4 ms·
Sure - so let's say you have PI insurance of $100/week, and you do an international flight each week also at $1000/rt. This still leaves you with $28,900/week
by nstj 10y ago
Sure - so let's say you have PI insurance of $100/week, and you do an international flight each week also at $1000/rt. This still leaves you with $28,900/week pre-tax? What other major expenses can you see with private software consulting?
- cperciva 10y agoA "rack rate" is not a typical rate, so he'd presumably take in less money than you're assuming. He lives in Japan and most of his customers would probably be in the USA, so if he wants to be able to function he should be flying business class. He also needs somewhere to stay, transportation, and food while in the customer's city; and it is the nature of consultancies to not have anywhere approaching 100% utilization, due to time spent on research, promotion, and networking, and the fact that gigs never fall neatly into your schedule. I'd guess that "full time consulting" would work out roughly along the lines of * Average billing per week of consulting: $15k * Round trip business class airfare: $3k * Hotel, food, transportation at destination: $2k * Profit per week of consulting: $10k * Weeks spent doing consulting per year: 20 * Take-home (gross) salary: $200k I'd guess this is more than Stripe pays him, but not dramatically more; and if I had a wife and child I would certainly prefer to not spend half the year away from them.
- idlewords 10y agoWhy not just ask him rather than derive it from first principles?
- kchoudhu 10y agoThat might puncture the brand-management force field.
- notabeliever 10y agoSo much for Patio transparency
- mythrowaway99 10y agoSeems relevant: http://i.imgur.com/aTQzGZn.png http://i.imgur.com/aTQzGZn.png
- patio11 10y agoIf I were running a consultancy full-time, and didn't hire anyone, I'd model that as 35 billed weeks a year at $30k. Travel to a client is billed to the client separately via a magical sentence that Thomas taught me: "I will expense travel as per your standard travel policy." I'd assume roughly $50k to $100k in overhead (legal and tax advice, travel to conferences to do prospecting, etc). I have never ran a consultancy full-time, and didn't particularly want to start now. It was certainly an option, but spending a few years building Atlas seems much more fulfilling.
- nstj 10y ago> I have never ran a consultancy full-time, and didn't particularly want to start now Just interested - does that mean that you've never actually been a full-time consultant? And do you really think that it's within the realm of possibility to pull $30k/week for 35 weeks/year? (ie: $1m+ after your $50-100k in expenses).
- kasey_junk 10y agoI don't know if Patrick could do that, but I've been on the other side of deals materially equivalent to those numbers. A 30k rack rate at those utilization rate is a high number but not an impossible one. It is not a number you will get for software contracting. It's one you'll get for solving business problems that cost/are worth much more to your clients than that. Sometimes that involves software.
- nstj 10y agoI don't doubt it. I've certainly seen people bill similarly (and obviously it doesn't involve writing that much code) - I'm just trying to put the pieces together in this context.
- tptacek 10y agoThe examples I'm thinking about are entirely code-based, with virtually no business reasoning involved.