9 ms·

$150 per hour is $300,000 per year including two weeks vacation per year. I have a side client that I met 11 years ago that I charge $150 per hour for remote d

by 300bps 5y ago

$150 per hour is $300,000 per year including two weeks vacation per year. I have a side client that I met 11 years ago that I charge $150 per hour for remote development. They feel lucky to get that rate! Most people around us charge $200 per hour but since I work full time for someone else and can’t always be available I give them that discounted rate. I don’t think they’re hard to find at all for consulting. Being a full time employee for $250k, I agree with you that those are more rare. In my experience you have to possess an in-demand specialty for that or get into management.

sofixa 5y ago
2 weeks vacation per year is pitiful. Do people really get on and are happy with only that? I get 5 weeks ( minimum legal in France), i use it to the max and it's okay, but sometimes insufficient.
- temp234 5y ago
  In my experience Americans are very stressed out but they're just used to it and don't know any other way and don't make the connection to lack of leisure time. Hardly anyone here gets 5wk
- dan-robertson 5y ago
  2 weeks makes the arithmetic easy (as you work 50 weeks in a year and 50 is an easier number) but I think it’s not really relevant: you can just plug in a different number of weeks or hourly rate and get your own answer.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  10 total days off would be below normal. Usually, vacation time is quoted as an addition on top of normal holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving and other days. Average professional job has about 8-9 paid holiday days, plus vacation time on top. My worst number of vacation days was 10 at my first job right out of college (they had to change after they struggled to attract employees) but every other job has been more than that. But only accounting for 10 unpaid days per year would barely cover minimum federal holidays, so it’s not realistic. It’s equivalent to saying you’re never going to take time off unless the company is shut down for a federal holiday.
  - Scarblac 5y ago
    I'm quite sure the five weeks he mentioned don't include official holidays. In the Netherlands it's also five weeks on top of a number of official holidays, and we gave the lowest number of those in the EU (7 iirc, some of which may be weekend Sat's in some years, like Christmas now). Of course good companies typically don't offer only the minimum.
    - BrandoElFollito 5y ago
      In France you get 5-8 weeks of vacation that are counted in addition to the official days off. In general you work 272 days a year and the rest is vacation and days off (this is also the reason we get a different amount of days off every year). I have about 40 working days off, of which the company can choose the dates of 10.
      - kileywm 5y ago
        272 days is very high. Full time work in the US with 0 vacation (typically is 10-20 days) and 0 company holidays (typically is 5-15 days) is 250 days. Perhaps you mistyped?
        Msw242 5y ago
        Don't they have a 4 day work week in France?
        BrandoElFollito 5y ago
        No we don't. We have a concept of "35 hours of work per week" but it gest complicated once your time is not metered per the hour. People whose work is counted in days get special "extra vacation days to catch up" (this is more or less the real name), around 15 per year I think.
        sofixa 5y ago
        Some places are starting to introduce it, but it's very rare. However the standard work day is 7 hours.
- kitten_mittens_ 5y ago
  American weeks are only 5 days long if you use employer accounting when evaluating an offer. I have "3 weeks" but it's only 15 days.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    Assuming you’re working 5 days a week, 15 days is 3 workweeks.
  - Cederfjard 5y ago
    That’s what the person you’re replying to means as well, five weeks or 25 workdays. I think all or at least most of the EU have more than 15 days minimum mandatory paid leave.
  - selcuka 5y ago
    Well, isn't that normal? When you sign a 6 month contract that doesn't mean that you'll have to work for 180+ days either.
- wpietri 5y ago
  If you are doing by-the-hour contract work you can generally set your own terms for which hours you work and how many.
  - eatYourFood 5y ago
    Hourly is unprofessional and a conflict of interest with your client. The worst deal I would sign is a day rate (no logging hours) but fixed scope/duration is far better.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      It really depends. In general I prefer charging by the task but that assumes a well-scoped and predictable task. That works for some things and not for others. Of course, there are a number of professions (law, accounting, etc.) where hourly charges are absolutely the norm. I've done some legal work and it was in some ways very nice to get paid whenever you were "on the clock."
      - eatYourFood 5y ago
        I agree with Alan Weiss, lawyers are unprofessional and mostly terrible at maximising income. They charge 1:1 hours to fees which is a bad deal for a professional.
        ghaff 5y ago
        The legal work I did was for an expert witness case as a subject matter expert (not a lawyer). There is no way we could have/would have agreed to a fixed fee up front unless it was for a really outrageous amount. (Well, it ended up being a pretty outrageous amount anyway but there's no way we could have reasonably scoped the work.) Most of the work we did in general was for specifically scoped deliverables and we actually tried very hard not to do day rates, much less hourly rates, but this was one case it really wasn't avoidable--and, of course, was the way the white shoe law firm operated.
- 300bps 5y ago
  I said 2 weeks vacation to make the math simple. I actually get six weeks vacation at my full time US job and I use part of that to work in my part time consulting job.
- deagle50 5y ago
  2 weeks (as in 10 non-holiday days) is pretty normal in the US, even if you get more. I get 4 paid but I barely take two and bank the rest. My European parents think I'm crazy but they're used to a pretty nice safety net when you get old, and the concept of early financial independence never entered their mind.
  - virtualritz 5y ago
