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I mean this in the nicest way possible, but it's easy to say money isn't everything when you're already earning £120k/$140k pa.

I seriously doubt parent is earning that much. I expect they probably bill avg 10-15 days per month at that rate. Most contractors like them in the UK that I know operate this way most of the time.

£500/day is the rate for software engineering contractors in the UK that guarantees a continuous stream of work: it would be trivial for someone to bill 100% of billable days in a year at that rate. I don't know anybody who only bills 10 - 15 days per month, I personally bill ~21 on average per month and I am always fully booked (I turn down work). All you need is a profile on LinkedIn and you'll get a constant stream of offers at £500/day -- no reputation or relationships required. Anybody billing 10 - 15 days per month is doing so out of choice.

I'm not suggesting they are unable to bill 20 days per month if they want to, I would say they probably choose not to on average across the whole year. I certainly don't like working absolutely every weekday, and I take time off periodically. Working a bit less is one of the huge perks of being a contractor.

£500/day is the rate for software engineering contractors in the UK that guarantees a continuous stream of work

That might have been true pre-COVID but is even that rate a guarantee of much in a post-COVID world with the economic uncertainty we have now and so much pressure to do everything inside IR35? So many of the offers being made in the UK contract market now fall through and so many of the gigs are relatively short that even if you take a rate where you can work "continuously" you could actually be losing 1-2 months out of the year just from things like delayed starts, having several rounds of looking for the next gig in the same year, having "safe" contracts fall through unexpectedly, aborting a "done deal" that was advertised as outside IR35 but it turned out the client or recruiter had no idea how IR35 actually worked, etc.

We've been talking about this a lot in my network this year as it seems to be a recurring source of irritation for those who are still trying to work genuine freelance and outside IR35 contract gigs. A reasonable estimate for this year might be that 80% of gigs people have been approached about on LinkedIn or seen posted by agency recruiters never actually hired anyone and the time taken for a freelancer or contractor to find their next real gig is up maybe 50-100% compared to a couple of years ago.

Python contractor here - in the current market, 500£/day is low enough that you can still bill the entire year if you’re not too picky as to what kind of work you take - just like the parent post, I have to turn down work constantly.

Indeed, the IR35 debacle and general downturn given the current events have put a damper on business, but at 500/day it’s still doable.

How fast are you arranging a new gig at the end of the last one lately? A lot of the negative stories I've been hearing seem to be about gigs only lasting a few months now instead of being 6/12 initially and maybe renewing like before. So then even if there's more work available straight away through your network you probably still end up having to do the interview dance several times per year and maybe losing a few days before the preferred start date for the new gig as well. Has that not been your recent experience?

If you're consistently managing to finish one gig on Friday and have a new one ready to start on the Monday without any downtime or excessive interviewing disruption then it seems you're doing better than several contractors I know at the moment. I think they typically do charge rates a bit higher than £500 though so maybe there's just less work available at that level or more competition for each gig.

My experience wouldn't be representative - my rate is higher and I'm picky about the clients & projects I choose (I prefer quality over quantity and have long-running projects to take up all my downtime anyway).

What I meant to say is that given what's happening in my inbox, if you weren't picky about what work you take on, at the 500 mark you should still be able to fill up pretty much an entire year's worth of work by actually following up on all those emails.

> A lot of the negative stories I've been hearing seem to be about gigs only lasting a few months now instead of being 6/12 initially and maybe renewing like before

Agreed, though in my case I've always preferred short-term gigs so not really a problem in my book. I feel like if you need someone for 12+ months, it looks like an employee might be more appropriate.

> I think they typically do charge rates a bit higher than £500 though so maybe there's just less work available at that level or more competition for each gig.

Correct - I believe that in the current market, you can get a continuous stream of work at 500. Beyond that it gets tougher.

What's your LinkedIn profile?

I don't get any offers on mine.

£525 outside IR35, £630 inside.

> I seriously doubt parent is earning that much.

