If you charge by the day, assume an 8-hour working day and divide your fee by 8.
If you'd like to post a comment about what you charge and why you feel it's a fair fee, that would be helpful.
Thanks very much.
Great stuff!
Though I don't hate it myself, I see your point. I think affiliation should always be mentioned though, e.g. by "(full disclosure: I made this)".
All of this seems a little funny and counterintuitive. We are a community of people who love coding for fun and developing these types of side projects, yet in comments, where the majority of us are heard, sharing your own relevant projects isn't exactly welcomed.
Yes, there are "ShowHN" posts, which are great, but it's more difficult to be heard through this avenue unless you're lucky enough to make it to the front page.
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javascript:(function(){var id=document.location.href.match(/id=(\d+)/)[1];url='http://hnlike.com/hncharts/chart/?id='+id;var w=window.open(url, '_blank'); w.focus();})()Contracting - generally on site, fixed term contract, paid by the day, working alongside the team.
Freelancing - generally off site, project based, paid by the hour, working more autonomously.
You do find exceptions such as a work from home contract or a freelancer who bills by the day, but this distinction definetly hold true in the mind of companies and agencies.
Making the good rates in the poll is relatively easy as a contractor, but fiendishly difficult as a freelancer.
I suspect freelancing is more appealing to the HN crowd for the autonomy and location independence. I know I would swap £100+ hr of what I call 'contracting' for a consistent stream of £50 hr 'freelancing' in a heartbeat, but the work is difficult to source reliably.
(As an aside, I'm glad to see we have the same rate inflation on the London polls. At the time of writing approx 30% of respondents are on £100 + hr. There's no way the London market supports that at volume.)
It's sort of a dangerous thing to assume that one's view of the market is the totality of it. Not to say that you're wrong, because I have never sold a gig in London, but I have heard the same about geographies/specialities with which I'm intimately familiar, and usually the claim comes from someone who has sort of fallen into a particular style of customer/acquisition channel/work and is not aware that large parts of the market exist in such a way that they'd never hear of them.
For example, rather frequently on HN we'll have people quote the going rate on Craiglist or RentACodeMonkey.com quoted as the maximum available for (without loss of generality) Rails programmers in Chicago, despite it being at an 80%+ discount to rates routinely charged by people whose clients wouldn't be caught dead on Craigslist.
I charge £400 a day and am constantly in demand and turning down work. I am however moving into something totally different business wise and will be retiring from contracting because ive plateaued rate wise using my skills in this way.
Also, do you only develop the backend, or do you have to do the entire frontend as well?
I would love to have a job that's just freelance backend (application logic and database setup) web development.
It's much easier when two people can look for work, and on getting the jobs, you know that you can split it based on the bits you like doing.
Especially good if you both have an understanding of backend and frontend.
However, my experience, though limited, has offered a very different picture. The vast majority of companies have a number in mind that they consider to be the standard rate for development work in their city. It looks like in London that's about £50/hour. Once you attempt to exceed this rate, regardless of qualification, the number of companies willing to hire you drops significantly to the point where you would have trouble finding steady work.
There are exceptions to this rule on both sides but most freelance developers will face this ceiling until they master the skills to overcome it (which, as you can probably guess, are sales-related, not technical).
It seems to be a super-sticky price point.
If you want to increase your rates and have a skillset for it, try doubling your rate and going after clients that are used to paying double your rate.
For context, here are some of my experiences:
- Finance jobs as a long-term contractor seem to start at about £600 per day for Java developers, with £700pd being more typical. For Scala you can probably get a £50-100 more. For short term work or a good candidate you can easily get >£800.
- Ruby / PHP and other commoditised work of the like seems to top out at around £400-500 pd. iOS might get you a bit higher, but I think the shine is coming off app development.
As always, the key to a high rate is differentiating your offering. Update: This doesn't have to be by offering rarer skills, though this is an easy to a higher rate. Being better known in your community, by writing blog posts, speaking at conferences, and so on, will allow you to command a higher rate as well.
