Ask HN: In NYC is $40/hr a low rate for an experienced Java guy?
5 comments
If you're experience really is as you suggest and you are an EJB/JMS/Spring/RDBMS/transactions/JAAS guru, then yes, that is low-ball, and I'd have expected you to be getting double that!!!
Caveat: I'm not NY based, but I have worked out of a US telco for a while. $100/hour was their top rate for telco experienced Java architect/developers.
Caveat: I'm not NY based, but I have worked out of a US telco for a while. $100/hour was their top rate for telco experienced Java architect/developers.
If you can get a sense of what a permanent Java position in NYC would pay, you can convert that to a contract rate using a rule of thumb:
$40/hr contract is about $40k/yr permanent
Knowing the cost of rent in NYC, $40k / yr sounds very low for Java.
*(If a contractor can work 40 hr/wk for 50 weeks, they should earn twice what a permanent workers earns in a year, since the contractor is responsible for their own training, new jobs, billing, equipment, etc, and companies generally (in my experience) budget twice the salary of a staffer for their actual cost)
$40/hr contract is about $40k/yr permanent
Knowing the cost of rent in NYC, $40k / yr sounds very low for Java.
*(If a contractor can work 40 hr/wk for 50 weeks, they should earn twice what a permanent workers earns in a year, since the contractor is responsible for their own training, new jobs, billing, equipment, etc, and companies generally (in my experience) budget twice the salary of a staffer for their actual cost)
Metro Florida (Orlando, Tampa, Miami) is $60 - $75 for agency contract. My rate is above that, but I mainly do Mobile Java, Objective-C and a whole lot of Javascript now.
I would venture to guess that $40 hr for NYC is obscenely low given the fact that it is in FL. Especially with all the financial work up there. I hear people theorizing that NYC's start-up scene is hindered by the financial money poured into development there, so I would have to assume that, if true, the money has to be pretty good to keep the start-up scene depressed like that.
My gut tells me you are getting low balled, if you have been in Java from the beginning. I have been doing it since the .9 beta release so we probably have similar tenure.
I would venture to guess that $40 hr for NYC is obscenely low given the fact that it is in FL. Especially with all the financial work up there. I hear people theorizing that NYC's start-up scene is hindered by the financial money poured into development there, so I would have to assume that, if true, the money has to be pretty good to keep the start-up scene depressed like that.
My gut tells me you are getting low balled, if you have been in Java from the beginning. I have been doing it since the .9 beta release so we probably have similar tenure.
Interesting, thanks. Just been talking to some people locally who said $65-$80 would be a likely range for NYC - so not too far off your estimate for FL.
Any idea if the rate would be better at a national agency (KForce/Manpower/etc) or a local one? Curious what your experience is since we seem to have a similar background.
Any idea if the rate would be better at a national agency (KForce/Manpower/etc) or a local one? Curious what your experience is since we seem to have a similar background.
I think their is a link to my linked-in profile in my HN profile which covers some of my experience. But to keep it brief, I was doing CGI/C and CGI/Perl on the web then around 94-95, the green team dropped Java on the net (I think it was a .8 release) I remember I downloaded it and never got around to playing with it, by the time I did it was at the .9 release.
At that point and with Netscape's announcement, we all thought Java was going to be what Javascript/CSS/HTML is now. Anyways, I rode it through its evolution to a server side language and I ended up doing a lot of Java/VRML work. I was doing computer based training around 1.2 and was doing Java and VRML work for a training and simulation company. Anyway, after that, my tenure becomes pretty standard. with the JEE and Apache web stuff.
As soon as a viable alternative existed for web front end though I bailed on Java for web as fast as I could. I always felt that we went too far towards Sun and Oracles vision of the dumb terminal, and that we set the web back a decade from where it could be, we are just now starting to see what the web could have been if we would not have been so dogmatic about server side frameworks and gave Javascript a little more love sooner.
It seems that when Java on the client died so did any effort to place UI logic in the UI. Anyways, I am totally side tracking, but my point was, my background besides some forays into simulation and AI, is pretty similar to other JEE / Web developers who have been in it from the mid to late 90's.
At that point and with Netscape's announcement, we all thought Java was going to be what Javascript/CSS/HTML is now. Anyways, I rode it through its evolution to a server side language and I ended up doing a lot of Java/VRML work. I was doing computer based training around 1.2 and was doing Java and VRML work for a training and simulation company. Anyway, after that, my tenure becomes pretty standard. with the JEE and Apache web stuff.
As soon as a viable alternative existed for web front end though I bailed on Java for web as fast as I could. I always felt that we went too far towards Sun and Oracles vision of the dumb terminal, and that we set the web back a decade from where it could be, we are just now starting to see what the web could have been if we would not have been so dogmatic about server side frameworks and gave Javascript a little more love sooner.
It seems that when Java on the client died so did any effort to place UI logic in the UI. Anyways, I am totally side tracking, but my point was, my background besides some forays into simulation and AI, is pretty similar to other JEE / Web developers who have been in it from the mid to late 90's.
$40 is low. $40 x 2,080 hours a year = $83,200
That would be $70k in salary with about $10k+ in benefits.
So, it's sounds like a good deal for the company... but not a horrible deal for you. You could get more, but make your decision on how great the company is to work with.
That would be $70k in salary with about $10k+ in benefits.
So, it's sounds like a good deal for the company... but not a horrible deal for you. You could get more, but make your decision on how great the company is to work with.
I received numerous contacts but the only one to mention a concrete figure was an agency that said they wanted to put me onsite at a gig right away for $40/hr.
I haven't done contract work for many years but this seems very low to me.
Are they low-balling me to see if I'll bite.
And, if so, what's a reasonable minimum to expect, considering that I've been programming enterprise Java since it first came out and would be able to "hit the ground running", as recruiters like to say?