And for all good reasons. They have to pay taxes. So yes, they change £500/day but they’re on progressive tax rate with a maximum of what, 38%? At least that’s what it was some years back when I was based in the UK. Hitting that tax rate in fourth month of a fiscal year easily.

Seems perfectly reasonable to me, maybe 1 month off a year. All my UK contractor friends make over £550pd and have work whenever they want

Most (all) the contractors I know can bill £500 per day outside IR35 pretty much indefinitely.

And there are lots of expenses.

Contracted for a few years. Almost zero expenses (a new laptop, an accountant, some PL insurance).

Not an accountant, but I believe if you’re working on a side-project you can expense a lot (essentially, the side project is just another service your company offers) and thus you can “expense” (not technically expensing because it’s paid by the company in the first place) a lot of stuff - hardware, cloud bills, software licenses, etc.

Agree with this. Contractor expenses are low. You can run a lot more through your biz if you want (travel, food, computers) but over the long term i'd say it\s 80-90% profit.

All they said was money isn't everything. They didn't say money is nothing.

That’s assuming they can work 240 days a year, contracting normally has significant unpaid downtime and of course zero benefits.

Not really, the rule of thumb most contractors talk about is plan around 220 days per year (44 weeks).

Even the 10% pay cut you suggest vs the numbers mentioned seems like a significant difference to me.

That's true in theory but the software market has been pretty good for the last 15 years. The only holidays I took were when I was an employee and I wasn't quitting that year (you get them in cash otherwise).

I think you and the parent poster are in agreement, insofar as much of HN is simultaneously displeased with their professional life whilst trying to go fro £140k to £240k per annum.

Ha, sadly that's not how a (my) day rate works. I am very comfortable, but take home maybe £60k p/a. It's a very nice salary for me, but in the world of many it's not huge :-)

That is literally their point - past a certain rate, you should be optimizing for something other than pay.

Yeah I exhaled slightly when reading they're in the >97th percentile for UK salaries.

Modest earnings

This is apples to oranges and therefore false. Contracting has much much more deductions from the base rate than salaries. At the very least, with 20 days (1 month) off, you start off with a 11/12 coefficient. Then there's buying your own benefits, dealing with your own accounting, i.e. maybe paying an accountant or otherwise investing the time to do it yourself, which in turn reduces the number of hours you have to actually, you know, contract. They aren't in the 97th percentile.

Fair.

Let's be realistic, or even conservative.

90th percentile? (£58k)

I think any contract developer will be on the 95%+ percentile. When I started contracting in my mid-20s I was in the UKs 1% for a 40 hour gig done from my bedroom desk. It’s pretty mental.

Yeah my points above all stand, despite people silently disagreeing.

No issue with those salaries. With contract work you're providing a much need service.

Just don't pretend those salaries are what they are.

I get what you're saying, but I work to live, not live to work. My end game is to spend my time doing what I love with those I love and unfortunately, writing code for someone elses business is not what I love. It's traveling the world, hiking mountains, swimming with whales and dolphins, sitting on a swing set with my kid, taking my dog for walks.

Money is my only motivation because I want to quit everything that makes money and only do stuff that doesn't make money but makes me happy.

5 years ago I’d say - Working to live is great. It makes one more well rounded and you discover you have other interests to pursue with time.

As time goes on the cost of freedom is higher and higher. You might meet someone special and want to experience life together. That might lead to realizing the world might be better with little versions of her in it.

In The last 2 years - My kids will be the only people who remember me when the day I no longer breathe, if I’m around for them now. I don’t want them to have to relearn the stuff I had to unnecessarily on my own and be in a position to lean into whatever their potential calls them to.

Wealth moves from not just money, but to time and creating memories. If all my time is spent to get money it’s not worth it.

Wealth as time is all there is. Since I’ve embraced this oddly the professional and product side of life has taken off even more.

From my experience in management consulting, it’s more industry related than rate related.

Clients in finance tend to be assholes even when you are cheap. The field just tolerates it.

