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$50 an hour is pretty good for 22. At that age I was making $30 an hour and ecstatic to be getting that much. Even that seemed astronomical compared to the $12 I was making two years before. Now, of course, all of those seem like piddly sums compared to the $75-100 an hour I bring in now as a full-time consultant at the age of 26.

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.

Recruiters are the worst. You'd think it's their job to get you the highest paying job out there, but it's quite the opposite. Their goal is to sell you as fast as possible, regardless of the rate.

That's why you should never listen to recruiters telling you that you want too much. It's bullshit.

Actually, more often than not recruiter's best interest is against yours. Recruiters in companies have one job: to get as high of a talent as possible - for as low cost as possible. Right? Everybody is shopping for the best bargain.

I think he was talking about recruiting firms, who (I think) typically get a commission for successful placement, proportional to the wages of the employee in question.

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.

There are multiple business models. Witness:

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.

Unfortunately, your interests are never really aligned.

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.

> There's a lot of competition for most positions

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.

You don't understand how recruiters work. Imagine a candidate, you. Let's say you want a $100/hr job. Let's say there are no such jobs that recruiter knows of at the moment, and they know (statistically) that such a job shows up once a month, on average. However, they have a bunch of contacts that offer $80/hr jobs. Do you think they will wait for a month looking for your $100/hr requirement? Hell no. They will try to convince you to take a lower paying job, and then switch to the next candidate. In the end, they make more money by selling more recruits rather than just a few recruits with higher salaries.

I've never been called by a 3rd-party recruiter that I didn't hang up on. Often I mock them first. I even sent one company, emailpcs.com, an invoice for 10 hours of consulting at $150/hour because they were calling me up every day for a month. They refused to pay, I sent them to collections, we settled.

You sound like a real pleasure to work with.

What kind of consulting do you do? Software?

I disagree. I was 22 when I quit my last job as a wage-slave, and that year I billed out 1100 hours at $125/hour. That might have been the best year of my life. A 6-figure salary for working essentially half-time.

You did consultancy? Can you post a few details? I'm 21 and making about $10/hour developing C++ software in a physics lab...

The first step to asking for more money is to save enough to be able to do so.

Words of wisdom. If you aren't really able to walk away from a job, you're not in the drivers seat.

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.

> always try to have a new one in the queue

I would take it one step further. Always have at least two active contracts at any given time. Real leverage.

The real fun part is when you're so over-flowing that you're hiring full-time engineers and you've turned into a consulting company. That's what happened with my last company.. I don't recommend it though, consulting isn't very scaleable, and there are no big exits.

eh, disagree. I don't think I've ever seen anyone get fired for saying "Hey, boss, it would be really great if you could give me a raise"

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