How I Landed A $50/hr Side Gig With Little Effort
zacharyburt.com
zacharyburt.com
While age and experience has a lot to do with why my rate has climbed so high and so fast, mostly it is due to confidence. You have to ignore your inner critic that says you are not worth $12/30/50/75 an hour, and honestly consider what your time is worth. Would you trade an extra hour of sleep or an extra hour with your girlfriend for the price of a meal at Chili's? A tank of gas? A shitty coffee table at Ikea?
There's a spectrum there, and you have to place yourself as high in the spectrum as possible. Don't stop going higher- even if people laugh at you. Two days before I landed my first gig at $75 an hour I had a recruiter laugh at me and that rate. Ignore them. Trust yourself. Trust your abilities. Charge a good price for your time. Because after all, time is all we have. Make them pay for it.
That's why you should never listen to recruiters telling you that you want too much. It's bullshit.
So while theoretically they have an incentive to get you the best salary possible, in practice they do better if they place more people at decent wages.
1. They take % of base first year salary on W2 - their incentives are aligned with yours. A good deal.
2. They take % of base hourly rate - their incentives are also aligned with yours. A good deal.
However:
3. They receive a flat hourly cap - their incentives are opposite yours. They're trying to fuck you.
4. Flat retainer - their incentives are technically neutral, but the lower they get you onboard, the better they look because their client is spending less. They're trying to fuck you.
Ask yourself this question? Who is actually the recruiter's customer? As in, who pays the bills?
That's right, it's the employer. You're not their customer. The employer is. A recruiter's goal is to fill the open positions out there with their candidates. There's a lot of competition for most positions, both from other recruiters and employees who apply independently. So they'd much rather short you as an employee on salary then risk having someone else hired for the position entirely.
As a hiring manager, I was on the other end of this practice. I can't tell you the number of times a recruiter emailed me something like "He says he wants 90, but he'll actually take 80".
If you know the companies you want to work for, don't use a recruiter.
Don't go for most positions. If you're a run-of-the-mill developer, of course you'll get shit wages. Learn something unique. Something that takes effort to learn.
> I can't tell you the number of times a recruiter emailed me something like "He says he wants 90, but he'll actually take 80".
Of fucking course they'll say that. You can always assume the recruiter will not keep anything in confidence - the dominating strategy in this situation is to tell them your minimum and NOT waver from that. With exception given to a +/- 5% counter-offer. Once you budge, they know you're weak. Give an inch, and they'll take a mile. The business managers who hire people can smell weakness from a mile away - it's their JOB to capitalize on that weakness. That's what they went to school for. It's what they live and breathe on a day to day basis. You won't be able to empathize with them until you run your own company, whether it be product or consulting. It's capitalism in the raw.
The problem is that most people who are desperate for a job think the offer on the phone is the last one they'll get, which is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Grow some fucking balls and the entire post-hoc world will open up to you.
In your case, I'd recommend trying to work 6 month contracts and always try to have a new one in the queue for more money, if possible, so you can ask for an increase at the end, or take the other job. But be classy about it.
I would take it one step further. Always have at least two active contracts at any given time. Real leverage.
The best thing I did was to try that years ago. One of my bosses told me he did that and not only found work, but respect, because his employers perceived his value and opinions as being worth more. If you have the skills, you can find yourself on a whole new level of employment.
Complete failure there because they happily wanted to pay it (and you cant turn it down then :()
You do have to be patient with it. It takes 20-30 ratings for it to start knowing your preferences.
I would say that $50/hour is a fine wage for your first gig, no matter where you are. However, that's not a reasonable long-term salary. Even if you bill out 2000 hours a year, you walk away with 100K. Then, you still need to pay taxes, insurance, and save for retirement. It's like making less than 50K at a job with benefits, except you work twice as much.
A $50/hour wage is not bad to start, but a long-term contractor needs to command above $100/hour, more like $200 in NYC.
I think my first contracting gig paid something like $8/hour. I did a website for someone for a flat fee, and it took me longer than I hoped :)
I'm glad that there are people who believe that 50K isn't a reasonable salary, because if you get used to spending less than half that, you can deal with almost any crisis while everyone else gets into panic mode as soon as they're out of work for a month or can't pay for fancy private schools or bizarrely structured retirement funds :-)
NYC's expensive, sure, but 50K is above even the NYC median personal income (and to the best of my research, just above the median NYC household income too).