    There is a curious symmetry in that the idea that you only do certain things when you are young(er) or may not live (or be healthy enough) to harvest (or enjoy) the fruits of your early financial independence does not seem to enter the mind of many people chasing this. In my thirties I worked in many different countries for many different companies. Going new places with different cultures and being able to enjoy my time there was always the main driver: i.e. experiences & work/life balance over salary. I would never trade these experiences for early financial independence at maybe age 50. I think there is a best before date for some experiences in life. Maybe now it is possible for a select minority to have both. But most of of my friends in their 30s who work 'normal' jobs and have this early financial independence aim it doesn't hold true. I.e. they will simply not have made these experiences when they reach that goal. Few have ever managed to leave their country of birth for anything else but holidays. Some personal examples: Living & working in Japan and thereby traveling the country on weekends or going to a cool club in Tokyo. When you're 35 vs when you're 55. Would you even do the latter at that age? Would it be the same? Living and working in India and thereby going for a weekend hiking trip in the western Ghats were you're sleeping in an abandoned train station in the middle of the jungle. When you're 35 vs 55. Would you even do the latter at that age? Would it be the same? Living and working in Sydney, going to a party of friends on a yacht on Friday after work and on a diving excursion to the Great Barrier Reef on Saturday morning when you're 35 vs 55. Would you even do the latter? Would it be the same? I was still hung over when I put on the diving gear but it was ok. With almost 55? You would simply have to skip the diving trip. None of the above are made up. The pandemic-related lockdown made me realize what rich tapestry of experiences my past life choices have afforded me. I have four people in my circle of friends who are actively working on early retirement. They do 'compensate' a lot on the weekends and when they go on holidays but that is not the same as the above.
- syshum 5y ago
  Yes... I will cash out any vacation my employer allows me to, unfortunately they require that I take most of it as time off not cash
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Why? Money doesn't give you time back. I guess I understand if someone is banking money to retire early but personally I've always taken every day off I could.
- saberience 5y ago
  - ithinkso 5y ago
    Bullshit this was the reason. 25 days off (not including bank holidays) is basically a standard minimum (maybe +/- a day or two) in all European countries, not only in France.
  - eatYourFood 5y ago
    Working in London you also get 5 weeks holiday. Holiday policy surely is not the main to not invest in France. Your comment is rooted in a tremendous amount of arrogance and ignorance.
- Jach 5y ago
  A lot of people are quite happy working, quite happy with their local environment, and feel no need to take a vacation. For other uses of (paid or unpaid) days off (being sick, funerals, important kid events, 'just not feeling it today', maternal leave, paternal leave, whatever) policies vary so much from company to company and individual to individual; I think this variability is a good thing and gives an additional dimension for companies to compete for workers on.
  - sofixa 5y ago
    > A lot of people are quite happy working, quite happy with their local environment, and feel no need to take a vacation I love my current job, the people, the work, the challenges. I still need an occasional break, and I still like seeing different things.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> I don’t think they’re hard to find at all for consulting. You said you found your $150/hr 11 years ago. How many other $150/hr clients have you met since then? What makes you say that it’s easy to find them? I think it’s easy to say that consulting is easy when you’ve had a single, long-term client that pays well. In practice, it’s much harder to find these clients when starting from 0, unless you have such luck to find the dream client right out of the gate.
- 300bps 5y ago
  I was self employed for five years many years ago. It’s easy to find clients - one of the best ways I did it was to go to computer stores and tell the salespeople if they got me a new client I would pay them $15 per hour in perpetuity for every hour I charged the client. I had 3 people that made more from me than their regular job. Then there are chambers of commerce, LinkedIn messages and frankly just putting yourself out there. I met my long term side client studying for a certification while my oldest son was at a baseball clinic. My client saw the book I was reading and walked up to me and said, “Are you in IT?”
wongarsu 5y ago
$150 per hour consulting is not the same as $150/h salary. With consulting you have to pay for your downtime, the time you use to acquire clients, your insurance, etc.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  It is especially not the same due to loss of tax advantaged benefits like health insurance ($20k+ per year if you have a family), 401k matching ($10k+), DCFSA and HSA matches ($5k), and then the 8% FICA taxes up to $10k that have to come out of your pocket.
  - jasonkester 5y ago
    That's all stuff you can calculate and price into your rate. It's not like you just take the salary number they offer and divide it by two to get your rate.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      I was commenting on the comparison of a $150/hour independent contracting price to a $300k salary.
  - robomartin 5y ago
    What these comments ignore is that, if you form an LLC for your consulting work you have access to a massive number of deductions that do not exist for someone who is an employee. My recommendation is to have a conversation with a good accountant and have them quantify the potential differences for you.
- jasonkester 5y ago
  Sounds like he has a steady client that accommodates as many hours as he likes at that rate, and has done so for a dozen years. I imagine he has covered his business development expense by now. This is how I do it too, by the way. Long term relationships with good companies. It's more like contracting, but without the 40h expectations of a contractor. ( Unless I feel like working 40 hours in a given week for some reason).
indymike 5y ago
> I have a side client that I met 11 years ago that I charge $150 per hour for remote development. That's not too surprising, and depending on what you are doing might be a great deal for everyone. Usually contracting work out is done at 1.7-2x the rate you'd pay an employee. This is because the the consultant has costs and risk that an employee does not. Costs like insurance, accounting, legal, personal benefits (i.e. savings to allow for vacations, healthcare), sales overhead (consultants have to keep finding new clients). Risks like contract cancellation and getting paid on time.
syshum 5y ago
$150 / hr as a 1099 Contractor, is more like $75/hr has a W2 employee after you factor in employee benefits (normally 30-40% of your total comp) and taxation (10-15% more for self employment depending on your deductions)
- notfromhere 5y ago
  If you’re doing it as part time to your full time job, it’s a bit more. The taxes are a little higher, but you’re already getting benefits from your full-time gig
  - syshum 5y ago
    True and if your goal is to only ever work part time as a 1099 (i.e over employed) then it would be fine to look at it like that However if your goal is to work to replace your employment you should start out looking at the full picture, and pricing your work accordingly.

