9 ms·

240/hr is a lot of money, especially outside of the valley. That's not a custom dev rate, that's a you have a track record of doing something very niche and va

240/hr is a lot of money, especially outside of the valley. That's not a custom dev rate, that's a you have a track record of doing something very niche and valuable and usually domain specific. I.e. you have a portfolio or set of recommendations that you delivered successful financial plug-ins for oil and gas ERP systems.

TomMarius 9y ago
Well he did base the calculation on a SV yearly salary. For other areas it will be based on a normal salary for that area.
- JamesBarney 9y ago
  I'm in the Houston area, and its easy to make 75-90/hr as a dev. But very hard to charge 300-360/hr as a consultant.
  - neltnerb 9y ago
    IEEE consultant surveys indicated ~$150/hr for a well trained consultant in software is median last time I checked. But what you get depends on how you get your business and what your approach is to selling your services. I think I'd find it impossible to charge more than $200/hr for embedded firmware (Boston), but could probably get $400/hr for systems engineering or industrial design to develop an integrated complex solution to a business problem that they don't have the in-house expertise to deal with.
  - mason55 9y ago
    I think a lot depends on who your clients are and what your business is. If you're talking about a real professional services engagement (Accenture, Oracle Consulting, whatever) then $300+/hour for an architect-level resource is pretty standard. Hell, junior business analysts get charged out at $175/hour. As a one-person shop the value you can bring is probably lower because you don't have the synergies of a team and you will have to spend some of your time doing junior BA-type work. You can't charge yourself out at the full rate of an architect-level resource because you're not spending all your time doing architect-level work. However as a one-person shop your overhead should be lower (e.g. no HR people or other cost centers to support with your billings). $75/hour seems awful low as a 1099/consultant, so it's no wonder businesses are happy to pay that.
ollerac 9y ago
I think a lot depends on the situation. There are a lot of companies who would pay a lot of money to have a technical person on their team who follows best practices, doesn't slack off, and is reliable. This is a low bar, but many engineers don't live up to this and end up causing as many problems as they solve, including being hard to manage. If, as a contractor, you are professional, easy to get a hold of, and treat your work seriously you'd be invaluable to any company who could hold onto you and a lot of hiring managers secretly know this.
- JamesBarney 9y ago
  They also know they're paying a lot of devs 80-150/hr who are hard working, don't slack off, are reliable, and follow best practices. And they have an HR/Invoices department who would constantly harass them about paying that much for a dev, if they even approve it in the first place.
  - ollerac 9y ago
    Ok, but in this case the contractor should make at least 2x as much the in-house staff, considering they're bringing all their own tools, paying for their own health insurance, paying their own taxes, and having a more flexible schedule. And then there's the question of why hire a contractor in the first place if you already have a strong team of devs — why not just hire another full-timer? Most likely you're having trouble filling out your team or filling a crucial role. That would probably be worth a little extra to you. Plus, there are tons of companies out there who don't need a full dev team of a dozen people, but know they could benefit a lot from hiring contractors for 3 months at a time for one-off projects. These companies are more than willing to pay a little extra to get a job done well on short notice.
  - tomsthumb 9y ago
    They’re payin the devs that much. That’s not how much they’re paying for the devs.
ebendogan 9y ago
Don't believe that shit. I worked through an agency once where I was the subcontractor for several projects. One time the account rep was lazy and sent me the customer's contract and failed to remove the rate he was charging for my work. I was charging $150/hr. He was charging the client $400/hr. People will pay a premium for something they value. In that instance I actually won out eventually. It turns out the agency was really shitty at managing projects and that particular client got in touch with me directly. He agreed to pay me $400/hr if I gave him priority. I did, and he started referring me to other businesses who would also pay that rate. So don't kid yourself about how much people will pay. Edit: These clients weren't in the Bay Area.
- JamesBarney 9y ago
  What do you do? If you're willing to get someone to pay you 400/hr, I bet you're not billing/marketing yourself as a developer. And I'm not kidding myself. Most companies know they can get good devs for significantly less than 400/hr.
  - ebendogan 9y ago
    This was about 10 years ago. The naive answer I would have given at time was: "I'm a software developer who builds ecommerce and CMS sites." And it's funny that you ask "What do you do?" At the time I had starting taking on projects from a friend who had been doing development contracting for about 4 years. One time when a client told me my proposal was priced too low and passed on my bid I was baffled. I told my friend about it and he asked me the same question, and I gave the above answer more or less. He corrected me and said "No! You're businessman enabling a national sales channel for a local or regional business who wants to increase their revenue." So never define your price by what you do, rather define it by what the value of thing is you're delivering to the client. This requires some research on your clients and a realignment of your thinking. When you're contracting as a developer, you have to start considering yourself as becoming a successful businessperson and not (just) a successful software engineer.
    - k__ 9y ago
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
oreo81 9y ago
LOL 240/hr is not that much.
- JamesBarney 9y ago
  Please share with us your experience.
taude 9y ago
