Ask HN: Generalist contractors, what is your hourly rate?
There was a question a couple days ago about hourly rate, and a lot of the discussion revolved around raising compensation by specializing. Of course, generalists can still specialize, but it's a bit different. So, I'm curious what the answers will be like if we hear from only generalist developers.
315 comments
Everyone here is so incredibly focused on money as the primary motivator, which I guess given the thread question makes some sense. But I'd like to just put in a little word for money not being everything, and client type / work type actually being a really important part of the equation.
HN is a forum where increasingly I see posts every single day about the high level of misery in tech / how can I get out of this rat race / high levels of stress / undervalued / etc etc.
I charge £500 a day. It's not much compared to some of the rates on here, but I work with lovely, interesting clients in the non-profit sector. My clients love what they do and I do good work for them so they love what I do. I have long term, low stress, friendship-like relationships with my clients, not shouty / nasty / high stress ones. I've done this work for 12 years, and had to work with maybe a handful of assholes during that time.
FWIW I think there is a "lower budget bar" under which demands are insane for the money being offered, and we should all avoid this work unless we actively want to take a race to the bottom. But - I think there is undoubtedly a "higher budget bar" over which the stress level and expectation is made exceedingly high. This (I would imagine; I don't know, I've worked in non profits my whole life) is probably also equated with sector - if you're in a FinTech environment I would imagine you're looking at high budgets but also an insane number of highly pressured assholes shouting at you all the time.
What am I basically saying? I guess - yes, charge enough (and this is probably more than you think it should be) - but also, look at the bigger picture of your work / sector. Think about happiness, work-life balance, client motivations, etc - and use this to inform what you charge and how you charge for it. That'd be my advice.
HN is a forum where increasingly I see posts every single day about the high level of misery in tech / how can I get out of this rat race / high levels of stress / undervalued / etc etc.
I charge £500 a day. It's not much compared to some of the rates on here, but I work with lovely, interesting clients in the non-profit sector. My clients love what they do and I do good work for them so they love what I do. I have long term, low stress, friendship-like relationships with my clients, not shouty / nasty / high stress ones. I've done this work for 12 years, and had to work with maybe a handful of assholes during that time.
FWIW I think there is a "lower budget bar" under which demands are insane for the money being offered, and we should all avoid this work unless we actively want to take a race to the bottom. But - I think there is undoubtedly a "higher budget bar" over which the stress level and expectation is made exceedingly high. This (I would imagine; I don't know, I've worked in non profits my whole life) is probably also equated with sector - if you're in a FinTech environment I would imagine you're looking at high budgets but also an insane number of highly pressured assholes shouting at you all the time.
What am I basically saying? I guess - yes, charge enough (and this is probably more than you think it should be) - but also, look at the bigger picture of your work / sector. Think about happiness, work-life balance, client motivations, etc - and use this to inform what you charge and how you charge for it. That'd be my advice.
I recommend Weekly Rate Consulting[0]
About four years ago a friend of mine, who specializes in personal brand consultation, suggested whatever my hourly was that I double it. I didn't believe her. I doubled it and landed the first proposal.
You're probably worth more than you think.
Specialization can increase your rate, but business sense, communication, and ability to articulate and contribute value at the executive level is a 10x difference.
[0] https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/consultin...
About four years ago a friend of mine, who specializes in personal brand consultation, suggested whatever my hourly was that I double it. I didn't believe her. I doubled it and landed the first proposal.
You're probably worth more than you think.
Specialization can increase your rate, but business sense, communication, and ability to articulate and contribute value at the executive level is a 10x difference.
[0] https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/consultin...
I specialize in the ability to competently and fully build from the ground up your whole business from design, development, system administration, deployments, testing, seo and other stuff as a single person.
My rate is $10,000/week pre-paid monthly.
My rate is $10,000/week pre-paid monthly.
I generally bill around $175/hr to make whatever technology problems you have work out :) (Note I'm based out of Europe, though, reading some of the stuff here I should probably charge more anyways)
That's my generalized rate when the person paying me is non-technical and the actual work involved isn't clear or known to them ahead of time. I spend part of the time coming up with a plan so they know what's going to happen, of course, and coming up with estimates.
If it's a technical person or the problem is better-defined, then I charge different 'specialist' rates that vary based on the task and the rough 'market rate' for such a task.
Sometimes, also, it's just an unusually fun task or a task for a nonprofit or something, in which case I work with their budget and my intrinsic motivation and try to come up with something fair.
That's my generalized rate when the person paying me is non-technical and the actual work involved isn't clear or known to them ahead of time. I spend part of the time coming up with a plan so they know what's going to happen, of course, and coming up with estimates.
