Freelance Rates Survey, 2011 (UK)(cole007.net)
cole007.net
Freelance Rates Survey, 2011 (UK)
http://cole007.net/blog/86/freelance-rates-survey-2011
9 comments
£28k is a low graduate salary in the UK.
The first proper result for "graduate software engineer" is Red Gate, who obviously only recruit the top graduates, but still: http://www.red-gate.com/our-company/careers/current-opportun...
The first proper result for "graduate software engineer" is Red Gate, who obviously only recruit the top graduates, but still: http://www.red-gate.com/our-company/careers/current-opportun...
Under the current economic climate, many graduates don't even find grad-level work and end up taking under-employment - the competition for the grad jobs that are out there is driving down salaries.
I also know people who 10 years after graduating are still not making £35k, although that's not specifically in the field of computer science.
It's rough back home right now :/
I also know people who 10 years after graduating are still not making £35k, although that's not specifically in the field of computer science.
It's rough back home right now :/
Do you know many devs getting that outside London for a non-finance sector straight out of Uni? I certainly don't.
My gf works for a recruitment company in the Netherlands, and my general feeling looking at these results is that they're on the low side. Senior developers here charge in the region of 50-70 euros/hour, or about 450 euros/day. I'm fairly sure a senior with plenty of experience in an in-demand technology can push the 70 up into the 80-90 rate, and niche areas like SAP can be even higher.
Are UK rates really that much lower than Dutch (NL) rates? In my experience (both as a freelancer and in hiring freelancers) is that in all areas of web development and design hourly rates start at €40 for wordpress stuff (charging less would be considered amateur range) up to €120 for really specific skills with most developers and designers charging around €60-€80.
Even with these rates it's pretty damn hard to find decent Python/PHP/Ruby or front-end devs. Designers (and Flash devs) are a bit easier to find as we are not lacking design/art schools.
Could it be there are simply more technically schooled people in the UK driving down prices?
Even with these rates it's pretty damn hard to find decent Python/PHP/Ruby or front-end devs. Designers (and Flash devs) are a bit easier to find as we are not lacking design/art schools.
Could it be there are simply more technically schooled people in the UK driving down prices?
It's not stated specifically in the article, but from the large number of respondents who offer act as both designer and developer, I suspect this survey is focused on web freelancers, as opposed to developers in general. I would expect to be able to charge far less for generic CMS-backed web site building than for more specialist areas.
Agree, I think there's a proportion of freelancers who do a mixture of boilerplate CMS development and backend development who have very different day rates for each just because the going rate for each is so different. It would be interesting to see the fraq.info web app expanded to include and use data from an ongoing survey which distinguishes between types of development.
Perhaps the rates are higher in the Netherlands because taxes are much higher compared to the UK. Even for people who work full time and benefit from the expat discount, it's still quite a bit more. So there's a higher cost of living.
I'd say this is not the case. For example, taxes in Belgium are higher than the UK and average rates are lower than the UK.
If you're a Canadian, you can join the Canadian Freelance Union: http://www.cfunion.ca/
They do contract reviews and they have some kind of deal on health benefits. They're also a local of the much larger Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union which has something like 150,000 members in it.
Yes there's a market for low-cost work, but don't sell yourself short as others in the comments are saying. Let's get that minimum rate a little higher ;)
They do contract reviews and they have some kind of deal on health benefits. They're also a local of the much larger Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union which has something like 150,000 members in it.
Yes there's a market for low-cost work, but don't sell yourself short as others in the comments are saying. Let's get that minimum rate a little higher ;)
Wow. I guess dev in the us is a lot more expensive. I will say that a mechanic at the tire shop that fixes my car charges $92 an hour for his time, and I feel some obligation to charge more than that, with my fancy high school diploma and noticeable absence of gang tattoos, felonies, etc.
>> mechanic at the tire shop that fixes my car charges $92 an hour for his time
These figures feel a little on the low side. When I first did some freelance work, I used the tables at http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/contract.aspx?page=1&sortby... to help work out a rate.
There seems quite a difference between hourly and daily rate.
There seems quite a difference between hourly and daily rate.
"anything under £100 I removed as I felt this could not easily be distinguished between daily and hourly rate."