by 300bps 5y ago

sofixa 5y ago

2 weeks vacation per year is pitiful. Do people really get on and are happy with only that? I get 5 weeks ( minimum legal in France), i use it to the max and it's okay, but sometimes insufficient.

temp234 5y ago
In my experience Americans are very stressed out but they're just used to it and don't know any other way and don't make the connection to lack of leisure time. Hardly anyone here gets 5wk
dan-robertson 5y ago
2 weeks makes the arithmetic easy (as you work 50 weeks in a year and 50 is an easier number) but I think it’s not really relevant: you can just plug in a different number of weeks or hourly rate and get your own answer.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
10 total days off would be below normal. Usually, vacation time is quoted as an addition on top of normal holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving and other days. Average professional job has about 8-9 paid holiday days, plus vacation time on top. My worst number of vacation days was 10 at my first job right out of college (they had to change after they struggled to attract employees) but every other job has been more than that. But only accounting for 10 unpaid days per year would barely cover minimum federal holidays, so it’s not realistic. It’s equivalent to saying you’re never going to take time off unless the company is shut down for a federal holiday.
- Scarblac 5y ago
  I'm quite sure the five weeks he mentioned don't include official holidays. In the Netherlands it's also five weeks on top of a number of official holidays, and we gave the lowest number of those in the EU (7 iirc, some of which may be weekend Sat's in some years, like Christmas now). Of course good companies typically don't offer only the minimum.
  - BrandoElFollito 5y ago
    In France you get 5-8 weeks of vacation that are counted in addition to the official days off. In general you work 272 days a year and the rest is vacation and days off (this is also the reason we get a different amount of days off every year). I have about 40 working days off, of which the company can choose the dates of 10.
    - kileywm 5y ago
      272 days is very high. Full time work in the US with 0 vacation (typically is 10-20 days) and 0 company holidays (typically is 5-15 days) is 250 days. Perhaps you mistyped?
      - Msw242 5y ago
        Don't they have a 4 day work week in France?
        BrandoElFollito 5y ago
        No we don't. We have a concept of "35 hours of work per week" but it gest complicated once your time is not metered per the hour. People whose work is counted in days get special "extra vacation days to catch up" (this is more or less the real name), around 15 per year I think.
        sofixa 5y ago
        Some places are starting to introduce it, but it's very rare. However the standard work day is 7 hours.
kitten_mittens_ 5y ago
American weeks are only 5 days long if you use employer accounting when evaluating an offer. I have "3 weeks" but it's only 15 days.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  Assuming you’re working 5 days a week, 15 days is 3 workweeks.
- Cederfjard 5y ago
  That’s what the person you’re replying to means as well, five weeks or 25 workdays. I think all or at least most of the EU have more than 15 days minimum mandatory paid leave.
- selcuka 5y ago
  Well, isn't that normal? When you sign a 6 month contract that doesn't mean that you'll have to work for 180+ days either.
wpietri 5y ago
If you are doing by-the-hour contract work you can generally set your own terms for which hours you work and how many.
- eatYourFood 5y ago
  Hourly is unprofessional and a conflict of interest with your client. The worst deal I would sign is a day rate (no logging hours) but fixed scope/duration is far better.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    It really depends. In general I prefer charging by the task but that assumes a well-scoped and predictable task. That works for some things and not for others. Of course, there are a number of professions (law, accounting, etc.) where hourly charges are absolutely the norm. I've done some legal work and it was in some ways very nice to get paid whenever you were "on the clock."
    - eatYourFood 5y ago
      I agree with Alan Weiss, lawyers are unprofessional and mostly terrible at maximising income. They charge 1:1 hours to fees which is a bad deal for a professional.
      - ghaff 5y ago
