8 ms·

Insights into the 2013 iOS Developer Survey

42 points by RickDT 13y ago

bennyg 13y ago
I think it'd be cool to see more visualizations of that data. What percentage was around the median and mean? What percentage of people charged under $50/hr?
- tankbot 13y ago
  Indeed, very little substance here. They couldn't even be bothered to indicate the time interval their "rate" applies to. One assumes hours, but it's not stated anywhere on the page. $93/hour? Day? Week? Project?
  - RickDT 13y ago
    Point taken, but if you look at the results page (linked in the post), it's a lot more clear: http://bigswing.com/ios-rates-2013 http://bigswing.com/ios-rates-2013
    - tankbot 13y ago
      Ah, thanks! That's exactly what I was looking for. The heavier font weight didn't register and I completely missed the links in the body of the text. Maybe they need to be set off more, or maybe I just need more coffee :)
    - bennyg 13y ago
      Beautiful, that's exactly what I wanted to see. I agree with the other commenter who missed the link. You should combine those into one page.
- RickDT 13y ago
  I will freely admit that I suck as stats and data viz. We'll track the feedback and add to the results page.
  - glaugh 13y ago
    Hey Rick, I'd humbly suggest that you load the dataset into Statwing, and you'll get visualizations (histograms, scatterplots, etc.) and stats out of the box, as well as a link to share so others can play with the data. Or ping me at contact at statwing.com and I can do the data-loading stuff for you (I'm a cofounder).
rfnslyr 13y ago
I'm in the wrong goddamn business. Time to look at mobile development!
- bennyg 13y ago
  For other people, maybe. The market's starting to get flooded with mobile devs I believe - and making a hit on your own is just non calculable for potential profit.
  - MisterWebz 13y ago
    What kind of profit are we talking about? I'd be content with 2k revenue a month.
    - potatolicious 13y ago
      Mobile app profitability isn't linear, or even close to linear - you're either rolling in the dough or you're not even making ramen money. Discoverability is a huge problem, if you're not in a featuring, a top-X list, or something of the sort, your profitability is extremely limited. If there's no visibility on the App Store for you, you don't get fewer users, you get almost no users. $2K sustaining revenue a month isn't impossible, but it's hard.
      - ryandrake 13y ago
        From this discussion, it sounds like it's potentially very profitable to be a consultant MAKING apps for other companies, but, except for very rare cases, the apps themselves are not profitable.
        RickDT 13y ago
        We may do a follow-up survey to attempt to confirm our assumption that the vast majority of people that make money from apps are doing so by invoicing clients, rather than selling apps in the store(s).
      - 13y ago
joshdance 13y ago
How did you get the survey out? Was it via your email list or Twitter HN etc? Survey methods can dramatically change your results.
- RickDT 13y ago
  All of the above. We posted here on HN, on Twitter, our blog, and we emailed some people that we knew would want to participate.
Phlarp 13y ago
These "feel" low to me. For context I'm a freelancer doing mostly front end web work based in MN and comfortably charging 50-60 with relatively little experience (~18 months, three of which were an internship with a creative firm). My intuition would have previously been that iOS devs; being both more supply constrained and needing more technical depth in skills (webdevs can get away with just knowing how to string up wordpress instances. I'm not aware of anything similar in the objective C world) would command much more leverage. On the top end, I would hope these "rockstar" teams are charging 250/hr per developer? I like to think I'm at the very bottom of the totem pole with plenty of room to climb higher and increase my revenue over a long career to come; seeing things like this make think I'm rapidly approaching a pretty hard cap.
- RickDT 13y ago
  Especially comparing the average rates to proficiency and locale, I was surprised. I would expect Journeymen and Master to be charging more than $100/hr on average. Same with people in tech-heavy areas. But, our data may be skewed this year just due to our reach. We didn't have many people from companies in the range of 20-100 people which I think is a sweet spot for high specialization.
wolframarnold 13y ago
You guys are asking some interesting questions in particular about whether people feel they charge too much or not enough. The best expose on that I've seen is in Gerald Weinberg's "Secrets of Consulting" http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0932633013/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1372779848&sr=8-1&pi=SL75 http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0932633013/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=... It's a question that's both externally determined, e.g. "What does the market bear?" and also based on someone's own perception of their worth. It's hard to disentangle the two but very important in order to maximize revenue. What's more the objective question of what the market will bear is often colored by my own perception, which is a recipe to leaving money on the table. Weinberg's advice is to set your rate such that you'd feel emotionally neutral whether or not you get the gig. If you over price (by your own feeling, not by what the market says) and you get the gig, you'll be stressed to deliver at what you think that price level should be worth in labor. If you under price (by your own standard, perhaps because you think the market will not accept more) then you'll be resentful for working below what you're worth. Having been a consultant myself, I can only advise everybody to challenge the own perception of what the market will bear.
- RickDT 13y ago
  Fantastic point on challenging your own perceptions of the value of an hour, the market, etc. We really hope this survey (and subsequent ones that we plan to do) gives people an additional data point to consider.
pjungwir 13y ago
Interesting that "innocent"s charge more than "exposed"s or "apprentices." I wonder if these are senior developers making a transition into iOS.
- RickDT 13y ago
  I hadn't considered the transitioners. That's a good point. The other way to look at it is that they don't know how bad they are yet :) When you first start to learn something, you feel like you know everything until you get that first smack down!
10dpd 13y ago
- Note this is a self-reported survey where people are likely to overstate their earnings in order to impress peers. - Additionally there isn't enough supporting data, e.g. no where is the rate of time defined in the article. I'd be interested to see the original survey to see if this is clearly mentioned here. - Can someone point to one clear unambiguous place where an iOS developer position is advertised at over $100 per hour?
- RickDT 13y ago
  - The survey was anonymous (unless you signed up to get the results). And, I don't think anyone is trying to impress us ;) - The data clearly shows that this is per hour (see the data here: http://bigswing.com/ios-rates-2013 http://bigswing.com/ios-rates-2013, per the post). You can also view an archived copy of the survey here: http://bigswing.com/ios-rate-survey-2013-archive/ http://bigswing.com/ios-rate-survey-2013-archive/ It poses the question: "If you do have an hourly rate, what is it on average?" - The point of doing this survey was that rates are rarely, if ever, actually posted. There are a lot of reasons for that, but it also makes hard to know if you're in line with your industry. Hence, the survey! Your critiques and questions seem to imply that you don't think our findings are valid. Is that true or am I reading too much into it? ~$100/hour USD is right in line with our experience for an average across the whole industry. It's low for an agency or big firm and high for a young freelancer.
- jtc331 13y ago
  >> "- Can someone point to one clear unambiguous place where an iOS developer position is advertised at over $100 per hour?" I think this misses the point. You seem to imply you're thinking about what a developer could make in a full-time salaried position. What a consultancy (whether one person or ten) charges is generally significantly higher.