We hire huge agencies that don't even cost $240/hour. I'm sure there's a couple niche people who can charge crazy dollars....but I'm skeptical.
- TaylorGood 9y ago
  As an Art Director we used three large agencies to cover needs, ranging $140-175/hr. Given this was a finance company, they didn't know creative as much. The issue I discovered was these agencies were inflating service hours. One example was the need to modify a four page powerpoint. Invoice came back as $6,800. So the issue wasn't rate, but durations..
  - jermaustin1 9y ago
    Having worked with agencies through a client, I have seen their billing process. They might not have inflated hours. Assuming you have a creative, a project manager, delivery manager, and a sales manager in the agency, each task/project has to go through each of their hands. That's an hour each for the managers and how ever many hours for the actual work itself as the base delivery price. Then the internal back and forth between the delivery manager and the creative to insure that everything is "to spec". Then the project manager to report on status each day and the sales manager to take you to lunch and discuss the how amazing everything is with the project, and that the BEST people are working on it. So 3-4 hours of work can turn into 20 hours of billing (plus expenses).
    - TaylorGood 9y ago
      Thanks for this. It's true. Our main agency had a process of the Account Exec telling the Art Director who delegated to his team of designers. That is at least three people at varied costs.
  - pwthornton 9y ago
    People focus far too much one rate and far too little on output cost. Different companies are wildly more efficient per hour of work never mind that many just do much better work. Rates are kind of ethereal. Maybe they are padding. Maybe they are just slow. Maybe they are throwing several resources on it. I don't know. This is a big problem with procurement. People fixate on hourly costs and not total cost of project.
fancyfacebook 9y ago
Not really, I'm trying to hire anyone, even mediocre developers and designers and simply can't get anyone right now on a short term basis even at $300/hr. We're going up to $500/hr soon. It's really really hard to get people right now. As bad as I've ever seen it.
- mhb 9y ago
  What do you need done?
- AFNobody 9y ago
  "Short term basis" being less than 6 months / 1000 hours? Yes, you will pay a premium. If you can stretch it to 1k hours or 6 months, you will be able to get cheaper prices. I doubt you'd be paying over $200/hr.
- LilyR 9y ago
  Hi, developer and designer here - I'm happy to help if you're happy dealing with a UK based company!
- JamesBarney 9y ago
  What type of projects are you trying to hire for? And how are you trying to hire? I imagine you're not having trouble finding Ruby devs 350/hrs.
- martimoose 9y ago
  Very very hard for me to imagine. I know good designers who'd be willing to work for $40/hr. CAD. Developpers are a bit pricier, maybe 60-70... Can't find mediocre ones for 300? Maybe we don't have the same definition of mediocre. And btw, one year full time at $500/hr is in the vicinity of one million. Where do I sign?
- thestepafter 9y ago
  I just quit my job as a Software Architect for one of the biggest hosting providers in the US. I am available for short term projects if you are still looking.
- 9y ago
mindcrime 9y ago
It's not that extreme. I was a "big data" consultant a couple of years ago and our bill-rate for gigs I went out on went as high as $200/hr at times. Our clients were all over the US, not just in the SV area, FWIW.
- JamesBarney 9y ago
  Were the people being billed out at 200/hr making 50/hr?
  - mindcrime 9y ago
    I'm not sure, exactly. Partly because A. that was a few years ago and I don't remember everything and B. our compensation there was a mixed model that included a base salary along with hourly "bonus" money for billable hours, which varied depending on whether the gig was onsite or remote, etc. But suffice it to say, if I went out on a gig that was being billed at $200.0 / hr, I wasn't making anywhere close to $200.00 / hr personally.
ransom1538 9y ago
"240/hr is a lot of money, especially outside of the valley." Nope. It is close to what I just paid a plumber. The plumber wanted $5000 for 16hrs of work to redo my piping ~$300/hr. (The cost materials: plastic PEX was probably $40, small house a one guy job). Remember this is a residential plumber - not a commercial electrician. WHY SO EXPENSIVE? You might ask? Try outsourcing my plumber.
- gowld 9y ago
  I think you just hired a premium plumber. My guy charges ~$100/hr
  - ransom1538 9y ago
    You have a plumber that charges by the hour?? That is awesome. I have only met plumbers that charge per project. Still, your plumber makes 200k a year!
    - hobs 9y ago
      Plumbers do not charge that for forty hours per week.
      - ransom1538 9y ago
        Agreed. Yes probably more like 60.
    - jmaygarden 9y ago
      I don't know why you seem surprised. It's not at all unusual for a skilled tradesman to be well compensated.
- JamesBarney 9y ago
  Yeah I think the other guy is right. That's definitely a premium plumber. I had my plumber fix a pipe that broke inside the foundation for a $1100. And that involved 8 hrs of 4 guys digging a long and deep ditch, as well as chiseling out foundation.
S_A_P 9y ago
Can confirm. Im in Houston and do what you mention with said track record. I cant get 240/hr, but can get around 175-180 most of the time. I base my rate on 85% utilization of myself. meaning Im working 10 and a half months per year.
- ioddly 9y ago
  Do you work with SAP as your username suggests? That seems pretty good to me for Houston.
  - S_A_P 9y ago
    I interface with SAP quite often, but the name is a different initialization. I also do movie/tv scoring under the moniker Stupid American Pig. Its a juvenile name that I came up with 20 years ago in college, but Ive not bothered to come up with anything else. As for the hourly rate, I would always accept more but have no real complaints. Getting back to the original post that made me comment, 240/hr for a freelance web designer seems unrealistically high, especially in Houston. I dont know the market well enough in other parts of the country though.

