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I was just reflecting on the rate before you posted and realized OPs rates are around what I made in base salary, plus I get the benefit of things like health i
by ganstyles 6y ago
I was just reflecting on the rate before you posted and realized OPs rates are around what I made in base salary, plus I get the benefit of things like health insurance, equity, etc. I think I would consider freelance for $500/hr, but $150-200/hr seems low for all the risk, for me personally. But I could see doing it depending on whether I really just enjoyed the freelance lifestyle and didn't have to live in an expensive locale.
- qu4ku 6y agoWorking for a rate that you would get full-time is non-sustainable as a contractor.
- Avalaxy 6y agoIf anyone is reading this and considers $150 per hour "low", do reach out to the email in my profile. Here in the Netherlands the going rate for a AI engineer is more around $90, so I'd be happy to pick up the work.
- Ididntdothis 6y agoI have almost never seen such a thing. The $500/hr freelancer are probably the same category as the $500k programmers. They exist but are quite rare.
- zerr 6y agoMost senior devs at FNG reach 500k and beyond (US and London).
- j_autumn 6y agoI know right? 40$/h FTE here. Not an AI engineer though.
- unishark 6y agoIf you look at the person's bio on their website, they have a phd and have written multiple books on the topic, plus have been an invited speaker and regular at conferences in the area. They went to work at a company doing the same specialization, then went out on their own. This is about how to cash in on being a well-known contributor in a very hot niche area. Given all that, I feel like they are still just selling their skills for short term cash while others make the real money off what they produce. As always with contracting.
- bryanrasmussen 6y agoAs a general rule to consider freelance you should make at least twice as much per hour as you do full-time employee to make up for the instability of the job. This calculation of course changes in times of instability such as now, I don't think there is any freelance job I could be offered right now that would tempt me to quit my current job - of course it is also unlikely I would get offered twice hourly given my current salary is pretty high up for my region.
- 1024core 6y agoA FTE costs (to the company) way more than their salary; an easy rule of thumb is to double it. The salary cost does not include things like the cost of providing an office, retirement matching, health insurance, etc. etc. If a typical ML engineer makes $250K/year, she costs the company about $500K/year; that means the hourly rate should be at least $250/hr.
- ledauphin 6y agoI've heard this rule of thumb and can't make it make any sense. My company's contribution to my health insurance and retirement doesn't come anywhere near 25% of my salary, and there's simply no way my office space costs more than $500/mo for my share of it.
- semanticist 6y agoPlus your share of the HR and internal IT teams, and any other part of the company that doesn't exist to service end users/external customers. It's only a rule of thumb, it doesn't need to be exact, and the more you earn the less accurate it gets.
- EduardoBautista 6y agoI wouldn't consider a huge overestimate to be a "rule of thumb".
- mandelbrotwurst 6y ago
- pedrosorio 6y ago400k base salary? Nice. As an individual contributor?