How much you get paid is a function of the market. Period. Because the job market works pretty efficiently in large cities. If there's an equally skilled developer of equal "perceived value" (whatever that means) whose willing to work for less than you are, you are going to have trouble maintaining a delta over the long run.
And given that... yes, there are definitely 22 year olds worth, even $200/hr. But the percentage of 22 year old developers worth $200/hr is far less than the percentage of 32 year old's worth $200/hr.
And if you question that... listen, it's abotu wisdom. Wisdom is difficult, it takes time. If wisdom was just about learning, we'd call it "knowledge." It's about learning and life experience. There are 40 year olds without wisdom, but show me a wise 20 year old and I'll show you a guy who stands alone, head and shoulders above his peers.
I find Pavlina to be interesting, but sadly he went w-a-y off into cuckoo land a while back.
Polyphasic sleep? Fine. Conscious growth? Um, ok. Polygamy? Woah, what?!
But actually, that's so 2009... check out his 2010 plan if you're curious ;)
Then a bit later "Steve and Erin have split up? That casts a different light on the posts about how intimate and great their relationship was, how he wants to focus on relationships more, and how he now wants to branch out polyamorously..."
In the end you have a mess (see: same sex marriages today) where you think people should know better and realize this isn't about what's "right or wrong" to any individual on any level, but a matter of discrimination when it comes to benefits that are not being given to one group but to another. But they don't always know better.
In the US, we're barely scraping by trying to get the same benefits to gay couples, let alone any mix of more than two people. A movement to do what you suggest...I can't imagine what kind of uproar there will be and how many people will be conflating polyamory with polygamy and being very against it as a result. At the minimum.
Geeks: Polyamory? -> {Manuel Garcia O'Kelly and his extended family, Moon Colonies, Heinlein, good associations}
Non-Geeks: Polyamory? -> {Hippy communes, commun...ism, cold war, evil, bad associations}
Yes. Because that's what those Russians were doing on the other side of the Iron Curtain... having massive orgies.
Well that does put a slightly different spin on "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need".
A lot of people have the idea that any type of polygamy is inherently sexist, and while that's true for traditional polygamy, it's also true for "traditional" monogamy. The historic Mormon polygamy that the fundamentalists get arrested for practicing was indeed sexist, but so were the 19th century monogamous marriages practiced by most other Americans. Contemporary monogamous marriages aren't nearly as sexist, and there's no reason contemporary polygamous arrangements--i.e. polyamory--are necessarily sexist, either.
Polyamory (and the various "open relationship"/non-monogamous lifestyles related to it) are less tied to the ritual of marriage and are often more equitable to women than traditional polygamy. I actually know some polyamorous people who live under the same roof and make babies, for instance. But some people just choose not to mind that much when their partners have sex with someone else, as long as it's safe and consensual. As I said, there's no set rules, other than it has to be safe, sane, and consensual for all parties involved. Which is worlds away from fundamentalist nutjobs in Utah marrying dozens of 13 year old girls.
What if people want to have multiple marriage partners? Wouldn't it be polygamy then?
For legal reasons, most polyamorous people separate their lifestyle from the legal institution of marriage. As another post implied, poly people are a few decades behind the gays in terms of social acceptance--it's not likely the marriage laws will be fixed enough for poly people to use them in the near future. (Lots of poly people are married, of course, but only to one person.)
"Polyamory" is kind of a neologism anyway. Kind of like when the gays decided to be "gay" instead of "homosexual". Polyamorous people are in fact polygamous in the sexual and romantic sense, but not in the technical sense of marriage.
In simple terms, Polyamory is the practice of open relationships, where Polygamy is the practice of having multiple married partners.
In the end, you're not a robot with tunable duty cycle. You do your body a disservice treating it like that.
(I've read him from near the beginning, keeping the wheat and discarding the chaff.)
In other parts of the country, especially during these times, an area can truly have enough of a cumulative lack of available capital, that being hired at all is considered an accomplishment.
I can do freelance work that in other cities that fetches $100/hr handily, but my Midwest city shelters few people who can pay that, regardless of my poise or professionalism.