So basically, he threw away all the data from people quoting high hourly rates, and now we're seeing a bunch of discussion here that can be summed up as "Gee, that seems a bit low, doesn't it?"
So basically, he threw away all the data from people quoting high hourly rates, and now we're seeing a bunch of discussion here that can be summed up as "Gee, that seems a bit low, doesn't it?"
No, he threw away data from people who put under £100 in a daily rate and didn't explicitly state it was an hourly rate. He threw away ambiguous data, yes it sucks data was lost but it means better "integrity" of the final results.
Don't you find it a bit suspicious that after throwing away all those numbers, he was left with nobody at all billing more than £75/hr?
And realistically, is there anybody here in the UK who is not a builder's apprentice and charges less than £100 per day? Think there are any computer programmers billing out at £12/hr here?
I don't think the data was in any way ambiguous. And since he threw it out, he pretty much invalidated his survey.
And realistically, is there anybody here in the UK who is not a builder's apprentice and charges less than £100 per day? Think there are any computer programmers billing out at £12/hr here?
I don't think the data was in any way ambiguous. And since he threw it out, he pretty much invalidated his survey.
Data between $100 to $200 could be ambiguous too. I think there's no way to save the integrity of the final results. It'd still have been nice to see a graph though.
This seems low, speaking as a UK dev. It massively depends on the work you're actually doing though.
Minor point, but I thought median is a better statistic compared to a mean when talking about compensation.
£300 per day. That's £37.50/hr before taxes. Peanuts if you are a consultant.
In my experience it depends on the work. For consulting jobs where you go sit in a bank or whatever and bash out code onsite all day, £300 is low. But for freelance work, remote work, it's much harder to find anyone who will pay £300, let alone higher. It's not impossible but there's much more of a race to the bottom in the latter jobs than there is in the former.
To give a data point: I'm doing only remote work (except 12 days on site this year) and I'm really, really north £300 (my usual daily rate is 900€).
(see http://www.logeek.fr/ if you're curious about the kind of work I do)
My opinion is that it's not a matter of money, but rather a matter of finding companies that work remotely and do it well.
(see http://www.logeek.fr/ if you're curious about the kind of work I do)
My opinion is that it's not a matter of money, but rather a matter of finding companies that work remotely and do it well.
Yep. It depends on the type of work, type of experience and type of clients. You might strike it lucky with a small client, but it's more than likely going to be low. For new media agencies, they will have years of experience with freelancers, so will push the price down to fit their budget. For big business and public sector, they aren't that bothered, plus you normally need very specialist (and expensive) training to do their work.
I disagree, the distinction between a contractor and consultant is not that one is on site and the other offsite. Many freelancers will work at the client's office if need be.
The terms have a massive grey area between them.
The terms have a massive grey area between them.
And you are a Software Developer and Technical Evangelist for IBM from Toronto, Canada.
I don't see how you added anything to the conversation.
Perhaps in your wisdom you could share what the difference is between a contractor and consultant and how to get these non 'peanut' jobs.
For example my old company provided consultants at £900 a day, probably still peanuts in your book, but these were employees who took a standard salary at less than £300 p/d and that money had to pay for salespeople, pre-contract technical support, offices, secretaries, etc. and all the effort on lost jobs as well as the actual work.
As a freelancer you don't have all those costs.
I don't see how you added anything to the conversation.
Perhaps in your wisdom you could share what the difference is between a contractor and consultant and how to get these non 'peanut' jobs.
For example my old company provided consultants at £900 a day, probably still peanuts in your book, but these were employees who took a standard salary at less than £300 p/d and that money had to pay for salespeople, pre-contract technical support, offices, secretaries, etc. and all the effort on lost jobs as well as the actual work.
As a freelancer you don't have all those costs.
No reason to be patronizing or get personal, Matt. And I didn't mean to be disrespectful to those who earn even a third of that rate.
My point is that the rate appears to be very much on the lower end of the scale. Which is a bit sad for professionals with over a decade of honing highly specific skills. However the same rate can mean different things, depending on the context.
- Remote worker on Elance: dream rate. Unusual in fact.
- Employee working 40 hours a week: very good rate.
- Contractor assigned to several projects throughout the year, with different companies, but essentially full-time for weeks at end: still good rate.