TomMarius 9y ago

Well he did base the calculation on a SV yearly salary. For other areas it will be based on a normal salary for that area.

JamesBarney 9y ago
I'm in the Houston area, and its easy to make 75-90/hr as a dev. But very hard to charge 300-360/hr as a consultant.
- neltnerb 9y ago
  IEEE consultant surveys indicated ~$150/hr for a well trained consultant in software is median last time I checked. But what you get depends on how you get your business and what your approach is to selling your services. I think I'd find it impossible to charge more than $200/hr for embedded firmware (Boston), but could probably get $400/hr for systems engineering or industrial design to develop an integrated complex solution to a business problem that they don't have the in-house expertise to deal with.
- mason55 9y ago
  I think a lot depends on who your clients are and what your business is. If you're talking about a real professional services engagement (Accenture, Oracle Consulting, whatever) then $300+/hour for an architect-level resource is pretty standard. Hell, junior business analysts get charged out at $175/hour. As a one-person shop the value you can bring is probably lower because you don't have the synergies of a team and you will have to spend some of your time doing junior BA-type work. You can't charge yourself out at the full rate of an architect-level resource because you're not spending all your time doing architect-level work. However as a one-person shop your overhead should be lower (e.g. no HR people or other cost centers to support with your billings). $75/hour seems awful low as a 1099/consultant, so it's no wonder businesses are happy to pay that.

ollerac 9y ago

I think a lot depends on the situation. There are a lot of companies who would pay a lot of money to have a technical person on their team who follows best practices, doesn't slack off, and is reliable. This is a low bar, but many engineers don't live up to this and end up causing as many problems as they solve, including being hard to manage. If, as a contractor, you are professional, easy to get a hold of, and treat your work seriously you'd be invaluable to any company who could hold onto you and a lot of hiring managers secretly know this.