- Do you interview well? If not, improve this. Take interviews to practice.
- Banks prefer people with experience in finance. If you don't have any, join a consultancy or a company like LMAX that can get you that experience and which are more open to outsiders.
- Go to meetups. Make connections.
- Learn Scala.
Drop me an email (see my profile) if you want to continue this conversation. It's easier than continually checking the comments.
My standard hourly is actually a fair bit lower than that, but then that's on-going projects and/or not for clients in London (so I voted £100+)
Edit: And of course to UK companies that's excluding VAT - If you're a UK freelancer and you're not VAT registered, do it now.
A lot of people think you have to turn over £79k / year before you can be VAT registered, but that's not true, £79k / year is when you have to become VAT registered. My first ever business had a turnover of exactly £0.00 when I VAT registered it.
If you're selling to other businesses (and not the general public) it's always better to be VAT registered :)
It depends who your customers are.
Also you get an extra 1% in your first year.
You charge 20% VAT but then you pay 14.5% of the 120% total (i.e. 17.4%).
This may be a good deal if you have relatively few VATable expeneses, and you are charging customers who are insensitive to VAT (you are paying their VAT for them). At best, you're making £52pw rather than £110pw.
Those earning £100+, any tips?
In my experience (albeit in U.S./ USD), those rates come to people with solid programming reputation, IN ADDITION TO a deep domain knowledge in a market with a lot of money.
(knowledge of the finance world like HFT algorithms, marketing skills like conversion optimization, high security clearance, etc.)
Ha! That's what they tell you. To the right kind of startup, time is everything and they will pay good money for someone they think of as an asset who will demonstrably help them execute.
I am guessing here - but it simply sounds like you are coming to the table with the wrong attitude. "Please sir, give me some dev work". Well, under these circumstances you will of course be treated as "just" another outsourced programmer.
Don't be like that. Be a partner. Turn up in a suit. Show your business savvy, list your successes, and matter-of-factly tell them that they are excited about their plans, you can likely help them achieve their execution goals, and your rate is £600/day (or more). Give them your business card and tell them to call you when they're ready to start. You're a pro, you can and will manage yourself, and you will deliver - you're not a teenager looking for a part-time job.
Startups aren't really interested in bargaining over your hourly rate. They want to execute! Frankly, they are bargaining you down only because you allow them to. That obviously means you are selling the wrong thing. Instead, make them understand that you are the guy who is going to take ownership of their mobile app and help them get it out by the end of next month. Now you're not an outsourced programmer, you're a partner consultant who takes ownership and has real commitment. Your rates double. Try it.
And of course, once you make that promise and gain those rates, you gotta deliver!
You have to decide where you fit and act (and charge) accordingly. There's an entire spectrum of rates, and there's no iron law that says one has to fit in at the bottom.
For example, a friend of mine markets himself as basically a part-time CTO. He's been there, done that at a number of startups over the years, team lead the last few, a strong record of delivery. Management (who are not or only partially technical) does not hire him for his programming skills - that is not even a question at the (short, single) interview. He develops software, yes, but the main priority is giving management confidence that their software story is in safe, experienced hands, gives them someone to interface with, and frees up their bandwidth for other concerns. This guy makes well over six figures working part time.
It's no secret that many startup founders come from finance - and despite their bad rap here on HN, mostly they are very smart, decent people. But they don't know tech like we do. What are their needs? What are their fears?
They're not looking for the cheapest typist in town. They're looking for a credible partner to take co-ownership of the tech side of things. Maybe that's taking co-ownership of the mobile product, or something more inclusive, it doesn't matter - they just don't want to have to worry about it. So be that person who can take care of that for them.
And one more thing. There is a bizarre tendency in the software world to eschew anything that smells like management, and to almost revel in the fact that IT people can often get away with dressing down at work. Don't do that. Always wear a suit, or at least a shirt. Business has rules, and the dress code is one of them. Demonstrate at the very first impression that you understand this, and you will gain a lot of respect. Suddenly, you are not just another slob typing gibberish in his dirty t-shirt, you are a fellow manager, but with rare and valuable technical skills. Big, big difference.
