3 ms·

For how many hours billable? If you were comfortably billing 40 hours a week for 48 weeks a year that would amount to €134.400 / year. Assuming that Germany isn

by dstick 6y ago

For how many hours billable? If you were comfortably billing 40 hours a week for 48 weeks a year that would amount to €134.400 / year. Assuming that Germany isn’t _that_ different from the Netherlands, good luck earning that while employed as an average sw dev. Insurance and retirement isn’t that expensive.

lucideer 6y ago
> If you were [...] Firstly, job security has value. Even if you manage to bill 40 hours a week (or close; I think 36-38 may be more usual for Germany), for an entire year, that is still just 1 year. Who knows how many it will be the following year. Secondly, how many freelancers actually do achieve that number of hours in a year. I don't have data but I would guess it is a small number. Thirdly, benefits do have some value. Thankfully in many European countries (though definitely not all!) they're slightly less "necessary" than in the US, but they still exist and you can't consider a full-time employee's base salary in isolation.
legulere 6y ago
As a hired developer you usually get 30 days of holidays + 12 days (which is a bit more than 8 weeks). The year has 52 or 53 weeks, so you end at around 44 weeks instead of 48 weeks. That’s 123K€ per year. Then you have to still subtract the days you are going to be sick (Google says 18.4 days on average per year) and the tile you need for administrative tasks. If you work with a contract your workplace will pay half of your insurances in Germany, if you are self-employed you have to pay that yourself.
- 0xffff2 6y ago
  >Then you have to still subtract the days you are going to be sick (Google says 18.4 days on average per year) What? Do I understand correctly that "Google says" and you find credible that on average a person takes 18.4 sick days every year? That sounds high by at least an order of magnitude to me. Even if I took a day off every time I had a slight sore throat or a moderate hangover, I still wouldn't take more than 3-4 sick days a year most years.
  - legulere 6y ago
    There’s a lot of long term sickness that is skewing the average. For instance cancer or a herniated disk can keep you from working for pretty long. The source of the 18.4 days has a lot of further information, albeit in German: https://www.iwd.de/artikel/krankenstand-in-deutschland-498654/ https://www.iwd.de/artikel/krankenstand-in-deutschland-49865...
MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
You'll have to subtract an average of ~2 weeks of sick leave as well, which is unpaid if you're a freelancer. Thats 46 weeks. Assuming 100% utilisation is a typical beginner's mistake. You will usually have some time you cannot bill, most importantly time between projects, but also customer acquisition and certifications. There are also types of insurance that you don't need as an employee. If you do the math, the conditions are not as favourable as they may appear from the outset. I will concede though that a reliable long-term project such as being a paid Zig contributor is a special case, and might warrant some discount.
emerongi 6y ago
In Estonia, the employer's expenses are 1.75x of what the employee actually receives; 43% of the employer's payroll expenses go to taxes and other fees. I assume it's similar in other EU countries. You can buy health insurance separately, but that doesn't excuse you from paying taxes if you're receiving income. And once you're paying taxes, there's no point to buy health insurance separately, as you will automatically qualify for "free" healthcare. The only time it makes sense to buy health insurance separately is if you have retired at a young age or you're cheating on your taxes. Of course, all of this varies by country, but I imagine the percentages are relatively similar. Germany is a more expensive country, so I can see how 70EUR/h might be a reasonable number there.
- throwaways885 6y ago
  > And once you're paying taxes, there's no point to buy health insurance separately, as you will automatically qualify for "free" healthcare. The downside of socialised health care is the extensive waiting lists for everything. I live under the NHS, and while it's a brilliant system, I do understand those with the means wanting to avoid it.
  - emerongi 6y ago
    True. You can skip the line here actually by paying for your doctor visit, but that also means you have to pay out of pocket for any further actions based on your diagnosis.
  - nicoburns 6y ago
    Indeed, but that's only really because we've underfunded it. It wasn't so long ago (last labour government) that waiting times were reasonable, and it wouldn't take all that much money to fix.
    - throwaways885 6y ago
      Funding for the NHS has massively increased YoY. Ageing population is the issue and it's not as easily solved with money as you might suspect.
atleta 6y ago
I don't think you work 48 weeks per year in Germany (or in general, most of the EU). You have to subtract national holidays and vacation. The latter should be 4 weeks minimum (i.e. for a young person). At least based on what we have here, in Hungary. I think it goes up to 6 weeks. I'm pretty sure Germany is not worse off. In general you have about 220-225 working days a year (which translates to 44-45 weeks). So that's about 125k invoiced income as an entrepreneur. It's not your salary yet. Again, depends on the country (you may have to pay lower taxes as a solo-preneur than what would be paid by someone employing you), but the employer usually pays more than what the employee makes in gross salary. Calculating with the Hungarian wedge, one of the highest in the EU, the net is about 50% of what the employer pays in total. My guess is that it's probably equal to around 85-100k of gross salary. Definitely not bad (based on what I can see from here), seems to be on the higher and, but doesn't seem exceptional either. Oh, well and you also have to account for downtimes as you'll probably won't quit before finishing your project (and if you won't, you'll almost certainly will have unpaid down times between projects).
- lars_francke 6y ago
  Just to add some more numbers as someone who's done freelancing in Germany for 15 or so years. 200-210 days of billable work (30 days holidays, sick days, conferences, downtime, pre-sales etc.) also a 100% utilization is often unrealistic but in this case might work. ~40% taxes ~9.000€ health insurance / year ~1.500€ liability insurance / year ~15-20% pension savings (personal preference) - various other business related expenses Very rough estimates: With 70€/h that'll be around 120k€ - 40k€ taxes - ~10k€ insurances - 15k€ pension = 55k€ That's not bad but also not an extraordinary amount and that's without any accounting for the extra risk, own hardware etc.