1. Bartenders make more than what you are offering me.
2. According to last year's 10K SEC filing, you made $X Billion, and you can't afford me?
3. You must be accustomed to dealing with desperate people, not talented people.
1. Sure, but bartenders have people skills
2. According to last month's data, our pool of potential employees has 10.5% unemployment, and you can afford to live on food stamps?
3. There are many talented and desperate ways to reject your application, but you've probably heard them all.
2. Pointing out to someone that they are very successful and can afford you isn't insulting. Pointing out to someone that they'd be on food stamps if you don't throw them a bone is, because it belittles them.
3. Dick move all around.
Don't forget that salary negotiation is supposed to be just that - a negotiation. You arrive to it when most other terms of employment seem acceptable.
...sorry, just seemed to fit the theme.
> 1. Sure, but bartenders have people skills
No they don't. They serve drinks in very loud, noisy bars where everyone is drunk. That's the kind of bartender that makes $75k+
Furthermore, so do I. That's how I charge $150/hr.
> 2. According to last month's data, our pool of potential employees has 10.5% unemployment, and you can afford to live on food stamps?
That's begging the question whether or not I am employed. I am employed. I have other clients. I do not live on food stamps. I am currently making my asking rate on a regular basis and have been for nearly a decade, or else I would not be asking for it. If I were not able to make this rate, I would lower it. This is very simple logic, although it may not be if you are viewing it through the prism of desperation. REJECT the prism of desperation. It will handicap you for the rest of your professional life.
> 3. There are many talented and desperate ways to reject your application, but you've probably heard them all.
Really? The only one I've heard is "we can't afford you.", or "we found someone cheaper", which really is not my problem at ALL.
You need to get those cojones, or you will be continue to be taken advantage of. Business people actively LOOK for weak willed developers. But - believe it or not - they respond positively to developers with balls, because they are so unaccustomed to hearing it. This is a basic tenet of human nature that many developers do not realize because they are too busy preoccupying themselves with machine logic.
At some point, you need to tell yourself that you've learned enough fucking machine logic. You're not going to be writing assembly language for these people. You're building applications (dev and integration work, basically) that will make them money. That frees up your brain to think of other things like human interaction and how to sell yourself.
Humans are not machines. Business is not a logical process. It's human interaction. When money changes hands, it's from one human (or group of humans) to another, no matter how deep the abstracted technical logic has been built to be.
Think of it this way. Look at a company's overall profit margins - the profit they are making off of your labor / work should fall within this ballpark. If it's not, you're being ripped off, because that means other employees (or shareholders) in the firm are capturing a larger share of the value you create than you are, compared to the average.
This is really, really, REALLY simple math, folks.
No. Learn something very few other people know and it will explain itself.
IOW, company had a net margin of 10%. Your project makes $1M/yr revenues and the company claims $200,000 revenue on that, a profit margin of 20%. You figure that they should reallocate half of that $200k to you so that you are paid commensurate with your contribution and they keep the remaining 10%?
That makes sense and I suppose the math is pretty easy in a smaller corporation or with a specialized product.
That's my fucking point! Remember bartenders get paid in cash. And they're free to spend that tax-free cash with a MASSIVE homie discount when they go out to bars and restaurants and clubs and other establishments in the same city they work in because hospitality industry people give each other discounts.
How much do you think a developer who charges $50/hr is grossing after taxes? Not EVEN $75k, especially not if they apply the same confidence to their Schedule C deductions that some people on this forum have applied to their careers.
Highly skilled people like competent UNIX engineers should be making a LEAST 2-3x a bartender.
Naive, naive, naive.
That being said, she has more social skills then almost every sysadmin I know. Same thing with the bartender. A bunch of my friends are bartenders, and I'd much rather hang out with them than with most of my colleagues .. Of course the bartenders are far more dramatic, and most of them are either alcoholics or recovering alcoholics.
There are trade-offs.
Anyway, I figured it would be worth giving this a shot. I went on Craigslist, browsed through the gigs, and picked one that looked promising. I made a quick estimate of my time, doubled it, and sent off an email to him. 6 sentences, and I used the word "simple" in 2 of them, and I made sure to use a "indifferent" attitude. The lister got back to me within 15 minutes saying that my price was "too much", that he had been quoted prices for less than a third of that. And then he proceeded to give me his number, and told me to call him and discuss what needed to be done for the project.