If it's a technical person or the problem is better-defined, then I charge different 'specialist' rates that vary based on the task and the rough 'market rate' for such a task.
Sometimes, also, it's just an unusually fun task or a task for a nonprofit or something, in which case I work with their budget and my intrinsic motivation and try to come up with something fair.
I build web apps from start to finish by myself (architecture, design, development, database, servers, marketing page etc.).
I bill $500/day, but do project based billing, with 50% payment up-front, 25% on first preview, and 25% on delivery. For improvements and new features on existing projects, I estimate the avg. monthly work and we do monthly retainer agreements.
I usually work with seed stage startups (usually referred to me by the angel investors) or bootstrapped B2B tech companies acting as their dev. team.
My rate is lower than others mentioned in this thread, but I live in Turkey, which compared to EU/USA, has very low cost of living, and this rates allow me to live comfortably.
That said, after doing this for 10+ years, I'm finally pivoting to creating my own SaaS products, and stopped accepting new clients and slowing down the works with existing clients.
I bill $500/day, but do project based billing, with 50% payment up-front, 25% on first preview, and 25% on delivery. For improvements and new features on existing projects, I estimate the avg. monthly work and we do monthly retainer agreements.
I usually work with seed stage startups (usually referred to me by the angel investors) or bootstrapped B2B tech companies acting as their dev. team.
My rate is lower than others mentioned in this thread, but I live in Turkey, which compared to EU/USA, has very low cost of living, and this rates allow me to live comfortably.
That said, after doing this for 10+ years, I'm finally pivoting to creating my own SaaS products, and stopped accepting new clients and slowing down the works with existing clients.
I'm a cyber security specialist (in web application security) with a few certifications and 10+ years of experience.
I charge usually $350 an hour unless it's something I estimate will require the help of an outsider to which I may go as high at $1k an hour.
Answering everyone asking how we find clients - I love public speaking and so I try to do as much as I can. 80% of my clients saw me speak, the other 20% come from word to mouth. Highly recommend if you have the ability.
I charge usually $350 an hour unless it's something I estimate will require the help of an outsider to which I may go as high at $1k an hour.
Answering everyone asking how we find clients - I love public speaking and so I try to do as much as I can. 80% of my clients saw me speak, the other 20% come from word to mouth. Highly recommend if you have the ability.
Have an annual salary in mind for a similar role, chop off the last three zeros, and that's my hourly rate.
It works out to approximately double which is just enough to account for things you would normally get from an employer:
- payroll taxes (SS/Medicare) - PTO/sick days - equipment & supplies - training/conferences - health insurance - retirement savings
Etc
It works out to approximately double which is just enough to account for things you would normally get from an employer:
- payroll taxes (SS/Medicare) - PTO/sick days - equipment & supplies - training/conferences - health insurance - retirement savings
Etc
Generalist can be a specialization in itself. Imagine someone that can do a bit of front-end, backend, infra, design, would be a specialist in bootstrapping a startup.
Don't get too attached to market/industry defined roles.
Another way to raise rates is to take risks (like deadlines, promises) but every person had their own risk profile.
Don't get too attached to market/industry defined roles.
Another way to raise rates is to take risks (like deadlines, promises) but every person had their own risk profile.
In Amsterdam NL a backend engineer could expect 80-100 euros/hr. > 100 is also possible, but you may get into specialization territory.
Most recently my floor was USD$300/hour but billed in weeks, and sometimes I didn't do full weeks (like four day weeks during good weather). Usually minimum engagement of four weeks, 25-50% upfront (longer engagements get the lower end).
I increase the rate with respect to beurocracy and scope. If I'm working with a small, single digits shop then the lower rate usually holds. If it's a larger shop and I'm going to be in a ton of meetings all the time, I usually start doubling the rate. For a F500-type company I'd never drop below $500/hour, and minimum engagement would probably grow to eight weeks.
I'm a generalist. I've actually signed a number of contracts on "I will fix ~all your hard to fix bugs".
I increase the rate with respect to beurocracy and scope. If I'm working with a small, single digits shop then the lower rate usually holds. If it's a larger shop and I'm going to be in a ton of meetings all the time, I usually start doubling the rate. For a F500-type company I'd never drop below $500/hour, and minimum engagement would probably grow to eight weeks.
I'm a generalist. I've actually signed a number of contracts on "I will fix ~all your hard to fix bugs".
Southeast USA. $100/hr for everything (meetings, development work, bug fixes, ...).
Took me a while to be honest with myself and finally charge for all of my time. Maybe it's confidence?