- Your typical consultant who has to promote themselves to get new clients, go on client's site (possibly with travel involved), etc, will normally book far less than 40 hours a week, even if they end up working 40+ hours to run their consulting business. In such a case £37.50 often ends up being peanuts. Common rates I see around here are about $100-150/hr for expert developers, exactly because of all the overhead of consulting.
That's why in my, admittedly very short, initial message I said "consultant" and not the generic term freelancer or contractor. I understand that you may have an issue with the term I used and the distinction from freelancer, but that's how I meant it.
My point is that the rate appears to be very much on the lower end of the scale. Which is a bit sad for professionals with over a decade of honing highly specific skills. However the same rate can mean different things, depending on the context.
- Remote worker on Elance: dream rate. Unusual in fact.
- Employee working 40 hours a week: very good rate.
- Contractor assigned to several projects throughout the year, with different companies, but essentially full-time for weeks at end: still good rate.
- Your typical consultant who has to promote themselves to get new clients, go on client's site (possibly with travel involved), etc, will normally book far less than 40 hours a week, even if they end up working 40+ hours to run their consulting business. In such a case £37.50 often ends up being peanuts. Common rates I see around here are about $100-150/hr for expert developers, exactly because of all the overhead of consulting.
That's why in my, admittedly very short, initial message I said "consultant" and not the generic term freelancer or contractor. I understand that you may have an issue with the term I used and the distinction from freelancer, but that's how I meant it.
I didn't mean it personally either, it's more that I felt you didn't add anything to the conversation and seemingly ridiculed other people's rates.
My point was you're not talking about the UK, you're working for BIG CORP that hires out consultants in a scenario I outlined above, so why start declaring people's rate peanuts?
For the record I'm actually a UK Freelancer and these rates are exactly what I see.
For some reason the UK pays less than the US for programmers. I don't know if it's because we've got more or it's something cultural, but that's the way it seems to be.
EDIT: These are also similar to the rates I know others in the East Midlands region charge too. One peculiar example is a small embedded systems company I know of about 6 people that charges all their staff out at £250 p/d. The owner claims that's the market rate, but that seems low to me for fairly specialised work.
My point was you're not talking about the UK, you're working for BIG CORP that hires out consultants in a scenario I outlined above, so why start declaring people's rate peanuts?
For the record I'm actually a UK Freelancer and these rates are exactly what I see.
For some reason the UK pays less than the US for programmers. I don't know if it's because we've got more or it's something cultural, but that's the way it seems to be.
EDIT: These are also similar to the rates I know others in the East Midlands region charge too. One peculiar example is a small embedded systems company I know of about 6 people that charges all their staff out at £250 p/d. The owner claims that's the market rate, but that seems low to me for fairly specialised work.
It does seem that embedded stuff pays badly across Europe. Maybe it's because it's close to the world of electronics development/industrial automation, which is seen (and sees itself) as a bunch of nerds soldering resistors together, and who are hired by guys buildings machines for which they themselves are afraid to ask real money for. As a consequence, the whole sector remains badly paid, working from poorly lid labs with cracked linoleum floors.
(Tangent: I was offered a job once to come work at a developer of medical systems. They gave me a tour of the facility and they showed me the 'desk' I'd be working from. It was literally a back corner of an electronics lab workbench, with a chair that didn't even swivel, right next to a dead plant and with a floor covered with previously-mentioned cracked linoleum that must've been 40 years old. C'mon bro, you serious? The hiring manager looked at me as if I was some sort of prima donna for wanting to work in an environment where I wouldn't feel like a necessary evil type of employee, just above or at about the same level of the guy working the loading dock. I declined the offer (one for which I was a perfect match, profile- and experience-wise, and one that had been open for 9 months because they couldn't find anybody even remotely filfulling the requirements) and then the CEO called me at home asking me why I had declined it, how could that be, such a great offer? He even 'upped' the pay - a whole 1000 euros/year or something like that, completely ridiculous, still below what I was making at the company I already had a job at at the time (I had told them how much I made and they didn't believe me). I told him a variation of 'pay peanuts, get monkeys' and brushed him off - he seemed to be not accustomed to that, weirdly enough.
Anyway, last year I was at a hospital when my wife was pregnant, and I saw that they used the equipment developed at that exact lab. I have to say that I felt quite queasy knowing that important things were decided based on results from machines build by people who would accept jobs under the circumstances there.)