        The legal work I did was for an expert witness case as a subject matter expert (not a lawyer). There is no way we could have/would have agreed to a fixed fee up front unless it was for a really outrageous amount. (Well, it ended up being a pretty outrageous amount anyway but there's no way we could have reasonably scoped the work.) Most of the work we did in general was for specifically scoped deliverables and we actually tried very hard not to do day rates, much less hourly rates, but this was one case it really wasn't avoidable--and, of course, was the way the white shoe law firm operated.
300bps 5y ago
I said 2 weeks vacation to make the math simple. I actually get six weeks vacation at my full time US job and I use part of that to work in my part time consulting job.
deagle50 5y ago
2 weeks (as in 10 non-holiday days) is pretty normal in the US, even if you get more. I get 4 paid but I barely take two and bank the rest. My European parents think I'm crazy but they're used to a pretty nice safety net when you get old, and the concept of early financial independence never entered their mind.
- virtualritz 5y ago
  There is a curious symmetry in that the idea that you only do certain things when you are young(er) or may not live (or be healthy enough) to harvest (or enjoy) the fruits of your early financial independence does not seem to enter the mind of many people chasing this. In my thirties I worked in many different countries for many different companies. Going new places with different cultures and being able to enjoy my time there was always the main driver: i.e. experiences & work/life balance over salary. I would never trade these experiences for early financial independence at maybe age 50. I think there is a best before date for some experiences in life. Maybe now it is possible for a select minority to have both. But most of of my friends in their 30s who work 'normal' jobs and have this early financial independence aim it doesn't hold true. I.e. they will simply not have made these experiences when they reach that goal. Few have ever managed to leave their country of birth for anything else but holidays. Some personal examples: Living & working in Japan and thereby traveling the country on weekends or going to a cool club in Tokyo. When you're 35 vs when you're 55. Would you even do the latter at that age? Would it be the same? Living and working in India and thereby going for a weekend hiking trip in the western Ghats were you're sleeping in an abandoned train station in the middle of the jungle. When you're 35 vs 55. Would you even do the latter at that age? Would it be the same? Living and working in Sydney, going to a party of friends on a yacht on Friday after work and on a diving excursion to the Great Barrier Reef on Saturday morning when you're 35 vs 55. Would you even do the latter? Would it be the same? I was still hung over when I put on the diving gear but it was ok. With almost 55? You would simply have to skip the diving trip. None of the above are made up. The pandemic-related lockdown made me realize what rich tapestry of experiences my past life choices have afforded me. I have four people in my circle of friends who are actively working on early retirement. They do 'compensate' a lot on the weekends and when they go on holidays but that is not the same as the above.
syshum 5y ago
Yes... I will cash out any vacation my employer allows me to, unfortunately they require that I take most of it as time off not cash
- ghaff 5y ago
  Why? Money doesn't give you time back. I guess I understand if someone is banking money to retire early but personally I've always taken every day off I could.
saberience 5y ago
- ithinkso 5y ago
  Bullshit this was the reason. 25 days off (not including bank holidays) is basically a standard minimum (maybe +/- a day or two) in all European countries, not only in France.
- eatYourFood 5y ago
  Working in London you also get 5 weeks holiday. Holiday policy surely is not the main to not invest in France. Your comment is rooted in a tremendous amount of arrogance and ignorance.
Jach 5y ago
A lot of people are quite happy working, quite happy with their local environment, and feel no need to take a vacation. For other uses of (paid or unpaid) days off (being sick, funerals, important kid events, 'just not feeling it today', maternal leave, paternal leave, whatever) policies vary so much from company to company and individual to individual; I think this variability is a good thing and gives an additional dimension for companies to compete for workers on.
- sofixa 5y ago
  > A lot of people are quite happy working, quite happy with their local environment, and feel no need to take a vacation I love my current job, the people, the work, the challenges. I still need an occasional break, and I still like seeing different things.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

