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Comment by scarface_74 | Hacker News Reader

So he spent all of a very long term article describing how he became a “successful” contractor and refused to mention the one metric of success that most people care about - how much he got paid?

This article was a waste of time without talking about was it worth the time over just being a salaried developer with benefits.

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I am a contractor of sorts...at least, I don't have a regular job as a salaried employee. Compared to working 9-5, my hours are closer to part time hours and I get paid about a third of what I used to as a programmer....

Seems like I get paid less but...if you factor in all the additional time I USED to need getting ready for work, recovering from the 9-5 grind, commuting, I get paid about twice as much per hour as I used to.

Plus, the ability to work whenever I want, chill at home in bed if I want, do whatever the hell I want because the ONLY thing that matters is the final product, is worth its weight in gold. Besides, I stopped caring about making tons of money, and would rather use my young years for fun stuff.

I don't mind answering that question, but I'm not sure it has a place in the article (maybe I'll modify it later if I change my mind). My expectation is that in The Netherlands you could at most aim at 80k / year as a FTE (depending on lots of factors). Right now my workload is equivalent to 4 days / week and I'm earning about double what I'd get as an employee. Sounds like a good deal to me.

This matches my experience as a Dutch contractor. FTE salary for devs caps out around 70-80k, often as a company policy. It's even stricter for large companies or governmental institutions that have formally published salary bands. Often, to get into the higher bands you need to have some sort of management responsibility like leading a department. Highly priced specialist labor like software developers fits poorly into that structure.

The commonly accepted way around this is for those institutions to hire contractors, which is a business-to-business transaction for which no such price limits or management requirements exist.

Total agreement with this.

I am Dutch, and indeed without working for meta-tier/booking.com-tier American firms you'll struggle to go above 80-100k for full time employment. Friends who went down the same path as wofo rake in 120-180k easily with a lot more free time (3-4 days/wk instead of 5) and fantastic flexibility.

This is exactly the info I was looking for, thanks for sharing!

I've had multiple interviews and a few offers with companies, both big and small, offering significantly more than 80K/yr - unless you're referring to net salary, after taxes.

My understanding was always that with freelancing you end up paying more taxes and insurance, especially if you want to cover your own pension (which has been included in all my employments except one).

Still, if you end up with comparable or higher earnings with less hours and more flexibility, still a win. I just don't think the difference is as big as you make it out to be.

Could you tell more about the companies, the roles and the salary ranges? Those are very interesting data points.

I usually interview for SRE positions, and I'd say the salary range for a senior is 90k-130k in Amsterdam. It may be possible to get even more in fintech or super big corporations, but I stay away from those.

When I lived in Oxford I left a job paying £44k for a job paying $150k as a contractor for a Bay Area startup. I’ve actually 10X’d my starting salary in 9 years of working (helped both by contracting and by starting with a small salary at 19).

I also almost 20x my salary in 15 years, but I went from e16k in Spain to $350k in Seattle, so when adjusted by inflation/cost of living it isn't that impressive.

Care to share more about your salary history and how you got there? I wish to move back to Spain but I would take a massive pay cut if I choose local jobs, so I am looking into freelancing.

I don’t want to be to specific but my 10x was from a 1st line sysadmin role in a small town in England to a senior engineering role in Palo Alto. I’ve gone down a lot since moving to Sweden though, because I chose to take a role in person so I can learn the language and make friends. If I want to make more money in the future I’ll look at startups in the Bay Area hiring globally remote roles on angel.co

I find this particularly interesting because I am in the US and I am also looking to move back to the EU, but the massive salary difference is a barrier. I was on talks with a company hiring for Spain for e90k, which admittedly is very handsome for the local market, but they were almost offended that I was looking for more.

Would you be ok with sending me the highlights privately? you can reach out at roesp2@hotmail.com

And this information is a helpful bit of context.

I'm a consultant in Denmark and I charge approximately €100/hour. When I used to be an FTE, my salary would be around €33/hour. And I use an agency for finding clients, they add approximately 20% on top of the bill, before they send it to the client.

I didn’t see an email in your profile and I wanted to ask you some questions if you’re open to it. Whats the best way to reach you?

In my experience, short-term pay for contracting is great. Long-term you start to run into problems because clients come and go, you always need to be on your feet looking for a new set of leads. Sometimes you have a bad project which sets you back. Being a salaried developer definitely shields you more from unpredictability.

> being a salaried developer…

To a lesser extent if you work mainly for startups though.

As a contractor you’re being paid to take on risk. That’s the trade.

I found it pretty useful, since it’s easy to just search online or ask a few people what the going rate is. Not everything is about money

I would expect that the hourly rates for run-of-the-mill contracting in the Netherlands via a broker would be 80-160 euros - more for short jobs (less than a month).

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