Never had an issue from a client with this arrangement.
Took me a while to be honest with myself and finally charge for all of my time. Maybe it's confidence?
Never had an issue from a client with this arrangement.
100€ per hour.
I'm a contractor on paper and work with my own company (so I can pay 15% in taxes) but it's a long term job, full-time and I don't take holidays. I live in a nice low cost of living European country, even if everything is slowly degrading and I give it 10-15 years before I'll need to move. Found the job (like all my jobs) via word of mouth / personal network. Recruiters offer you significantly less per hour in my experience.
I tried working with the States but I couldn't charge more (they try to pay european prices) and the work was way more stressful. Living in the States is definitely not for me though, way too many homeless and mentally ill people, not to mention the culture gets "progress"ively worse and worse.
If I were employed by a FANG (even ignoring the waste of time of preparing for the interview) I would have to pay way more taxes because I would be an employee. Also they pay way less in Europe.
I guess over time I could make more money, once I progress inside a FANG but that sounds hard, shaky and absolutely not fun.
I need money to build a house so my current plan is to keep contracting and run side businesses to make passive income (currently at around 1/2k per month passive) until I don't need money anymore.
I'm a contractor on paper and work with my own company (so I can pay 15% in taxes) but it's a long term job, full-time and I don't take holidays. I live in a nice low cost of living European country, even if everything is slowly degrading and I give it 10-15 years before I'll need to move. Found the job (like all my jobs) via word of mouth / personal network. Recruiters offer you significantly less per hour in my experience.
I tried working with the States but I couldn't charge more (they try to pay european prices) and the work was way more stressful. Living in the States is definitely not for me though, way too many homeless and mentally ill people, not to mention the culture gets "progress"ively worse and worse.
If I were employed by a FANG (even ignoring the waste of time of preparing for the interview) I would have to pay way more taxes because I would be an employee. Also they pay way less in Europe.
I guess over time I could make more money, once I progress inside a FANG but that sounds hard, shaky and absolutely not fun.
I need money to build a house so my current plan is to keep contracting and run side businesses to make passive income (currently at around 1/2k per month passive) until I don't need money anymore.
$2k per day.
hourly always invites discussions, for example how are phone calls with mixed topics billed?
hourly always invites discussions, for example how are phone calls with mixed topics billed?
Germany, mostly doing iOS, macOS native (Objc & Swift), Android (Kotlin), Hybrid (Ionic/Capacitor) & Web (Angular + React). ~ 10 years of experience. Working with lots of low level communication protocols for controlling industrial field devices from native apps or web apps. However I never decline a project based on technology and have done all sort of other things as well.
I usually charge 120€ per hour (working mostly for big german companies). Currently mostly helping various international teams of my clients and not doing much dev work myself anymore. Usually my contracts are at least 500 hours.
However I do this in addition to my own software projects that sell pretty well. This gives me the flexibility to decline any customer project I don’t like. (Or if they want me to do scrum)
I usually charge 120€ per hour (working mostly for big german companies). Currently mostly helping various international teams of my clients and not doing much dev work myself anymore. Usually my contracts are at least 500 hours.
However I do this in addition to my own software projects that sell pretty well. This gives me the flexibility to decline any customer project I don’t like. (Or if they want me to do scrum)
$150/hr for small (<= 10 hour) projects but I did lower my upwork to $90 before the pandemic to try and see if it got me any inbound leads (it did not).
$4000/week with no Fridays for bigger contracts.
It usually gets negotiated down for startups and non-profits.
$4000/week with no Fridays for bigger contracts.
It usually gets negotiated down for startups and non-profits.
I’m not sure if I qualify as generalist, but this should still be relevant:
It depends. Did I go through an agency, or find the client myself? Do they need _me_ or a butt in a seat? Will the work be fun, or awful, or is there any on-call expectation (which is worse than awful and probably a hard no)? Discounts for bulk and prepayment.
Also, hourly rates are the worst. Value pricing is a hard leap; a much easier thing you can do today is at least bump to a flat day rate, or a weekly one of the shape of your clients makes it seamless. Just do it; it’ll make you a happier, saner person and immediately mitigate a terrible incentive misalignment.
It depends. Did I go through an agency, or find the client myself? Do they need _me_ or a butt in a seat? Will the work be fun, or awful, or is there any on-call expectation (which is worse than awful and probably a hard no)? Discounts for bulk and prepayment.
Also, hourly rates are the worst. Value pricing is a hard leap; a much easier thing you can do today is at least bump to a flat day rate, or a weekly one of the shape of your clients makes it seamless. Just do it; it’ll make you a happier, saner person and immediately mitigate a terrible incentive misalignment.
