4 ms·

My advice: Attend networking events, meetups etc. Tell people you are looking for work, most of my work has come through friends (which you have seem to done)

My advice: Attend networking events, meetups etc. Tell people you are looking for work, most of my work has come through friends (which you have seem to done) Charge what your worth beginning day one, maybe cut your personal friends a discount, but doing work for next to nothing to build your portfolio is great, but trying to raise your price afterwards is very very hard. To answer your original question: check dice.com and craigslist, but dice.com will be true contract jobs that don't want companies that consult, but contractor (most of the time) and craiglist will be full of build digg for 10$/hr types of people(maybe they'd hire you on for what your worth but I doubt it).

xlnt 18y ago
How do you know what you're worth? I've read "post your salary" threads and other things that show up on yc or programming.reddit, but I still can't really tell.
- ovi256 18y ago
  And notice a flaw in all "what I am billing threads": they are positing a 40-hour week average, whole year round. Maybe in a hyperactive market it is possible to do that, but I think it would be fair to posit at most 2/3 uptime (out of about 250 work days per year). Why so low? You will spend considerable periods in downtime, looking for gigs.
  - thomasswift 18y ago
    Only the good posts tend to talk about that. You will not 40 on billable stuff, unless you are crazy. There is a bunch of admin/business work to account for, that leaves you billing less than 40 hours per week, at least with still having some sort of life.
  - andrewbadera 18y ago
    Really? Sign me up, sounds like a vacation.
    - elad 18y ago
      It's not. You're looking for gigs, which means networking, interviewing etc. Marketing yourself essentially. Vacation is when you don't work.
- icey 18y ago
  A quick and dirty baseline is to take your yearly salary and divide by 1000, giving you an hourly rate.
  - jon_dahl 18y ago
    This is a good rule of thumb, and probably the most common one. It's basically identical to 2x your hourly rate as an employee. (FT employment is often figured at 2000 hours/year.) So if you want the equivalent of $75,000/year, charge $75/hour.
    - anewaccountname 18y ago
      "2x your hourly rate as an employee" Maybe if you can manage to pretend that your employer doesn't pay half of your social security taxes =)
      - icey 18y ago
        That's part of why you have to figure for a rate so much higher than your salaried rate.
- thomasswift 18y ago
  My short and fast rule Is charge about 4-6x your hourly salary of doing equivalent work. You pay more taxes, you are not receiving benefits, and most of all you are doing difficult work. Of course there are exceptions to this rule. If you make $20/hr slinging code. Consulting that be $80/hr. May seem high, but really it is quite low. The big boys charge $250/hr. I think that rate is fair for small businesses. If you need justification for charging a certain fee. Research numbers on how much it costs to actually hire someone full-time and all the extra costs associated with it. Time, Interviews, Job board placements, training, benefits(big costs long haul). If your being hired to do something you know and pretty much getting going on day one, they should be paying a decent sum of money for you, because you had already done the legwork, you step in and work. You are also temporary to them if the contract ends(a.k.a they fire you), as employee you get unemployment(extra cost to the company), exit interviews, more time and money wasted. If you an IC the contract ends, what are you going to do. Look for the next gig, more time spent with no money coming in. My favorite pricing quote is the one about the artist, name escapes me. A lady asks him to paint her caricature of face and he get out a piece of paper, paints a few lines and she says it's amazing and ask how much, he says 5k or something. She says thats ridiculous it took you five minutes. He responds no it took me my whole life. I'm not saying I'm picasso or monet or whatever, but the work you do today will be added to your overall experience and knowledge that you will apply to the jobs of tomorrow, and you should be compensated for that. i also don't change $1000/min (it be nice) - sorry for rambling