42 points by RickDT 13y ago

I think it'd be cool to see more visualizations of that data. What percentage was around the median and mean? What percentage of people charged under $50/hr?

tankbot 13y ago
Indeed, very little substance here. They couldn't even be bothered to indicate the time interval their "rate" applies to. One assumes hours, but it's not stated anywhere on the page. $93/hour? Day? Week? Project?
- RickDT 13y ago
  Point taken, but if you look at the results page (linked in the post), it's a lot more clear: http://bigswing.com/ios-rates-2013 http://bigswing.com/ios-rates-2013
  - tankbot 13y ago
    Ah, thanks! That's exactly what I was looking for. The heavier font weight didn't register and I completely missed the links in the body of the text. Maybe they need to be set off more, or maybe I just need more coffee :)
  - bennyg 13y ago
    Beautiful, that's exactly what I wanted to see. I agree with the other commenter who missed the link. You should combine those into one page.
RickDT 13y ago
I will freely admit that I suck as stats and data viz. We'll track the feedback and add to the results page.
- glaugh 13y ago
  Hey Rick, I'd humbly suggest that you load the dataset into Statwing, and you'll get visualizations (histograms, scatterplots, etc.) and stats out of the box, as well as a link to share so others can play with the data. Or ping me at contact at statwing.com and I can do the data-loading stuff for you (I'm a cofounder).

rfnslyr 13y ago

I'm in the wrong goddamn business. Time to look at mobile development!

bennyg 13y ago
For other people, maybe. The market's starting to get flooded with mobile devs I believe - and making a hit on your own is just non calculable for potential profit.
- MisterWebz 13y ago
  What kind of profit are we talking about? I'd be content with 2k revenue a month.
  - potatolicious 13y ago
    Mobile app profitability isn't linear, or even close to linear - you're either rolling in the dough or you're not even making ramen money. Discoverability is a huge problem, if you're not in a featuring, a top-X list, or something of the sort, your profitability is extremely limited. If there's no visibility on the App Store for you, you don't get fewer users, you get almost no users. $2K sustaining revenue a month isn't impossible, but it's hard.
    - ryandrake 13y ago
      From this discussion, it sounds like it's potentially very profitable to be a consultant MAKING apps for other companies, but, except for very rare cases, the apps themselves are not profitable.
      - RickDT 13y ago
        We may do a follow-up survey to attempt to confirm our assumption that the vast majority of people that make money from apps are doing so by invoicing clients, rather than selling apps in the store(s).
    - 13y ago

joshdance 13y ago

How did you get the survey out? Was it via your email list or Twitter HN etc? Survey methods can dramatically change your results.

