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Comment by syats | Hacker News Reader

€30K for 6 months is a pretty low salary? Not in Germany. Not anywhere.

€30K for 6 months works out to 5k per month. That's really not bad by our standards, at least in Austria.

If you make 5k before taxes you're already way above average here, because your employer usually pays around 7k per month then.

Edit: Yes, I admit it is quite low when compared against typical contracting rates in urban areas.

If a person is self-employed then he has to pay VAT (Mwst) 19%. And then they say that they cover only 60% of all the expenses. And finally the person has to pay income tax.

This is wrong. Especially if you are self-employed you do not need to pay VAT (to simplify it: VAT is for end consumers). Where do you get that 60% ? If you are not self employed you have to pay wage tax, so there's not much difference to income tax.

€30k for 6 months is a low contracting rate.

Normalise that to €60k per year. Full-time work in Germany is 231 days (52 * 5, less 29 days legally-mandated holiday).

€60k / 231 = €259.74 per day.

So around €260/$290/£220 per day. This is definitely the low-end of freelancing/contracting rates in Germany[1]/Western Europe.

[1] Contracting rates in Germany: http://forums.contractoruk.com/business-contracts/77870-hour... (German)

You math is slightly off, it's 24 days of legally mandated holidays, but those assume a 6-day workweek (§ 3 BUrlG, see 1). Legally mandated holidays on a 5 days workweek is 20 days only. The actual number of workdays varies slightly with the location you're in as well. Some states have more federal holidays. Generally speaking the dominantly catholic part have more, the city of Augsburg has the most (they have the "Hohes Freiheitsfest", a holiday that is restricted to the city of Augsburg) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augsburger_Hohes_Friedensfest

http://www.schulferien.org/Arbeitstage/arbeitstage-2016.html

Your general point still stands: 30k is a low contracting rate and in general untenable for a freelancer. You should be earning at least twice as much. However, for open source work this is a major step up - you can make a living off it instead of self-funding your work.

(1) https://dejure.org/gesetze/BUrlG/3.html

IMHO Contracting rates based on GULP are totally BS.

If you make €60K you are very good for beeing a self employed (programmer) and make more money than many not self employed programmers (yes, even when you subtract all taxes, health insurance and your private retirement arrangements).

Specialists in big corporates earn of course more (what GULP is targeting), but then at first place you have to be a specialist and need to have the expertise.

Also don't forget that many people do not have work the whole time... so you have to see the GULP rates also in contrast to gap times where you have no income.

And they pay only 60% ~ 155 per day

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