7 ms·
Ask HN: Remote ROR developers, how much per hour you make?
How much per hour on w2 you make when working remotely as a rails developer?
- odev 12y ago$100/h is my highest rate, but frankly plan to increase it to at least $150, which I still don't have an idea of how to do :) jus wondering: anyone followed http://doubleyourfreelancing.com/ http://doubleyourfreelancing.com/ rules and succeeded?
- hellbanner 12y ago<1099, not w2>Yes. It's just a number. Double it. Do the same with your hourly estimates. I quit my job making ~27 to doing contracting at 40. Then 60, 75, 80 now 85-100 across projects. (3 years rails, 6 years other stuff, USA) The real kicker is the former company billed me out at $150+ when I had even less experience!
- lewisvance 12y agoDo you have a few minutes to chat about your experience? I'm looking to make a similar move and I'd love to hear about what worked and didn't work for you. My contact info is in my profile (I didn't see any in yours). Thanks.
- hellbanner 12y agoI emailed you.
- venomsnake 12y agoCan you give ideas where to start searching for international contracting work if you are outside of US?
- hellbanner 12y agoMost of my work has come from referrals, but the original leads came from introducing myself. I suggest finding an international conference -- regardless of industry -- meet those people, trade business cards & regularly stay in contact offering your services. I haven't used this resource; but there are online communities like http://forum.thefreelancersguild.com/ http://forum.thefreelancersguild.com/ by the creator of DYFR.
- Guvante 12y ago> The real kicker is the former company billed me out at $150+ when I had even less experience! One thing to keep in mind is one of the reasons for doing that is the environment you are in and a certain guarantee about the work provided.
- hellbanner 12y agoYes - I am aware of that. Having an experienced team available to help newer coders out dramatically increases their productivity through synergy, pair programming and learning. However -- there's still a huge price discrepancy1
- taf2 12y agoAbout 7 years ago on a project I earned 100 an hour... No idea though these days...
- byEngineer 12y agoI make 65/hr on a remote project. Had an offer of 95usd/hr on w2 for an onsite project.
- eggie5 12y ago$100/hour
- cpursley 12y agoThese numbers would be more helpful by stating your level/years of experience and nationality/location.
- nfriedly 12y agoNote: the OP asked about W2 earnings which implies, among other things, that the employer is paying part of your taxes. I don't do a lot of RoR work but it does come up occasionally. My day job is salary but it works out to about $60 per hour (w2). However, when I do occasional freelance work, I charge $125 per hour - but its 1099 income where I pay all of the taxes, not w2. (Both are remote.)
- addict3d 12y ago$8.50/hr
- rjbwork 12y agoWhy are you accepting such paltry wages? There must be something exceptional about your situation.
- _random_ 12y agoI wanted to say he could be from any country, but actually this shouldn't be a reason to pay less.
- lmz 12y agoIt could be, depending on where the clients are. Maybe that's good money where he is, and the clients are local?
- stevelaz 12y ago$8.50/hr may be a lot for where OP lives based on their experience. I would think that OP is not living in the US. Hopefully OP can provide some insight here.
- jozi9 12y ago$8.50/hr is a nice amount of money in Hungary for example. If you don't have a finance/compsci degree is way above the average. In compsci, its an average payment for a developer with 2-3 years of experience (no need to pay further tax anyways from this). Architects, lead devs, PMs earns around 15/hour at best paying companies. If you're a contractor, it could top up around 20 after taxation. A young person with an average degree (economics for eg.) in an average position is not earning more than 5/hour here...
- hellbanner 12y agoPlease http://doubleyourfreelancingrate.com http://doubleyourfreelancingrate.com
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- nolite 12y ago$110 on 1099, SF startup post Series B
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- jerguismi 12y agoThis kind of raw comparison somewhat useless, since domain knowledge adds up + numerous other contract-specific things. For example, it is not unreasonable to ask $200 a hour in my country for a short gig, however if the contract is longer, usually the billable amount goes lower as well.
- claudiug 12y ago30$
- throw123123 12y agoI work full time remote in a salaried position. Lead engineer for a publicly traded company, made around 200k USD last year (salary + bonus + stock). /throwaway account
- stevelaz 12y agoNot to hijack this thread, but I'd like to hear more about remote rates of other platform developers as well (php,nodejs,python,.net, etc). A nice comparison matrix would be awesome. Anyone know of a site that specifically compares these rates across the globe? I could see a matrix like this being a great addon to remote job sites. Those of you who have created a work-remote job site and are competing to weworkremotely, etc... I would think that this would bring you a lot more traffic.
- odev 12y agomy answer is already there($100 max, sorry didn't see your question), but I do RoR, single page JS and JS/Cordova mobile.
- nyargh 12y ago$100/h - $125/h 1099
- dm03514 12y ago$35 / hr plus equity full remote python web development, With 5 years experience
- hellbanner 12y agoHow much equity did you get & can you talk about that arrangement more?
- pookieinc 12y agoAmazing! This thread makes me consider doing freelance work myself... Regarding freelance: Where do you advertise your work and do you follow a specific standard when working with clients, or is it mainly your own DIY standard?