I charge 75 EUR per hour but my main client is very loyal (15 years working together), pays on time (24 hours) and I might soon become a business partner.
I de design, backend in PHP test and do server administration of a PMS for hotel.
I de design, backend in PHP test and do server administration of a PMS for hotel.
I’m also curious what’s a good way finding projects for generalists. My contracting experience was that I ended up doing specialized work even though I would able to complete the project from start to finish.
I'm from South Asia. I offer end to end web development, SEO and digital marketing. I charge $50/hr.
12,500 / week for general work (design, prototyping, sometimes building). Startups won't pay this, but large firms will.
in the uk, everyone wants to work on daily rates. 600pd-650pd as a devops engineer.
So, £75, or $86 an hour. This is 5 days a week, 40 hours a week. I bill around £14k a month and after taxes i walk away with about £7k a month.
So, £75, or $86 an hour. This is 5 days a week, 40 hours a week. I bill around £14k a month and after taxes i walk away with about £7k a month.
I bill anywhere from 85/hr to 350/hr depending on what’s going to be done, who and what I’ll need, location/commute, etc. In the DC area.
I imagine a not quite bell curve with the center around ~150/hr for “accomplish X task and leave” contracts that I’m willing to entertain. Sometimes you bump into some juicy ones, sometimes not. That’s life.
I’ve always told clients that above all else, they’re paying for my ability to provide them certainty, quality, and a hard deadline. I charge what I charge because I’m worth it.
Depending on your reputation, if applicable, it can however be smart to work below your worth for a contract if it means a greater chance at better contracts later. You gotta build your network somehow.
I imagine a not quite bell curve with the center around ~150/hr for “accomplish X task and leave” contracts that I’m willing to entertain. Sometimes you bump into some juicy ones, sometimes not. That’s life.
I’ve always told clients that above all else, they’re paying for my ability to provide them certainty, quality, and a hard deadline. I charge what I charge because I’m worth it.
Depending on your reputation, if applicable, it can however be smart to work below your worth for a contract if it means a greater chance at better contracts later. You gotta build your network somehow.
$120US for work I think will be interesting or rewarding, scaling to $300US for work that sounds like it's going to suck.
It varies widely based on how much I think I gain from your project (experience, learning, networking etc). I'm an AWS specialist DevOps ish person, and bill around 1k/day on retainer and a bit more for "live" work. In general, if your aws bill is smaller than my invoice, we do something short term and results focused and I bill at a higher rate, if your aws bill is higher, you get a lower rate, but keep me around on call because when someone really fucks up, it balances in the wash when you're back online in hours instead of days.
I charge $150/hr. for new work and do pretty much exclusively hourly-based work. I have many clients that I grandfather on lower rates.
The second half of this equation is how many billable hours you can get as freelancer in a week. Plenty of the things I do are not billable, and the more different small contracts I'm working on the less billable hours I'm able to fit in. I would say I average 20-25 hours billable on a regular work week of 40-ish hours.
The second half of this equation is how many billable hours you can get as freelancer in a week. Plenty of the things I do are not billable, and the more different small contracts I'm working on the less billable hours I'm able to fit in. I would say I average 20-25 hours billable on a regular work week of 40-ish hours.
I do fixed project fees against tight scopes rather than hourly rates. When things go out of scope, it's expensive enough ($250-300/hr) to create a pain point.
One thing I don't more of and it surprises me: There's no reason to charge all clients the same rate. If you're solving a five-figure problem for one client and a seven-figure problem for another using basically the same solution, why charge them the same?
One thing I don't more of and it surprises me: There's no reason to charge all clients the same rate. If you're solving a five-figure problem for one client and a seven-figure problem for another using basically the same solution, why charge them the same?
£75/hr was my last freelance rate for some PHP dev work I did.
Got a few too many plates spinning at the moment though so only doing oldschool Linux sysadmin stuff (pets vs cattle) outside the day job. I'd probably bill cheaper for that as it's less of a time sink and the tasks are either easy fixes or interesting.
Got a few too many plates spinning at the moment though so only doing oldschool Linux sysadmin stuff (pets vs cattle) outside the day job. I'd probably bill cheaper for that as it's less of a time sink and the tasks are either easy fixes or interesting.
Ten-some years ago I started at $100/hour and I thought that was a good idea. "Great, I'll make $200k a year and pay 45% in taxes, that's fine, I can live on that." I thought that being attractive to more people was a better way to find clients.
I didn't have a problem finding clients, but they were clients that I didn't see panning out — they gave me vibes of being poor executors. I looked for a way to filter out these "app idea bros" as I called them.
