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I'm 1/3 of a three person dev. shop — does that count? We charge 250/person/hr and have been doing 40+ hr weeks for the last few years. We'll also make some mar
by defarobot 9y ago
I'm 1/3 of a three person dev. shop — does that count? We charge 250/person/hr and have been doing 40+ hr weeks for the last few years. We'll also make some margin if we need to sub out occasionally as client needs increase. This stability is really shaky though as all this work was from a single client.
- cronjobma 9y agoYou've been making 7-figures of a single client for a few years?
- k__ 9y agoHow do consulting shops charge so much? I mean, yes they got higher overhead than a single dev, but that's their own problem and not the problem of the client, so what's the difference fro a single dev here?
- HeyLaughingBoy 9y agoThe single dev isn't charging enough?
- k__ 9y agoLast time I told someone I want 100€ an hour he laughed at me. I charge per month, but it would be about 40€ an hour.
- HeyLaughingBoy 9y agoOTOH, the last time I told someone I wanted $200/hour, he said "if you can fix the problem today, I'll write you a check on the spot!"
- k__ 9y agoHaha, yes. A friend of mine took 80€ a hour but they only took like 20-30h a month. I charged per month, got paid below 80€/h but ended up with much more than him. But well, here are some people on HN who charge per hour AND get more absolute... so it's probably also a bit of luck?
- lojack 9y agoYou're asking a few questions here. I can answer from my experience working at a consulting shop that charged a lot of money... > Are they charging more because of overhead? Partially. There's overhead you wouldn't get with a single developer like office space and administrative overhead. A big overlooked piece of overhead is sales overhead. It's much easier to find 40 hours of consulting work a week than 120 hours of work. If its a premium development shop, the developer salaries are probably higher as well. This all may cut into the margins, but it doesn't really explain why they charge so much. > Why do they charge so much? Because they have clients who are willing to pay that much. Plain and simple. > What does the client get that they wouldn't with a single developer? Some companies are bad at finding and retaining talent. This includes contractors. They also might not know how to manage a project. For a lot of companies, they need something done, but this simply isn't their area of expertise. Some single developers can manage their own projects, but sometimes they need more than just a single developer. The workload may be much higher than what a single person could manage, and hiring 3 individual developers can be much less efficient than hiring a team of 3 developers who already work well together. Perhaps they need a designer as well, or they're looking for a project manager who is really good at communicating business needs with them.
- k__ 9y agoSo you're saying it's a team factor and a single dev can't get into that 200€/person/hour range?
- morgante 9y agoExperienced solo devs can get into the $200/hr range.
- lojack 9y agoI'd never attach a number to anything I said because its all relative, and I'd just be asking to be proven wrong. Like all things its pretty relative. There's teams that can charge more than developers and developers that can charge more as teams. The number you threw out doesn't seem unreasonable though.