9 ms·
For the Europeans feeling US numbers are unattainable: I'm on £1100/day in London with about 8 years devops/cloud/IaaS experience
by ukoki 4y ago
For the Europeans feeling US numbers are unattainable: I'm on
£1100/day in London with about 8 years devops/cloud/IaaS experience
- hankchinaski 4y agoIs that inside or outside ir35? This is CTO-Head Of level pay for a contractor in london. Unless you work in a hedge-fund, in which case that is attainable even as a IC
- ukoki 4y agoInside sadly, but my previous contract was 950 outside.
- DoingIsLearning 4y agoI have been in consulting for several years and then back to permanent positions. What advice do you have for people who are happy to do technical work but find too stressful (in terms of 'people skills') to manage clients and the networking side of sourcing clients?
- lupire 4y agoFind someone to pimp you out for 25-50%.
- pc86 4y agoStandard rate is 30% for placement of permanent positions (e.g. recruiters) and 10% for contract.
- Silhouette 4y ago30% for how long though? 10% seems low for a UK recruitment agency placing contractors in software dev or similar fields unless we're talking about relatively long engagements and the recruiter fees continue throughout.
- pc86 4y agoI've seen the following in action: 1. Recruiter sources a direct hire. At hire they're paid 30% of one year's salary, and if the hire is still there 30/60/90 days later, they keep the money. 2. 10% finders fee for fixed-price contract to a contractor (paid by the contractor, not the company) 3. Company employs someone, who is then billed out to another company as staff augmentation / contract. Markup varies widely but ranges from 2-200% and in my experience is inversely proportional to the quality of the person doing the work.
- ukoki 4y agoIn terms of networking: I get all my clients from recruiters reaching out to me LinkedIn. I've "SEO"d my profile to make sure all keywords (and every variation) for the tech I specialise is in my profile. In terms of making money without being in a supervisory role: Become really good at operating / devopsing niche enterprise software. Try and specialise in software where: * There aren't many users (and therefore few competing specialists) * The users are large, rich enterprises * It's "legacy" and therefore the pool of competing specialists is shrinking (but importantly the pool of customers is shrinking at a slower rate than the pool of specialists) * It's complicated * The software provides enough value to its users such that paying an incredibly expensive contractor to look after it is much cheaper than not using the software and having to pay the salaries of the dozens/hundreds of jobs the software automates away.
- Aeolun 4y agoWe’re talking about ERP systems now? Just the server to run those things on costs more than your monthly rate :)
- dom96 4y agohow much is that per year?
- lupire 4y agoHow many days per month?
- ukoki 4y agoI take about 4-6 weeks holiday a year, so averaging about 19-20 days a month
- poooogles 4y agoHow has IR35 treated you? By this I mean, how have things changed for you?
- ukoki 4y agoWell I negotiated a 150+ bump in rate for the 1100 contract to offset the IR35 taxes as my current contract is inside IR35, but it's still a net loss for me compared to my previous 950/day outside contract. At 1100, my total tax burdern is 49% (that's total, not marginal!)
- pc86 4y ago> my total tax burdern is 49% (that total, not marginal!) This is insane. FTE + contracting put me at something like 300-325k USD for 2021 and under 15% effective tax rate, and targeting similar on ~40k less for 2022
- badcppdev 4y agoEthical question? Do you think that's reasonable given tax rates of 12%, 22%, etc for salaried roles? Is there something that makes your contract based employment significantly different to a salaried role?
- pc86 4y agoMore than half of that was salaried W2 income. The rest is/was taxed as regular income. There's no capital gains or tax shenanigans. It's all regular income with deductions and credits.
- scopendo 4y agoWhilst high, not sure it makes any sense to compare the systems.
- pc86 4y agoIt's hard to imagine any system where half (or more) of your total earnings being taken is justified. I have no problem paying taxes, and mine could be noticeably higher without any negative day-to-day impact, for sure. I think there's a lot of FUD and fear-mongering around marginal tax rates but if your total tax bill is 50%+ something is very wrong.
- tigershark 4y agoInside IR35 or outside?
- ukoki 4y agoInside sadly, but my previous contract was 950 outside.
- benjaminwootton 4y agoThat is very difficult to achieve though. Most contracts through recruiters top out at £700 or so in DevOps and Cloud and it’s tough to go direct with large businesses for consultancy type rates. It sounds as though you did it by combining the skill set with an enterprise app and negotiated hard by owning that niche? Despite your deserved success, UK contracting rates are on average poor compared to east coast and west coast US.
- EddySchauHai 4y agoHow’ve you managed that? I’m a test engineer in the Bay Area but when I move back to the UK, if I can’t carry on with my current role, I’ll go into contracting. I see rates up to £700 but was really aiming for £500 myself. I also have 8 years experience. Any tricks you’ve found on breaking four figures a day?!