  - brianlash 18y ago
    >My favorite pricing quote is the one about the artist, name escapes me. I've heard that story. It's probably apocryphal, but instructional. The artist is Picasso (at least in the variation I encountered).
  - andrewbadera 18y ago
    The "big boys" in code don't charge $250/hour -- that's SAP or similar platform specialist territory. Code generalists run $80-$150/hour for truly excellent engineers. I do work in the Albany and NYC markets, and $120/hour is typical. $700-$1200/day is a reasonable range to consider in the NYC market. Downgrade that for most other markets.
- SwellJoe 18y ago
  How do you know what you're worth? Think about what you need to make, and double it. Then double it again. You're probably getting close to what you ought to charge. I expect to pay $50-$200/hour when I hire a contractor (depending on whether they are famous for what they do or not), and when I did contract work I billed at $125/hour. I was reasonably well-known for the field I contracted in, with a published book and code sprinkled throughout the project I supported, and my name appearing daily on the related mailing list--I probably should have been charging more, as I never lost a customer because I cost too much. Someone once told me that if you, as a contractor, don't get a response of "fuck you!" in response to your estimates about half the time, you aren't charging enough. That's probably really good advice. You'll work less, but work better, because you can really devote yourself to the clients you do have. This assumes that you are really good. If you aren't really good, then you'll just have to take what work you can get at whatever rate you can get. Doing fantastic work fast is more important than working cheap, because people will recommend you if you're good and expensive (they'll say, "This guy is a bit pricey, but he does amazing work") but probably not if you do crap work and don't pay enough attention to them (if they say anything at all about you, they'll say, "I can never get this guy on the phone, and he does sloppy work, but he works cheap"). If you were hiring a contractor, which of those choices would you call? And which kind of customer would you rather work for? The cheap customer always demands even more than he's already getting, and expects to be treated like a king for it. The customer that wants great work is grateful when he finally finds someone that will deliver--at just about any price. Also note that the larger the corporation, the more you need to charge to deal with their red tape. You will have to invoice according to their rules, you will have to keep yourself updated in their vendor database, you will have to deal with additional tax forms, and you will have to get sign-off on projects from more people. Working in a big corporation will also drain the life from you at an alarming clip, because they will have meetings over the stupidest crap--you'll be getting paid huge sums for eating donuts and listening to endless arguments over what to name a table or a variable, but you will probably die a little inside, as well. After my first couple of experiences with big corporations, I began to charge extra for soul death (that's not how it appeared on the invoice...I just added another $25/hour to the rate).
  - mosburger 18y ago
- MaysonL 18y ago
  I got this advice from a couple of people, one the Engineering VP at the last job [i.e.: 40hr/wk nominal, W2] I had, back in '79, one the CEO of the company before that (whom I consulted with for ca 20 years during the 80s, 90s, and 00s) after he started up his own consulting/contracting company. Basically, take your desired salary[including expenses/fringes], divide by 100, and that's your daily rate. You can come down a little for long term work, say more than 2 weeks.

