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Comment by kator | Hacker News Reader

I'm not currently billing for contract work, but when I was my formula was:

    rate = YearlyGoal / 1700

Which is to say, 2000 hours at 85% billable (leaving time for vacation).

Some years I was 105% billable but those are brutal years and I'm sure my life will be shorter for it.

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You must have been pretty good at billing every single hour you spend on your clients.

I was once told that it's unwise to expect to bill more than 50% of the time I spend, so I've been sticking close to $target_income / 1000 for the last few years. The actual ratio of billable to unbillable hours probably depends a lot on what kind of contracts you get and what type of work you do.

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