(Tangent: I was offered a job once to come work at a developer of medical systems. They gave me a tour of the facility and they showed me the 'desk' I'd be working from. It was literally a back corner of an electronics lab workbench, with a chair that didn't even swivel, right next to a dead plant and with a floor covered with previously-mentioned cracked linoleum that must've been 40 years old. C'mon bro, you serious? The hiring manager looked at me as if I was some sort of prima donna for wanting to work in an environment where I wouldn't feel like a necessary evil type of employee, just above or at about the same level of the guy working the loading dock. I declined the offer (one for which I was a perfect match, profile- and experience-wise, and one that had been open for 9 months because they couldn't find anybody even remotely filfulling the requirements) and then the CEO called me at home asking me why I had declined it, how could that be, such a great offer? He even 'upped' the pay - a whole 1000 euros/year or something like that, completely ridiculous, still below what I was making at the company I already had a job at at the time (I had told them how much I made and they didn't believe me). I told him a variation of 'pay peanuts, get monkeys' and brushed him off - he seemed to be not accustomed to that, weirdly enough.
Anyway, last year I was at a hospital when my wife was pregnant, and I saw that they used the equipment developed at that exact lab. I have to say that I felt quite queasy knowing that important things were decided based on results from machines build by people who would accept jobs under the circumstances there.)
Just to clarify: I have lived in GB before, and I wasn't expressing my opinion based on my experience with IBM. I do not work as a consultant in IBM, nor do I know particularly well how they do business (or their rates) in that department.
Quoting http://stackoverflow.com/a/746854/22088:
Contractor is a temporary resource brought in from outside of organisation. Contractors' job is done when they finish delivering products or services specified in their contract.
Consultant is a specific kind of contractor. Their primary job is not just scaling up the existing team, but delivery of knowledge transfer. Consultants invest time into learning a specific topic or coming up with a new way of doing things, then they come to an organisation and transfer that knowledge to the locals, so that the team can carry on doing the job without need for the consultant to stay with the organisation.
Contractor is a temporary resource brought in from outside of organisation. Contractors' job is done when they finish delivering products or services specified in their contract.
Consultant is a specific kind of contractor. Their primary job is not just scaling up the existing team, but delivery of knowledge transfer. Consultants invest time into learning a specific topic or coming up with a new way of doing things, then they come to an organisation and transfer that knowledge to the locals, so that the team can carry on doing the job without need for the consultant to stay with the organisation.
There's a much more important (though somewhat cynical) distinction between the two though. A contractor is a guy working for your company on the equivalent of a 1099, who behaves much like an employee. A consultant is an outside entity who comes in to do a specific piece of work, and tends to be treated as something of a specialist who you should listen to. Given that the actual work being done is usually indistinguishable, guess which one you should call yourself if you want to make more money?
There's a 3rd term for this same position, "Freelancer", that you can use if you want to make significantly less than either of the above.
There's a 3rd term for this same position, "Freelancer", that you can use if you want to make significantly less than either of the above.
It's part of the reason I moved here.
Switching to salary-paid positions for a moment (as they might be easier to compare to your own compensation), £28k (~US$44k) seems to be a going rate for a mid-level developer and £40k (~US$62.5k) for a senior developer in London right now. Ignore financial services-based engineering positions, although there are a lot less of those today.
Current equivalent in SF right now could be $75-$90k for a mid-level developer and $100-$150k for a senior developer (or more).
Keep in mind London is a more expensive city to live in than even SF, taxes are higher (yes even compared to CA+Fed), health insurance isn't included (ok, we have socialized medicine but my point is that's part of your comp here in US), sales tax in UK is 20%, and unlike the US you have to pay property tax (council tax) on the property you live in regardless of whether you rent or own it.
Living in the UK, especially London, is incredibly expensive and I sometimes wonder how I managed frankly :P
EDIT: Oh and the reason I think wages and rates are low is because software engineering isn't a primary industry in London and a great deal of developers end up working for marketing agencies etc where they are simply "code monkeys". The BBC is another big employer (my former employer) but they only pay non-commercial wages as they are a public-service and it (used to be) seen as prestigious to work there.