Re: [VOT] What hourly rate to charge for programming?

[Gunther Birznieks <gu...@extropia.com>]

Hey guys..MASSIVELY OFF TOPIC!!!!!! :( :( :(

At 12:24 AM 10/3/2001 -0400, Michael Bacarella wrote:
> > I've had about two years of experience with perl, and one year of
> > experience with mod_perl and MySQL.
> >
> > I've been doing contract programming jobs for people and charged by the
> > hour. The rate I currently charge them ($40) was kind of chosen randomly.
> > I'd like to find out if this figure is too high/too low. Does anyone here
> > have any experiences to share?
>
>Contract programming is entirely different from salaried work.
>
>Assuming you live in the United States and are charging US dollars,
>Consider:
>
>         Taxes (including an additional self-employment tax).
>
>         Insurance (health, general liability, and possibly others)
>
>         (Home) Office Expenses -- stuff you use to generate invoices, 
> stuff you
>         use to do your actual work if done in your home, rent, etc.
>
>         Continued education -- consultants are expected to be experts.
>
>         Greater risk. You generally will also never work as much as
>         you'd like to.
>
>         Your clients also get to wash their hands of you completely. Your
>         expenses are a direct tax writeoff, rather than an additional
>         accounting headache.
>
>
>After deducting all of the above, a $40/hr rate starts looking more like
>an $18/hr rate, and maybe even less. Consultants don't _just_ bill
>$100/hr because they're scam artists. :)

It depends on your location of course. I notice that Michael is in 
Manhattan which is a pretty expensive salary area of the USA. And it also 
depends on how long you are on a contract -- 6 months? A year at a time? or 
just a week or two to solve a specialized problem?

>You're charging effectively half of what a salaried perl/mysql hacker
>costs. Humility is a valuable business trait, but I'm positive you're
>worth more than you're charging.

Maybe.