Similarly, industrial customers are used to be put under a lot of pressure regarding costs and delays and will treat you as they are used to be treated.

Here is my trick: if you want to work in a nice environment, choose a job in an environment known to be nice.

Now I am curious: what kind of environment have you experienced to be nice?

It's interesting and positive that the top rated comment in this thread is one in the "money isn't everything vein". Programming has made many people so well-to-do that it resonates with them above all the pricing replies. And that is excellent, and speaks volumes about how effective our profession is at supporting comfortable lifestyles.

But I'd like to say something close to my heart, that unless you've felt what a desperate lack of money does, it's hard to really understand why someone would be obsessed about it above all else. Even long after the problem is gone.

Lack of money creates a visceral, chronic fear of death. It's not like "I'm about to be killed", but it's like a feeling of existential desperation. It makes you feel you're not guaranteed to be alive in the near future. It makes you feel you're "close to the earth". It is horrifying, and if you ever feel it you never forget it. And it transforms you and your thinking, often permanently.

It's just something worth remembering. Being able to worry about money below all else is a luxury that many people will never have the fortune to understand.

Agreed, especially the anticipation of a rent increase which you can't afford leaving you potentially homeless. Many in so-called affluent economies now live with this daily reality.

I think it's tempting to think that higher day rates equate to longer hours and a less cordial and more stressful work environment, but this hasn't been my personal experience as my day rates have grown over the years. I think this is a combination of:

* Your rates themselves are a signalling mechanism to clients of the level of expertise and professionalism you will bring -- how closely would you scrutinise the work of a plumber who quoted £100/hour compared to one asking for minimum wage?

* You are filtering for clients that believe "quality comes at a price", a belief they likely apply in other areas as well. So you're more likely working with competant people who enjoy generous benefits, with managers who care about providing a pleasant working environment for their direct reports.

One way of thinking about this is that you’re charging less for doing less work. Maybe that’s what you want (eg less stressful days). Another way to see it is that if you could work for some places you like less for £X per day, you could live off £500 per day and donate £(X-500) to charity (this is basically the argument that was popular 10 years or so ago that ambitious young people wanting to ‘do good’ should go and work in tech/finance to make a lot of money to give to charity instead of working for charities directly). So in some sense you’re choosing to instead donate £(X-500) per day to the nonprofits you work for. I guess if you like what they do then maybe it’s a reasonable choice for you.

Money is everything to me because I'm not getting younger and I don't want to toil forever. I stopped caring about almost everything except my growing family.

I'm 50 and care about nothing apart from my family. That's why I want to be around for them by having a good work / life balance which for me means working as I've described. I can worry about the money when they've left home :-)

Pricing according to the ability to pay and the value it generates is something that seems to make sense.

There is no perfect universal formula. Everyone has different situations, backgrounds, variables to weight and scenarios to ensure. It’s good to advocate for balance because keeping score with money quickly can get hollow when Al your time and best energy is tanked.

Ones pursuit of profit and purpose doesn’t have to be with min the same hour of activity at work. One can be optimized to feed the other.

Surprisingly the world will pay atomically will for solving what appears to be a boring but very real problem.

Solving these tries of problems can lead to interesting ones.

If one some it might be more possible to work for larger rates based on their experience and give back to non profits at little to nothing, or over deliver value.

It doesn’t seem important but within 5-10 years it becomes apparent that ppl on the self or startup path have to create their own retirement fund and healthcare plan not just for them.

The more you can save the more you can have a say in what you do and don’t take on, and for how long.

Probably not relevant to anything, but what do you do for your £500 a day? :)

>I charge £500 a day. It's not much compared to some of the rates on here

500GBP/day is still very good by European dev wage standards. You can't compare to American wages/rates.

It is pretty average for a contractor in Europe. Contractors/Freelancers have always been paid above normal wages, because the contracts offer more flexibility to the employers.

Depends on which market in Europe. Rates can vary wildly.