by dstick 6y ago

lucideer 6y ago

> If you were [...] Firstly, job security has value. Even if you manage to bill 40 hours a week (or close; I think 36-38 may be more usual for Germany), for an entire year, that is still just 1 year. Who knows how many it will be the following year. Secondly, how many freelancers actually do achieve that number of hours in a year. I don't have data but I would guess it is a small number. Thirdly, benefits do have some value. Thankfully in many European countries (though definitely not all!) they're slightly less "necessary" than in the US, but they still exist and you can't consider a full-time employee's base salary in isolation.

legulere 6y ago

As a hired developer you usually get 30 days of holidays + 12 days (which is a bit more than 8 weeks). The year has 52 or 53 weeks, so you end at around 44 weeks instead of 48 weeks. That’s 123K€ per year. Then you have to still subtract the days you are going to be sick (Google says 18.4 days on average per year) and the tile you need for administrative tasks. If you work with a contract your workplace will pay half of your insurances in Germany, if you are self-employed you have to pay that yourself.

0xffff2 6y ago
>Then you have to still subtract the days you are going to be sick (Google says 18.4 days on average per year) What? Do I understand correctly that "Google says" and you find credible that on average a person takes 18.4 sick days every year? That sounds high by at least an order of magnitude to me. Even if I took a day off every time I had a slight sore throat or a moderate hangover, I still wouldn't take more than 3-4 sick days a year most years.
- legulere 6y ago
  There’s a lot of long term sickness that is skewing the average. For instance cancer or a herniated disk can keep you from working for pretty long. The source of the 18.4 days has a lot of further information, albeit in German: https://www.iwd.de/artikel/krankenstand-in-deutschland-498654/ https://www.iwd.de/artikel/krankenstand-in-deutschland-49865...

MrBuddyCasino 6y ago

You'll have to subtract an average of ~2 weeks of sick leave as well, which is unpaid if you're a freelancer. Thats 46 weeks. Assuming 100% utilisation is a typical beginner's mistake. You will usually have some time you cannot bill, most importantly time between projects, but also customer acquisition and certifications. There are also types of insurance that you don't need as an employee. If you do the math, the conditions are not as favourable as they may appear from the outset. I will concede though that a reliable long-term project such as being a paid Zig contributor is a special case, and might warrant some discount.

emerongi 6y ago

In Estonia, the employer's expenses are 1.75x of what the employee actually receives; 43% of the employer's payroll expenses go to taxes and other fees. I assume it's similar in other EU countries. You can buy health insurance separately, but that doesn't excuse you from paying taxes if you're receiving income. And once you're paying taxes, there's no point to buy health insurance separately, as you will automatically qualify for "free" healthcare. The only time it makes sense to buy health insurance separately is if you have retired at a young age or you're cheating on your taxes. Of course, all of this varies by country, but I imagine the percentages are relatively similar. Germany is a more expensive country, so I can see how 70EUR/h might be a reasonable number there.

throwaways885 6y ago
> And once you're paying taxes, there's no point to buy health insurance separately, as you will automatically qualify for "free" healthcare. The downside of socialised health care is the extensive waiting lists for everything. I live under the NHS, and while it's a brilliant system, I do understand those with the means wanting to avoid it.
- emerongi 6y ago
  True. You can skip the line here actually by paying for your doctor visit, but that also means you have to pay out of pocket for any further actions based on your diagnosis.
- nicoburns 6y ago
  Indeed, but that's only really because we've underfunded it. It wasn't so long ago (last labour government) that waiting times were reasonable, and it wouldn't take all that much money to fix.
  - throwaways885 6y ago
    Funding for the NHS has massively increased YoY. Ageing population is the issue and it's not as easily solved with money as you might suspect.

atleta 6y ago

I don't think you work 48 weeks per year in Germany (or in general, most of the EU). You have to subtract national holidays and vacation. The latter should be 4 weeks minimum (i.e. for a young person). At least based on what we have here, in Hungary. I think it goes up to 6 weeks. I'm pretty sure Germany is not worse off. In general you have about 220-225 working days a year (which translates to 44-45 weeks). So that's about 125k invoiced income as an entrepreneur. It's not your salary yet. Again, depends on the country (you may have to pay lower taxes as a solo-preneur than what would be paid by someone employing you), but the employer usually pays more than what the employee makes in gross salary. Calculating with the Hungarian wedge, one of the highest in the EU, the net is about 50% of what the employer pays in total. My guess is that it's probably equal to around 85-100k of gross salary. Definitely not bad (based on what I can see from here), seems to be on the higher and, but doesn't seem exceptional either. Oh, well and you also have to account for downtimes as you'll probably won't quit before finishing your project (and if you won't, you'll almost certainly will have unpaid down times between projects).

lars_francke 6y ago
Just to add some more numbers as someone who's done freelancing in Germany for 15 or so years. 200-210 days of billable work (30 days holidays, sick days, conferences, downtime, pre-sales etc.) also a 100% utilization is often unrealistic but in this case might work. ~40% taxes ~9.000€ health insurance / year ~1.500€ liability insurance / year ~15-20% pension savings (personal preference) - various other business related expenses Very rough estimates: With 70€/h that'll be around 120k€ - 40k€ taxes - ~10k€ insurances - 15k€ pension = 55k€ That's not bad but also not an extraordinary amount and that's without any accounting for the extra risk, own hardware etc.