5 ms·

I have read more than one post on hn about freelance developers bragging about how much money they are making and handing out advice to others for how to make m

by AJ007 11y ago

I have read more than one post on hn about freelance developers bragging about how much money they are making and handing out advice to others for how to make more. When this 'bubble' deflates, dev salaries are going to take a big hit and it is going to be painful. The best advice for those of you getting paid $150+ an hour is save your money and don't take on long term liabilities.

exstudent2 11y ago
Why would contractors suffer? Generally when the economy dives it's full-time employees that get replaced by contractors. Also, $150 /hr is a pretty low rate even in the leanest of times. EDIT: Really surprised at the down votes on this. What I'm saying is hardly radical. There seems to be a lot of sour grapes in this thread sadly. My tip: don't envy those doing better than you, learn from them.
- bshimmin 11y ago
  Yeah, practically a McDonald's salary. I am reminded of that lovely remark once made by Boris Johnson's, London's blond bombshell of a mayor, when asked about his £250,000 a year contract to write a column for The Daily Telegraph: "It's chicken feed."
  - exstudent2 11y ago
    You do realize that most contractors don't have 100% utilization (far from it) and also don't get paid for time it takes to make sales, find clients, they pay for their own health insurance... $150 /hr is basically the least you're going to want to charge. Realistically you're going to be looking at 90-120k /year depending on how much work you land at that rate. For highly skilled intellectual work, that's not very much money.
    - jazzyk 11y ago
      Hello form planet Earth: It is not what you "want to charge", it is what they are willing to pay you, that counts.
      - exstudent2 11y ago
        Right and plenty of companies will pay > $150 /hr, on planet Earth.
- hibikir 11y ago
  $150/hr for a contract that will last 5 hours is terrible, because of all your overhead costs. If the contract lasts 8 months, is likely to be renewed, and you are expected to bill around 40 hours a week, the overhead is pretty much gone, so it's very easy to make comparisons with salaried work. Around here in the midwest, under those long-term circumstances, many contractors don't hit the three figures. A whole lot of senior devs around here are slumming it at a $50-$80/hr range.
  - exstudent2 11y ago
    > $150/hr for a contract that will last 5 hours is terrible, because of all your overhead costs. That was my point about how $150 isn't some insane amount of money. Depending on the length of contract, it may be almost nothing at all with the overhead factored in. Out of curiosity are those senior devs keeping their skills up, or are they programming in Java/.NET or something similar? At those rates I'd definitely be interested in taking a look at their CVs since I often need to hire developers. It's WAY below market.
    - steven777400 11y ago
      Platforms such as Java or .NET make up a lot of the developer community, just not the visible (startup/tech) community. I'm classified as a "senior developer" at my day job ($90K/year) and I also do contracting ($60/hour). I could probably eek up both of those numbers a little bit, but not a lot without having to move to the cutting edge of technology. There's a lot of folks like me who program on older, non-sexy, maintenance roles on established systems which use older technologies. Outside of big cities, these positions don't generally command a big wage.
      - exstudent2 11y ago
        > I could probably eek up both of those numbers a little bit, but not a lot without having to move to the cutting edge of technology. That's my point. As a developer (especially a contractor) you must always be learning new things and technology. It also helps to specialize in a field/domain. If you're a senior developer you could absolutely make double $60/hr as a contractor by just focusing on the business side of contracting a bit more.
- rhino369 11y ago
  Presumable some/many of those full time employees will become contractors. Increasing the supply of available contractors. What happened to contractor pay in 2000?
  - exstudent2 11y ago
    > Presumable some/many of those full time employees will become contractors. Increasing the supply of available contractors. My experience is most of these people will leave the industry. Very few have the skillset to become an independent contractor because of all the sales and marketing involved (in addition to the tech skill set you're actually selling). > What happened to contractor pay in 2000? I have no official data, but I was contracting at the time and continued to raise my rate a reasonable amount at semi-regular intervals (every year or two). During that time, people needed to get work done but they wanted one super contractor to do the work that a team of middling engineers used to do, for 1/5 the cost.
- erdojo 11y ago
  $150/hour is rare for anyone except so-called 10x developers on shortish term contracts.
  - exstudent2 11y ago
    Absolutely not, it's a base rate for most full-time consultants. "10x developers" and specialists make MUCH more.
cdelsolar 11y ago
Hey look it's a bubble deflating comment again for the millionth time in the last 5 years.
jacquesm 11y ago
> The best advice for those of you getting paid $150+ an hour is save your money and don't take on long term liabilities. That's good advice, regardless of how much you earn (but it might need a 'save your money when you can'). Spending money when you don't actually have to is a bad strategy when you're young and you can still materially alter you later-in-life situation with relatively little funds. That's why I hate student debt of any form, it saddles those that would benefit the most from some savings with debt so they can't start to save until they're in their mid 30's or even later.