Not that it means anything, but the 20 minutes I spent looking at craigslist during my lunch break due to this post seem to have been well worth it (although, admittedly, I barely skimmed the actual post, and just read the comments here in detail).
The notion of value offering is very different from value taking. Value offering coincides with abundance mentality; value taking coincides with scarcity mentality. When you are value offering, you really want to help the other person. You want to present them with the truth and honestly evaluate how you could meet their needs, rather than manipulating and micromanaging to get your end of the deal. You create a win-win situation.
Also, sounds like someone has had some experience with pickup.
"why would you care about any individual woman if you have access to a lot of them?" Why not? This question makes me think of a completely faithless relationship filled with cheating and manipulation just because caring is not an issue.
I understand your social proof point, and I know quite well how you deal with everything: "I just acted naturally, without tweaking", but I find this statement misplaced, "It’s more honest, and non-manipulative, which is something I think we could all strive for." for why would one strive for non-manipulation and honestly when one can get any girl without them -when there are just so many fish in the sea.
Other than that, I enjoyed the post =]
Oh, and by the way, next time you argue one of my philosophies, I'm going to quote you. I tend to describe myself as philosophically immature for good reason.
I like some of your thoughts but it I do not believe it is this complex. Maybe the new title should be "How personal confidence affects perceived value, both in business and in meeting chicks."
That is why you got $50 an hour. Confidence.
For example: "Reiterating: Other people are only projections of your own consciousness. If you are not a friend to everyone then you are not a friend to yourself."
This is just plain stupid. I can't say it any plainer. I hate to Godwin this discussion, but Hitler killing millions of Jews was not a projection of myself, and if I was alive during that time-period, I sure as hell wouldn't have been a friend to Hitler.
I'm with him that you should look for how you can contribute, rather than take (positive sum game vs. zero sum game), but those lessons can be taught without the "metaphysics" and bullshit.
Last Edit: And finally, in case you don't buy into that stuff either, but think it's basically harmless, review the case of the now arrested James Arthur Ray: http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20341429,00.html
In that video, he clearly expresses the same main idea, directly and without the fluff.
Well, my approach is that you can benefit of operating in this mode, but I don't take it literally. Agreed that the less "The Secret" bullshit is around the better.
It might be my naivety that just assumes a non-literal interpretation of certain passages in the text, but I suppose one should account for a literal interpretation as well. I wouldn't imagine that would be an issue here on HN.
Addition: NiN's song "Only" could be interpreted as subjective reality (though it's almost certainly metaphor), and it explains why they choose to project me (and Hitler) into their world:
Yes I am alone but then again I always was
As far back as I can tell
I think maybe it's because
Because you were never really real to begin with
I just made you up to hurt myself
[x2]
I just made you up to hurt myself, yeah
And I just made you up to hurt myself
And it worked.
Yes it did!
It's been my experience that the less someone is willing to pay you for your work, the less they value it. Then every detail becomes subject to scrutiny on the invoice.
If you're good at what you do, and you can prove it, you'll eventually find jobs that pay you what you're worth. It just takes more effort to find them.
And of course, standing firm on your rates helps. You won't get all the gigs, but you probably don't want the headaches that would come with them.
Keep in mind that the negotiation on rate is a glimpse into how future negotiations will go. Contracting is all about negotiations. (Deadlines, feature requests, etc.)
The employer is looking to keep costs down. You're looking to eat. But neither of you should come away feeling cheated. Don't charge more than you're worth, and don't accept less.
If that's true, you need to start a consultancy with those "people with years more experience " as your subcontractors. You charge $40-50/hr for their time and pass through $25-40/hr to them. You both win.
Alternately, give a known quality associate a discount rate in order to get a firmer opinion of their work ethic.
At least while starting out, I'd emphasize quality over quantity. Alternately, go in as a team, and see how much slack needs to be picked up.
"You can’t cheat others without cheating yourself."
All of these "How I did so and so" blog postings explaining basic life operations are getting annoying. Look forward to my next blog posting "How I Bought Some Organic Groceries While Only Walking A Block And A Half"