RickDT 13y ago
All of the above. We posted here on HN, on Twitter, our blog, and we emailed some people that we knew would want to participate.

Phlarp 13y ago

These "feel" low to me. For context I'm a freelancer doing mostly front end web work based in MN and comfortably charging 50-60 with relatively little experience (~18 months, three of which were an internship with a creative firm). My intuition would have previously been that iOS devs; being both more supply constrained and needing more technical depth in skills (webdevs can get away with just knowing how to string up wordpress instances. I'm not aware of anything similar in the objective C world) would command much more leverage. On the top end, I would hope these "rockstar" teams are charging 250/hr per developer? I like to think I'm at the very bottom of the totem pole with plenty of room to climb higher and increase my revenue over a long career to come; seeing things like this make think I'm rapidly approaching a pretty hard cap.

RickDT 13y ago
Especially comparing the average rates to proficiency and locale, I was surprised. I would expect Journeymen and Master to be charging more than $100/hr on average. Same with people in tech-heavy areas. But, our data may be skewed this year just due to our reach. We didn't have many people from companies in the range of 20-100 people which I think is a sweet spot for high specialization.

wolframarnold 13y ago

You guys are asking some interesting questions in particular about whether people feel they charge too much or not enough. The best expose on that I've seen is in Gerald Weinberg's "Secrets of Consulting" http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0932633013/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1372779848&sr=8-1&pi=SL75 http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0932633013/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=... It's a question that's both externally determined, e.g. "What does the market bear?" and also based on someone's own perception of their worth. It's hard to disentangle the two but very important in order to maximize revenue. What's more the objective question of what the market will bear is often colored by my own perception, which is a recipe to leaving money on the table. Weinberg's advice is to set your rate such that you'd feel emotionally neutral whether or not you get the gig. If you over price (by your own feeling, not by what the market says) and you get the gig, you'll be stressed to deliver at what you think that price level should be worth in labor. If you under price (by your own standard, perhaps because you think the market will not accept more) then you'll be resentful for working below what you're worth. Having been a consultant myself, I can only advise everybody to challenge the own perception of what the market will bear.

RickDT 13y ago
Fantastic point on challenging your own perceptions of the value of an hour, the market, etc. We really hope this survey (and subsequent ones that we plan to do) gives people an additional data point to consider.

pjungwir 13y ago

Interesting that "innocent"s charge more than "exposed"s or "apprentices." I wonder if these are senior developers making a transition into iOS.

RickDT 13y ago
I hadn't considered the transitioners. That's a good point. The other way to look at it is that they don't know how bad they are yet :) When you first start to learn something, you feel like you know everything until you get that first smack down!

10dpd 13y ago

- Note this is a self-reported survey where people are likely to overstate their earnings in order to impress peers. - Additionally there isn't enough supporting data, e.g. no where is the rate of time defined in the article. I'd be interested to see the original survey to see if this is clearly mentioned here. - Can someone point to one clear unambiguous place where an iOS developer position is advertised at over $100 per hour?

RickDT 13y ago
- The survey was anonymous (unless you signed up to get the results). And, I don't think anyone is trying to impress us ;) - The data clearly shows that this is per hour (see the data here: http://bigswing.com/ios-rates-2013 http://bigswing.com/ios-rates-2013, per the post). You can also view an archived copy of the survey here: http://bigswing.com/ios-rate-survey-2013-archive/ http://bigswing.com/ios-rate-survey-2013-archive/ It poses the question: "If you do have an hourly rate, what is it on average?" - The point of doing this survey was that rates are rarely, if ever, actually posted. There are a lot of reasons for that, but it also makes hard to know if you're in line with your industry. Hence, the survey! Your critiques and questions seem to imply that you don't think our findings are valid. Is that true or am I reading too much into it? ~$100/hour USD is right in line with our experience for an average across the whole industry. It's low for an agency or big firm and high for a young freelancer.
jtc331 13y ago
>> "- Can someone point to one clear unambiguous place where an iOS developer position is advertised at over $100 per hour?" I think this misses the point. You seem to imply you're thinking about what a developer could make in a full-time salaried position. What a consultancy (whether one person or ten) charges is generally significantly higher.