JamesBarney 9y ago
They also know they're paying a lot of devs 80-150/hr who are hard working, don't slack off, are reliable, and follow best practices. And they have an HR/Invoices department who would constantly harass them about paying that much for a dev, if they even approve it in the first place.
- ollerac 9y ago
  Ok, but in this case the contractor should make at least 2x as much the in-house staff, considering they're bringing all their own tools, paying for their own health insurance, paying their own taxes, and having a more flexible schedule. And then there's the question of why hire a contractor in the first place if you already have a strong team of devs — why not just hire another full-timer? Most likely you're having trouble filling out your team or filling a crucial role. That would probably be worth a little extra to you. Plus, there are tons of companies out there who don't need a full dev team of a dozen people, but know they could benefit a lot from hiring contractors for 3 months at a time for one-off projects. These companies are more than willing to pay a little extra to get a job done well on short notice.
- tomsthumb 9y ago
  They’re payin the devs that much. That’s not how much they’re paying for the devs.

ebendogan 9y ago

Don't believe that shit. I worked through an agency once where I was the subcontractor for several projects. One time the account rep was lazy and sent me the customer's contract and failed to remove the rate he was charging for my work. I was charging $150/hr. He was charging the client $400/hr. People will pay a premium for something they value. In that instance I actually won out eventually. It turns out the agency was really shitty at managing projects and that particular client got in touch with me directly. He agreed to pay me $400/hr if I gave him priority. I did, and he started referring me to other businesses who would also pay that rate. So don't kid yourself about how much people will pay. Edit: These clients weren't in the Bay Area.

JamesBarney 9y ago
What do you do? If you're willing to get someone to pay you 400/hr, I bet you're not billing/marketing yourself as a developer. And I'm not kidding myself. Most companies know they can get good devs for significantly less than 400/hr.
- ebendogan 9y ago
  This was about 10 years ago. The naive answer I would have given at time was: "I'm a software developer who builds ecommerce and CMS sites." And it's funny that you ask "What do you do?" At the time I had starting taking on projects from a friend who had been doing development contracting for about 4 years. One time when a client told me my proposal was priced too low and passed on my bid I was baffled. I told my friend about it and he asked me the same question, and I gave the above answer more or less. He corrected me and said "No! You're businessman enabling a national sales channel for a local or regional business who wants to increase their revenue." So never define your price by what you do, rather define it by what the value of thing is you're delivering to the client. This requires some research on your clients and a realignment of your thinking. When you're contracting as a developer, you have to start considering yourself as becoming a successful businessperson and not (just) a successful software engineer.
  - k__ 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

oreo81 9y ago

LOL 240/hr is not that much.

JamesBarney 9y ago
Please share with us your experience.

taude 9y ago

We hire huge agencies that don't even cost $240/hour. I'm sure there's a couple niche people who can charge crazy dollars....but I'm skeptical.

TaylorGood 9y ago
As an Art Director we used three large agencies to cover needs, ranging $140-175/hr. Given this was a finance company, they didn't know creative as much. The issue I discovered was these agencies were inflating service hours. One example was the need to modify a four page powerpoint. Invoice came back as $6,800. So the issue wasn't rate, but durations..
- jermaustin1 9y ago
  Having worked with agencies through a client, I have seen their billing process. They might not have inflated hours. Assuming you have a creative, a project manager, delivery manager, and a sales manager in the agency, each task/project has to go through each of their hands. That's an hour each for the managers and how ever many hours for the actual work itself as the base delivery price. Then the internal back and forth between the delivery manager and the creative to insure that everything is "to spec". Then the project manager to report on status each day and the sales manager to take you to lunch and discuss the how amazing everything is with the project, and that the BEST people are working on it. So 3-4 hours of work can turn into 20 hours of billing (plus expenses).
  - TaylorGood 9y ago
    Thanks for this. It's true. Our main agency had a process of the Account Exec telling the Art Director who delegated to his team of designers. That is at least three people at varied costs.
- pwthornton 9y ago
  People focus far too much one rate and far too little on output cost. Different companies are wildly more efficient per hour of work never mind that many just do much better work. Rates are kind of ethereal. Maybe they are padding. Maybe they are just slow. Maybe they are throwing several resources on it. I don't know. This is a big problem with procurement. People fixate on hourly costs and not total cost of project.