xlnt 18y ago

How do you know what you're worth? I've read "post your salary" threads and other things that show up on yc or programming.reddit, but I still can't really tell.

ovi256 18y ago
And notice a flaw in all "what I am billing threads": they are positing a 40-hour week average, whole year round. Maybe in a hyperactive market it is possible to do that, but I think it would be fair to posit at most 2/3 uptime (out of about 250 work days per year). Why so low? You will spend considerable periods in downtime, looking for gigs.
- thomasswift 18y ago
  Only the good posts tend to talk about that. You will not 40 on billable stuff, unless you are crazy. There is a bunch of admin/business work to account for, that leaves you billing less than 40 hours per week, at least with still having some sort of life.
- andrewbadera 18y ago
  Really? Sign me up, sounds like a vacation.
  - elad 18y ago
    It's not. You're looking for gigs, which means networking, interviewing etc. Marketing yourself essentially. Vacation is when you don't work.
icey 18y ago
A quick and dirty baseline is to take your yearly salary and divide by 1000, giving you an hourly rate.
- jon_dahl 18y ago
  This is a good rule of thumb, and probably the most common one. It's basically identical to 2x your hourly rate as an employee. (FT employment is often figured at 2000 hours/year.) So if you want the equivalent of $75,000/year, charge $75/hour.
  - anewaccountname 18y ago
    "2x your hourly rate as an employee" Maybe if you can manage to pretend that your employer doesn't pay half of your social security taxes =)
    - icey 18y ago
      That's part of why you have to figure for a rate so much higher than your salaried rate.
thomasswift 18y ago
My short and fast rule Is charge about 4-6x your hourly salary of doing equivalent work. You pay more taxes, you are not receiving benefits, and most of all you are doing difficult work. Of course there are exceptions to this rule. If you make $20/hr slinging code. Consulting that be $80/hr. May seem high, but really it is quite low. The big boys charge $250/hr. I think that rate is fair for small businesses. If you need justification for charging a certain fee. Research numbers on how much it costs to actually hire someone full-time and all the extra costs associated with it. Time, Interviews, Job board placements, training, benefits(big costs long haul). If your being hired to do something you know and pretty much getting going on day one, they should be paying a decent sum of money for you, because you had already done the legwork, you step in and work. You are also temporary to them if the contract ends(a.k.a they fire you), as employee you get unemployment(extra cost to the company), exit interviews, more time and money wasted. If you an IC the contract ends, what are you going to do. Look for the next gig, more time spent with no money coming in. My favorite pricing quote is the one about the artist, name escapes me. A lady asks him to paint her caricature of face and he get out a piece of paper, paints a few lines and she says it's amazing and ask how much, he says 5k or something. She says thats ridiculous it took you five minutes. He responds no it took me my whole life. I'm not saying I'm picasso or monet or whatever, but the work you do today will be added to your overall experience and knowledge that you will apply to the jobs of tomorrow, and you should be compensated for that. i also don't change $1000/min (it be nice) - sorry for rambling
- brianlash 18y ago
  >My favorite pricing quote is the one about the artist, name escapes me. I've heard that story. It's probably apocryphal, but instructional. The artist is Picasso (at least in the variation I encountered).
- andrewbadera 18y ago
  The "big boys" in code don't charge $250/hour -- that's SAP or similar platform specialist territory. Code generalists run $80-$150/hour for truly excellent engineers. I do work in the Albany and NYC markets, and $120/hour is typical. $700-$1200/day is a reasonable range to consider in the NYC market. Downgrade that for most other markets.
SwellJoe 18y ago
How do you know what you're worth? Think about what you need to make, and double it. Then double it again. You're probably getting close to what you ought to charge. I expect to pay $50-$200/hour when I hire a contractor (depending on whether they are famous for what they do or not), and when I did contract work I billed at $125/hour. I was reasonably well-known for the field I contracted in, with a published book and code sprinkled throughout the project I supported, and my name appearing daily on the related mailing list--I probably should have been charging more, as I never lost a customer because I cost too much. Someone once told me that if you, as a contractor, don't get a response of "fuck you!" in response to your estimates about half the time, you aren't charging enough. That's probably really good advice. You'll work less, but work better, because you can really devote yourself to the clients you do have. This assumes that you are really good. If you aren't really good, then you'll just have to take what work you can get at whatever rate you can get. Doing fantastic work fast is more important than working cheap, because people will recommend you if you're good and expensive (they'll say, "This guy is a bit pricey, but he does amazing work") but probably not if you do crap work and don't pay enough attention to them (if they say anything at all about you, they'll say, "I can never get this guy on the phone, and he does sloppy work, but he works cheap"). If you were hiring a contractor, which of those choices would you call? And which kind of customer would you rather work for? The cheap customer always demands even more than he's already getting, and expects to be treated like a king for it. The customer that wants great work is grateful when he finally finds someone that will deliver--at just about any price. Also note that the larger the corporation, the more you need to charge to deal with their red tape. You will have to invoice according to their rules, you will have to keep yourself updated in their vendor database, you will have to deal with additional tax forms, and you will have to get sign-off on projects from more people. Working in a big corporation will also drain the life from you at an alarming clip, because they will have meetings over the stupidest crap--you'll be getting paid huge sums for eating donuts and listening to endless arguments over what to name a table or a variable, but you will probably die a little inside, as well. After my first couple of experiences with big corporations, I began to charge extra for soul death (that's not how it appeared on the invoice...I just added another $25/hour to the rate).
- mosburger 18y ago
MaysonL 18y ago
I got this advice from a couple of people, one the Engineering VP at the last job [i.e.: 40hr/wk nominal, W2] I had, back in '79, one the CEO of the company before that (whom I consulted with for ca 20 years during the 80s, 90s, and 00s) after he started up his own consulting/contracting company. Basically, take your desired salary[including expenses/fringes], divide by 100, and that's your daily rate. You can come down a little for long term work, say more than 2 weeks.