- nfriedly 12y agoI used to freelance full time, and my main sources of clients were word-of-mouth, elance, and Google (in that order.) My standard was DIY - I had a short 1-page contract, and I'd ask for 40% up-front for new clients.
- cookiecaper 12y agoI make $45/hr on W2 doing remote work. Rails dev is one of my tertiary responsibilities. I also do Java dev and sysadmin. When I contract, I try to base my rates around $125/hr, but I'll give a dose of reality to the fantasy that HN always promotes: it's not easy to get people to pay that. I've been more successful getting clients in the $75-80/hr range and found that to be about the top of the tolerable range for most people, and even that is often a stretch. It really comes down to what type of client you're pitching. Anything mid-medium-sized or less in terms of revenue is going to snicker at decent rates. I've had a couple of bigger clients that were surprised they weren't paying me more than $125/hr, but I stopped freelancing full-time shortly after getting them (one of them successfully courted me over to W2; I probably shouldn't have taken it). I always found it hard to break into the bigger clients that were willing to pay good rates; they usually already have vendors and everyone wants their associate to get a piece of the pie.
- robflynn 12y ago$50 - $100/hr depending on the project. Planning to increase the rate soon. 1099. My non-remote W2 salary is less than that.
- cgarvis 12y agoDon't have a W2 rate but my 1099 Freelance rate is $150-$200
- ppihc 12y ago(throwaway) Full-time remote, salaried at $85k. (Roughly $40 USD per hour). Company pays market rate wherever employees are. I am located in NYC (so I'm probably a bit under market rate).
- briandear 12y ago5 years experience. 1 job at $120k (w2) and long-term consulting contract with 40 billable weekly hours at $95. Fully remote. For short duration (<1 month,) I bill at $115. Almost purely Rails.
- briandear 12y agoFYI, I am American who works for US clients but I live in Western Europe.
- lastofus 12y agoHow's working 2 full time jobs?
- briandear 12y agoIt's rough. about 15 hour days plus a few hours on many weekends. But the idea is to accumulate enough to buy some multi-family real estate. So it's one of those things were you work your ass off to get a benefit. The whole idea of do what other people won't do so you can live like other people don't live. It's extremely tough, but it's a means to an end. Luckily, since I'm remote, I get to see my kids any moment of the day and a difficult code issue is generally mitigated by taking a five minute break to play with my kids.
- gioele 12y agoFor the non-US, could somebody please explain what W2 and 1099 are?
- Guvante 12y agoW2 means an employee, from a wage standpoint it means your employer must pay for half your social security and medicaid. 1099 means a contractor, which means you are responsible for those. There are many other differences, but usually when talking about wage the 7.5% is the big one.
- company 12y agow2 = waged.. the employer withholds tax and also pays half of some taxes that you need to pay 1099 = independent contractor.. you get the full amount but you pay taxes end of the year
- lastofus 12y ago1099 = 15% more in taxes you have to pay on the revenue you earn from that income source
- csdreamer7 12y agoTo everyone who posted in this thread. How did you get your remote job?
- lastofus 12y agoGood recruiters
- nfriedly 12y agoYep, same. I freelanced remotely for a number of years, but my last two jobs have been as an employee because a recruiter (or, in the first case, the CTO) got a hold of me and made me an offer I couldn't refuse - which included remote work. Any recruiter that wants me to work on site gets an automatic no. (I might consider an exception if they had an office within bicycling distance of my house, but that's fairly unlikely.)
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- haidrali 12y agoStarting from 10$ per hour now at 15$ per hour with 1 year of experience in RAILS
- th1agofm 12y agoSorry to sabotage this thread, but I want to be a freelancer. I have a lot of experience with ruby/rails(have maintained good gems and all that jazz) but I work for a major media company, currently in high scale apps, here in my country and I make about ~$30h/hour. Does anybody that is in around ~$50/100 hourly rate want to get me aboard freelancing? I would gadly share some of my rate. Cheers
- nfriedly 12y agoThis isn't quite what you were looking for, but I'd say just go for it. If you still want a safety net, then don't quit your day job right away, just freelance on the side until you're more comfortable with it. I do occasional side jobs, mostly through elance. They take about 8-10% of your income in fees, but they do a couple of things to make up for it: * They have a good pool of work ready for you to bid on. * They automatically charge your client's credit card each week if you've recorded hours. (And you can set up https://github.com/nfriedly/elance-withdrawal https://github.com/nfriedly/elance-withdrawal to automatically transfer it from elance to your bank.) * You can differentiate yourself even without much experience by taking their skill tests. Start your rates around $75 an hour and raise it up to $100 after you have 2-3 good jobs under your belt. Don't get distracted by the folks charging ridiculously low rates - they are not competing with you, they're competing with each other for the clients who either don't need quality work or don't understand that you get what you pay for. Oh, and put about 50% of your income into savings. Depending on your country, you might end up owing a good portion of that in taxes, and regardless, whatever's left makes for a nice emergency/rainy day/ vacation/retirement fund. Feel free to email me if you want to go down that route and have more questions. (Or just post them here ;)