
xpto123 wrote: post #2

I'll start: My current daily rate is 62.5 EUR/hour, and currently work in Belgium (non-remote worker, 8 years exp.). I work as Java developer/architect and my main skills are Java, JavaScript, Spring, Hibernate, GWT, Camel, SOAP/REST web services, Maven

Is that before or after taxes? As a contractor?

This is before taxes, TVA excluded, as a contractor.

Re: Ask HN: What is your daily rate?

#93

Post by majc2 »

xpto123 wrote: post #80
majc2 wrote: post #26

I don't think your hypothesis is correct. There are sites out there that already aggregate the permanent and contract markets. (i.e. itjobswatch.co.uk) - I'm sure others exist for other territories. I know its fashionable to bash recruiters - and man do a bunch of them deserve it. But for contractors/freelancers - if you don't like selling then service companies/recruiters are your friend. Quit thinking of them as us…

For me charging 25% to the contractor for the live of the contract is completely unjustifiable just for posting a job in some site and some emails and phone calls.

The contractor is not really being charged 25%. Sure the agency, might end up with 25% (but I suspect its less).

The recruitment agency gets money, because they've taken the time to build a relationship/do sales stuff/navigate a procurement department/convincing someone they can solve the clients problem (I need more resource!).

Re: Ask HN: What is your daily rate?

#94

Post by thedufer »

patio11 wrote: post #87
thedufer wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the argument is that most top commenters (which I suspect correlates quite well with high rates) are not pseudonymous, and thus unlikely to respond. See: patio11, tptacek, etc.

FWIW: I bet you that there exist people with 0 < n < 100 HN karma who have weekly rates which beat Thomas' and my peak career rates, combined.

Oh, I don't doubt it. Outliers among outliers and all that.

I didn't mean to pick you two out as particularly high earners among the top HN users, FTR. You're just the two username/real name pairs I can come up with off the top of my head.

Re: Ask HN: What is your daily rate?

#95

Post by instakill »

SyneRyder wrote: post #75
instakill wrote: post #32

$80 - $150 per hour (depending on the project) capped at 10 hours per week. Live in a GMT +2 area. 4 years rails XP. Help maintain a very big legacy codebase and have built a rails backend that served an education site that got thousands of concurrent visitors at peak. Know enough devops to provision a secure server, and do deployments via capistrano or ansible.

Is that capped at 10 hours per week per client, or in total?

Total. I like my free time.

Re: Ask HN: What is your daily rate?

#96

Post by instakill »

jberryman wrote: post #85
instakill wrote: post #32

$80 - $150 per hour (depending on the project) capped at 10 hours per week. Live in a GMT +2 area. 4 years rails XP. Help maintain a very big legacy codebase and have built a rails backend that served an education site that got thousands of concurrent visitors at peak. Know enough devops to provision a secure server, and do deployments via capistrano or ansible.

I'm also interested in what you mean by "10 hours per week" and how you present that to clients, and what sort of pushback (or not) you've experienced from clients about that.

Exactly that. I won't offer more of my leisure time to clients per week. Haven't had any upset about it yet.

Re: Ask HN: What is your daily rate?

#97

Post by xpto123 »

majc2 wrote: post #93
xpto123 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me charging 25% to the contractor for the live of the contract is completely unjustifiable just for posting a job in some site and some emails and phone calls.

The contractor is not really being charged 25%. Sure the agency, might end up with 25% (but I suspect its less). The recruitment agency gets money, because they've taken the time to build a relationship/do sales stuff/navigate a procurement department/convincing someone they can solve the clients problem (I need more resource!).

Navigating procurement departments does not add any value to anything.

In the age of the internet, if a company needs some resources then the hiring manager could place the job description directly in some website instead of asking a recruiter to do it for him.

He can filter out CVs much more effectively by keywords using some GUI rather asking a recruiter to ask for the keywords on the phone.

He sends a mail/phones the candidate for an interview, how hard could it be? He needs to interview the candidate anyway.

I don't see how a few hours of administrative work for a hiring manager could justify the fortune that the procurement department will spend with the margin payed to the intermediary.

Re: Ask HN: What is your daily rate?

#98

Post by dysfunction »

artmageddon wrote: post #74

Does this include salaried positions? Right now the rate I'm earning is about $41/hr($328/day) in the northeast US at a small company. A few years ago I was getting $50/hr on a consulting gig, but that required a 4 hour commute(2hrs each way to NYC). I'm primarily a C# developer, but I have experience in C++, Java, SQL, and a little bit of webdev(HTML/JS). I've worked on a few mobile apps in iOS and Android(the latte…

Regular employee is different from contract, as contractor's taxes will be (much) higher and you have benefits such as health insurance included in your salary. I bet that $41/hr as a regular employee goes a lot farther than $50/hr as a contractor. Though that does still seem underpaid for 10 years' experience.

Re: Ask HN: What is your daily rate?

#99

Post by artmageddon »

dysfunction wrote: post #98
artmageddon wrote: post #74

Does this include salaried positions? Right now the rate I'm earning is about $41/hr($328/day) in the northeast US at a small company. A few years ago I was getting $50/hr on a consulting gig, but that required a 4 hour commute(2hrs each way to NYC). I'm primarily a C# developer, but I have experience in C++, Java, SQL, and a little bit of webdev(HTML/JS). I've worked on a few mobile apps in iOS and Android(the latte…

Regular employee is different from contract, as contractor's taxes will be (much) higher and you have benefits such as health insurance included in your salary. I bet that $41/hr as a regular employee goes a lot farther than $50/hr as a contractor. Though that does still seem underpaid for 10 years' experience.

Yeah, all that had crossed my mind too, thanks for your comment on that. The reason I took this position was largely influenced by the fact I'd have a life. Having a commuting reduction from 2 hours each way to 20 minutes each way has made a huge difference in my quality of life. It's just that now I'd like to try to get more, and I'm in a better position to focus more time on getting myself up to a higher level(rather than fighting for a seat on mass transit).
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