by AJ007 11y ago

exstudent2 11y ago

Why would contractors suffer? Generally when the economy dives it's full-time employees that get replaced by contractors. Also, $150 /hr is a pretty low rate even in the leanest of times. EDIT: Really surprised at the down votes on this. What I'm saying is hardly radical. There seems to be a lot of sour grapes in this thread sadly. My tip: don't envy those doing better than you, learn from them.

bshimmin 11y ago
Yeah, practically a McDonald's salary. I am reminded of that lovely remark once made by Boris Johnson's, London's blond bombshell of a mayor, when asked about his £250,000 a year contract to write a column for The Daily Telegraph: "It's chicken feed."
- exstudent2 11y ago
  You do realize that most contractors don't have 100% utilization (far from it) and also don't get paid for time it takes to make sales, find clients, they pay for their own health insurance... $150 /hr is basically the least you're going to want to charge. Realistically you're going to be looking at 90-120k /year depending on how much work you land at that rate. For highly skilled intellectual work, that's not very much money.
  - jazzyk 11y ago
    Hello form planet Earth: It is not what you "want to charge", it is what they are willing to pay you, that counts.
    - exstudent2 11y ago
      Right and plenty of companies will pay > $150 /hr, on planet Earth.
hibikir 11y ago
$150/hr for a contract that will last 5 hours is terrible, because of all your overhead costs. If the contract lasts 8 months, is likely to be renewed, and you are expected to bill around 40 hours a week, the overhead is pretty much gone, so it's very easy to make comparisons with salaried work. Around here in the midwest, under those long-term circumstances, many contractors don't hit the three figures. A whole lot of senior devs around here are slumming it at a $50-$80/hr range.
- exstudent2 11y ago
  > $150/hr for a contract that will last 5 hours is terrible, because of all your overhead costs. That was my point about how $150 isn't some insane amount of money. Depending on the length of contract, it may be almost nothing at all with the overhead factored in. Out of curiosity are those senior devs keeping their skills up, or are they programming in Java/.NET or something similar? At those rates I'd definitely be interested in taking a look at their CVs since I often need to hire developers. It's WAY below market.
  - steven777400 11y ago
    Platforms such as Java or .NET make up a lot of the developer community, just not the visible (startup/tech) community. I'm classified as a "senior developer" at my day job ($90K/year) and I also do contracting ($60/hour). I could probably eek up both of those numbers a little bit, but not a lot without having to move to the cutting edge of technology. There's a lot of folks like me who program on older, non-sexy, maintenance roles on established systems which use older technologies. Outside of big cities, these positions don't generally command a big wage.
    - exstudent2 11y ago
      > I could probably eek up both of those numbers a little bit, but not a lot without having to move to the cutting edge of technology. That's my point. As a developer (especially a contractor) you must always be learning new things and technology. It also helps to specialize in a field/domain. If you're a senior developer you could absolutely make double $60/hr as a contractor by just focusing on the business side of contracting a bit more.
rhino369 11y ago
Presumable some/many of those full time employees will become contractors. Increasing the supply of available contractors. What happened to contractor pay in 2000?
- exstudent2 11y ago
  > Presumable some/many of those full time employees will become contractors. Increasing the supply of available contractors. My experience is most of these people will leave the industry. Very few have the skillset to become an independent contractor because of all the sales and marketing involved (in addition to the tech skill set you're actually selling). > What happened to contractor pay in 2000? I have no official data, but I was contracting at the time and continued to raise my rate a reasonable amount at semi-regular intervals (every year or two). During that time, people needed to get work done but they wanted one super contractor to do the work that a team of middling engineers used to do, for 1/5 the cost.
erdojo 11y ago
$150/hour is rare for anyone except so-called 10x developers on shortish term contracts.
- exstudent2 11y ago
  Absolutely not, it's a base rate for most full-time consultants. "10x developers" and specialists make MUCH more.

cdelsolar 11y ago

Hey look it's a bubble deflating comment again for the millionth time in the last 5 years.

jacquesm 11y ago

> The best advice for those of you getting paid $150+ an hour is save your money and don't take on long term liabilities. That's good advice, regardless of how much you earn (but it might need a 'save your money when you can'). Spending money when you don't actually have to is a bad strategy when you're young and you can still materially alter you later-in-life situation with relatively little funds. That's why I hate student debt of any form, it saddles those that would benefit the most from some savings with debt so they can't start to save until they're in their mid 30's or even later.