fancyfacebook 9y ago

Not really, I'm trying to hire anyone, even mediocre developers and designers and simply can't get anyone right now on a short term basis even at $300/hr. We're going up to $500/hr soon. It's really really hard to get people right now. As bad as I've ever seen it.

mhb 9y ago
What do you need done?
AFNobody 9y ago
"Short term basis" being less than 6 months / 1000 hours? Yes, you will pay a premium. If you can stretch it to 1k hours or 6 months, you will be able to get cheaper prices. I doubt you'd be paying over $200/hr.
LilyR 9y ago
Hi, developer and designer here - I'm happy to help if you're happy dealing with a UK based company!
JamesBarney 9y ago
What type of projects are you trying to hire for? And how are you trying to hire? I imagine you're not having trouble finding Ruby devs 350/hrs.
martimoose 9y ago
Very very hard for me to imagine. I know good designers who'd be willing to work for $40/hr. CAD. Developpers are a bit pricier, maybe 60-70... Can't find mediocre ones for 300? Maybe we don't have the same definition of mediocre. And btw, one year full time at $500/hr is in the vicinity of one million. Where do I sign?
thestepafter 9y ago
I just quit my job as a Software Architect for one of the biggest hosting providers in the US. I am available for short term projects if you are still looking.
9y ago

mindcrime 9y ago

It's not that extreme. I was a "big data" consultant a couple of years ago and our bill-rate for gigs I went out on went as high as $200/hr at times. Our clients were all over the US, not just in the SV area, FWIW.

JamesBarney 9y ago
Were the people being billed out at 200/hr making 50/hr?
- mindcrime 9y ago
  I'm not sure, exactly. Partly because A. that was a few years ago and I don't remember everything and B. our compensation there was a mixed model that included a base salary along with hourly "bonus" money for billable hours, which varied depending on whether the gig was onsite or remote, etc. But suffice it to say, if I went out on a gig that was being billed at $200.0 / hr, I wasn't making anywhere close to $200.00 / hr personally.

ransom1538 9y ago

"240/hr is a lot of money, especially outside of the valley." Nope. It is close to what I just paid a plumber. The plumber wanted $5000 for 16hrs of work to redo my piping ~$300/hr. (The cost materials: plastic PEX was probably $40, small house a one guy job). Remember this is a residential plumber - not a commercial electrician. WHY SO EXPENSIVE? You might ask? Try outsourcing my plumber.

gowld 9y ago
I think you just hired a premium plumber. My guy charges ~$100/hr
- ransom1538 9y ago
  You have a plumber that charges by the hour?? That is awesome. I have only met plumbers that charge per project. Still, your plumber makes 200k a year!
  - hobs 9y ago
    Plumbers do not charge that for forty hours per week.
    - ransom1538 9y ago
      Agreed. Yes probably more like 60.
  - jmaygarden 9y ago
    I don't know why you seem surprised. It's not at all unusual for a skilled tradesman to be well compensated.
JamesBarney 9y ago
Yeah I think the other guy is right. That's definitely a premium plumber. I had my plumber fix a pipe that broke inside the foundation for a $1100. And that involved 8 hrs of 4 guys digging a long and deep ditch, as well as chiseling out foundation.

S_A_P 9y ago

Can confirm. Im in Houston and do what you mention with said track record. I cant get 240/hr, but can get around 175-180 most of the time. I base my rate on 85% utilization of myself. meaning Im working 10 and a half months per year.

ioddly 9y ago
Do you work with SAP as your username suggests? That seems pretty good to me for Houston.
- S_A_P 9y ago
  I interface with SAP quite often, but the name is a different initialization. I also do movie/tv scoring under the moniker Stupid American Pig. Its a juvenile name that I came up with 20 years ago in college, but Ive not bothered to come up with anything else. As for the hourly rate, I would always accept more but have no real complaints. Getting back to the original post that made me comment, 240/hr for a freelance web designer seems unrealistically high, especially in Houston. I dont know the market well enough in other parts of the country though.