The first thing I did was change my rate to $150/hour.
Again, I didn't have a problem finding clients; they were still the clients that I didn't see panning out, though.
I kept increasing it until I got three prospects in a row that had huge concerns paying what I was asking: granted, it as a lot more than anyone should ever pay for any skillset that wasn't life or death, but it helped me find a balance.
Eventually I settled on $375/hour, prepaid, and prepaid weekly. I still have no problem finding clients, but the quality of client has significantly increased. I also now am much more happy to filter clients out — I let them know that, too.
I rarely negotiate on it. I'll negotiate on scope (time), or really narrow focus so that my value can be had in a much more focused manner.
Before, my marketable skill was "developer, with business chops". My acumen has evolved, sure, so my marketable skills have too. But how I approach it has changed greatly.
My value prop is quite extensive: I am a one-stop shop for all things idea, from both a business and product standpoint. I contribute at the executive level, I build the product, I share fifty ways that a product could fail and find new ways that it could succeed.
Most importantly, though, I tell clients what they don't need, and I don't spare any time to do so. "Well, my friend said that they use AWS and Kubernetes, don't we need that to scale?", to which I reply, "Cool, I'm happy for them, but you don't need it, no; $PaaS is fine until you reach their limits and it starts becoming a problem — you have three paying customers who are operating off your hacked-together MVP; thus, it's not a problem. Please, do yourself a favor and stop talking to friends about what they use and go talk to customers and potential customers while I'm building this."
This builds trust, and is the most important tool in my bag of tricks: not my background in Ruby development, not how productive I am, not my experience in having already solved seemingly 99.9% of the problems people face in building and scaling web apps. Those are all superficial and nice-to-haves.
Trust is the most important thing I sell, followed by my ability to say "no". The practical and tangible experience in design, development, systems, content, email campaigns, copy, branding... my clients could hire anyone to do those things better than I could — people can specialize in it. I specialize in saying no, and, while the jury is still out on this, I haven't quite been proven completely wrong yet — and one of my biggest kinks is being wrong.
I miss client work. It was stressful at times, and at times kind of lonely. I've pivoted to other things to build skillsets that were practical, but I still find myself picking up the odd job here and there.
I didn't have a problem finding clients, but they were clients that I didn't see panning out — they gave me vibes of being poor executors. I looked for a way to filter out these "app idea bros" as I called them.
The first thing I did was change my rate to $150/hour.
Again, I didn't have a problem finding clients; they were still the clients that I didn't see panning out, though.
I kept increasing it until I got three prospects in a row that had huge concerns paying what I was asking: granted, it as a lot more than anyone should ever pay for any skillset that wasn't life or death, but it helped me find a balance.
Eventually I settled on $375/hour, prepaid, and prepaid weekly. I still have no problem finding clients, but the quality of client has significantly increased. I also now am much more happy to filter clients out — I let them know that, too.
I rarely negotiate on it. I'll negotiate on scope (time), or really narrow focus so that my value can be had in a much more focused manner.
Before, my marketable skill was "developer, with business chops". My acumen has evolved, sure, so my marketable skills have too. But how I approach it has changed greatly.
My value prop is quite extensive: I am a one-stop shop for all things idea, from both a business and product standpoint. I contribute at the executive level, I build the product, I share fifty ways that a product could fail and find new ways that it could succeed.
Most importantly, though, I tell clients what they don't need, and I don't spare any time to do so. "Well, my friend said that they use AWS and Kubernetes, don't we need that to scale?", to which I reply, "Cool, I'm happy for them, but you don't need it, no; $PaaS is fine until you reach their limits and it starts becoming a problem — you have three paying customers who are operating off your hacked-together MVP; thus, it's not a problem. Please, do yourself a favor and stop talking to friends about what they use and go talk to customers and potential customers while I'm building this."
This builds trust, and is the most important tool in my bag of tricks: not my background in Ruby development, not how productive I am, not my experience in having already solved seemingly 99.9% of the problems people face in building and scaling web apps. Those are all superficial and nice-to-haves.
Trust is the most important thing I sell, followed by my ability to say "no". The practical and tangible experience in design, development, systems, content, email campaigns, copy, branding... my clients could hire anyone to do those things better than I could — people can specialize in it. I specialize in saying no, and, while the jury is still out on this, I haven't quite been proven completely wrong yet — and one of my biggest kinks is being wrong.
I miss client work. It was stressful at times, and at times kind of lonely. I've pivoted to other things to build skillsets that were practical, but I still find myself picking up the odd job here and there.
[deleted]
25-35$ per hour, im in EU so this is the maximum I can get away with