Just curious who pays 200-250 dollars per hour for some contracted software projects other than companies? How do you find those customers? I am not working in this sector but am truly curious. I hired a contractor online from Greece who was a certified network specialist and had tons of great reviews and completed many projects. I needed some performance tuning and setting up of advanced network protocols with my mellanox 100gbe switch. He did an amazing job all online and at the same time upon my request walked me step by step through it and even wrote a full documentation describing all the steps and rational behind it. He charged 25 dollars per hour and the entire project took him 3.5 hours. So, I wonder how in this age a software consultant/developer can charge 150 an hour. I understand that an under-served niche might prove beneficial. But how do you find your customers?
People who need custom software with custom solutions. I mostly work with companies, I don't contract with individuals. If I did, I'd probably drop my rate. A lot of times there are old stacks that need to integrate with new stacks, and someone who develops "vertically" is very useful there. Generally out-of-the-box stuff is cheap. The kind of copy/paste work many shops are known for. You could probably get a simple app like anything you see in the app store for a total hourly of $40/hr. 25/hr is reasonable for IT work. A good metaphor is the guy fixing the router is paid 25/hr, the guy they had some crude coffee napkin drawings to and tell to build the router is paid 200/hr. I'm sure the industry won't be worth that much for more than decade more. There's a ton of money in tech companies and they are happy to spend for good talent. The upside for them is they don't have pesky employees to take care of, the upside for me is I can practically name my rate. I'm fully expecting to be living off of savings if the economy nose dives. Companies tend to hire internally during those periods - not good for us consultant types ;D. EDIT: An example of copy-and-paste work would be something akin to "build me a nodeJS frontend that connects to our database" kind of stuff. Things any experienced developer could handle in a few days. Projects I'm on go for months at a time (longest contract being over a year). EDIT EDIT: The guy who said he's paying a developer $250/hr to fly in and do work is the first time I've heard of an individual paying that much - truth be told. If I worked with an individual, I'd probably offer a lower rate. With companies and individuals there a significant amount of flex in hourly based on perks (such as travel, room and board, etc). For someone that needed me to write an API integration or something, I might go from $50-$80/hr, with a ceiling at $125-150 if the job is particularly involved or complicated. Everything is flexible. Even though I charge $200/hr, my average blended rate is probably closer to $125-150 all being said and done.
That answers my question, thanks. I also heard of individuals paying northnof 150 an hour except in very rare (extremely rare) circumstance. Contracting with companies makes sense if you can get the foot into the door.
Trying to explain Gaussian the difference between an entrepreneur and a contractor bitch is like trying to teach prime numbers to a cow. We're talking hard cognition limits there so sadly some concepts will forever remain out of reach for both protagonists.
Yeah I agree on the cognition limits. I'm just stupid enough to pick up money being thrown at me, and not stupid enough to believe in your scam .
You know what's a joking joke? An ordinary job ad for an ordinary quant offering an ordinary salary gets posted and 17 hours later has 1028 applicants. Some people get it though (@Real Money), scattered among the vast amounts of clueless. Who in their right mind would even contemplate the idea of beating 1027 candidates to get a job? @gaussian: just be the 1029'th stupid that applies to money being thrown at him then.
@Aquarians frankly what you are thinking isn't practical but I really like your try-it attitude and attempting to break out from the farmland. Better do it yourself as much as possible with as much money as you can lay your hands on. Posting here is useless. Good luck
Thanks. I like the "farmland" expression, will incorporate it into my vocabulary. Hope you don't charge royalties Actually I already said I'm aware my post is "useless". Quoting myself: "What I do find reasonable to expect though is polishing this 'pitch' to the point the message is crystal clear, in the shortest count of words. Afterwards I'm gonna take it to other places and see how it goes there." Also I obviously do work by myself / invest my own money regardless of people approving me or joining me. This association proposal is just a parrallel attempt at improving my odds / productivity with little effort involved. Compared to the countless hours of studying / experimenting / programming, writing a few messages on an obscure forum doesn't cost me much.