> I don’t think they’re hard to find at all for consulting. You said you found your $150/hr 11 years ago. How many other $150/hr clients have you met since then? What makes you say that it’s easy to find them? I think it’s easy to say that consulting is easy when you’ve had a single, long-term client that pays well. In practice, it’s much harder to find these clients when starting from 0, unless you have such luck to find the dream client right out of the gate.

300bps 5y ago
I was self employed for five years many years ago. It’s easy to find clients - one of the best ways I did it was to go to computer stores and tell the salespeople if they got me a new client I would pay them $15 per hour in perpetuity for every hour I charged the client. I had 3 people that made more from me than their regular job. Then there are chambers of commerce, LinkedIn messages and frankly just putting yourself out there. I met my long term side client studying for a certification while my oldest son was at a baseball clinic. My client saw the book I was reading and walked up to me and said, “Are you in IT?”

wongarsu 5y ago

$150 per hour consulting is not the same as $150/h salary. With consulting you have to pay for your downtime, the time you use to acquire clients, your insurance, etc.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
It is especially not the same due to loss of tax advantaged benefits like health insurance ($20k+ per year if you have a family), 401k matching ($10k+), DCFSA and HSA matches ($5k), and then the 8% FICA taxes up to $10k that have to come out of your pocket.
- jasonkester 5y ago
  That's all stuff you can calculate and price into your rate. It's not like you just take the salary number they offer and divide it by two to get your rate.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    I was commenting on the comparison of a $150/hour independent contracting price to a $300k salary.
- robomartin 5y ago
  What these comments ignore is that, if you form an LLC for your consulting work you have access to a massive number of deductions that do not exist for someone who is an employee. My recommendation is to have a conversation with a good accountant and have them quantify the potential differences for you.
jasonkester 5y ago
Sounds like he has a steady client that accommodates as many hours as he likes at that rate, and has done so for a dozen years. I imagine he has covered his business development expense by now. This is how I do it too, by the way. Long term relationships with good companies. It's more like contracting, but without the 40h expectations of a contractor. ( Unless I feel like working 40 hours in a given week for some reason).

indymike 5y ago

> I have a side client that I met 11 years ago that I charge $150 per hour for remote development. That's not too surprising, and depending on what you are doing might be a great deal for everyone. Usually contracting work out is done at 1.7-2x the rate you'd pay an employee. This is because the the consultant has costs and risk that an employee does not. Costs like insurance, accounting, legal, personal benefits (i.e. savings to allow for vacations, healthcare), sales overhead (consultants have to keep finding new clients). Risks like contract cancellation and getting paid on time.

syshum 5y ago

$150 / hr as a 1099 Contractor, is more like $75/hr has a W2 employee after you factor in employee benefits (normally 30-40% of your total comp) and taxation (10-15% more for self employment depending on your deductions)

notfromhere 5y ago
If you’re doing it as part time to your full time job, it’s a bit more. The taxes are a little higher, but you’re already getting benefits from your full-time gig
- syshum 5y ago
  True and if your goal is to only ever work part time as a 1099 (i.e over employed) then it would be fine to look at it like that However if your goal is to work to replace your employment you should start out looking at the full picture, and pricing your work accordingly.