For example, here's an idea for you: look at minicab companies with their own apps; "everyone" wonders what companies like Hailo and Kabbee will do to their business, yet apart from the huge ones like Addison Lee, every single minicab company specific app I've seen looks like crap and most are horrible to use too. In this case, an app has a clear and direct monetisation for them, and as long as you do contracts right they can to a certain extent be "cookie cutter" if you manage to land multiple clients. If they think you quote too much, you focus on how few extra bookings it will take to earn it back - and you can even offer to take part of the payment based on performance (but then make sure to make that high enough that you are likely to make more, because you are taking risk).
Secondly, if you are going after startups, seek out networking opportunities for startups that are actively going after investment. Once a startup has closed a major financing round, there's a ton of pressure on to deliver and deliver quickly, and people understand that short, urgent jobs will cost a lot more. Many of them will also be a lot more willing to spend money on polishing things up right before they go out to seek investment - everyone wants to make a great impression.
If all else fails, there's the risky path of fixed price contracts. If you work quickly, and can estimate your effort well, price it out based on what you want to make per hour with a substantial buffer for risk, and give a delivery date consistent with a lower per hour price. Just be sure that exactly what you are offering is nailed down in excruciating detail, and that you know how much time you are actually spending on things - developers are notorious at under-estimating own effort.
So yeah, it is great to have an income as a student, particularly in London. I wouldn't be able to pay my rent otherwise, the student loan is totally insufficient for even rent alone, let alone other expenses on top of that. But there is a major downside as well.
Back on topic, it depends what year are you in. If youre going for an internship between 2nd and 3rd year (and you should), you can easily spend most of 1st and 2nd year socialising and intern/3rd working hard and still get a solid 1st degree
If you meant excluding rent and bills, say they cost £15/day (which is still unrealistically cheap), plus your £1 for living expenses, that's a monthly cost of £480. Per academic year, that costs about £3840. While this is well within the threshold of the maximum student maintenance loan, remember you'll still have to pay travel costs (you can't really stay within walking distance of your house for the entire time you're in London), buy books (which can get very expensive), pay for other materials for coursework. At a minimum. University, and living in London generally is very expensive...
Mostly, I'm just thinking, how do you even eat on £1 a day? That's pretty much one tin of baked beans plus a slice or two of bread per day. Or maybe some rice. Luckily nobody has to pay medical costs here...
Also, I'm interested as to whether or not you think a gap year internship is still really important if I'm already working? I've had two jobs so far, that's quite a lot of experience for someone who's only in second year, and a lot more than many graduates I know...
plus youll earn some money which you can spend in the 3rd year (typical intern pay for programmers is £15-20k)
and yeah that was without the bills. i lived in houses close to uni to avoid commuting and the £400 was common if not a bit steep, but i suppose my uni wasnt in central (it was brunel in uxbridge). also i lived in pretty shitty houses, because hey, im only there for a year, but on the upside met lots of cool people.
a key to eating cheap is buying in bulk and cooking large amounts of food. say you buy 10 or even 20kg bag of rice (i used to do it on indian holidays for better discounts), that will cost less than £10 and last a few good months. get some canned veg, maybe micne. big tescos in poorer areas are your friend. its hard to calculate but for around £7 (and certainly for £10) you can stir up enough to last you a week. shits not gonna be gourmet but it works.
there are other ways too... freeganism, putting stuff through self checkout as onions, etc.
In short, how many freelancers are a business vs a well remunerated job?
edit: apologies for steering you off course - have added a seperate poll - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6574752, of course at the perfect time of day for London !
Sorry, non-Londoners!
I also find that generally, in Europe, today's rates are daily. With the assumption that the working hours are at a least the same as those of an employee; but, often expected to be one or two hours more (banks, I'm looking at you).
For reference I am a php contractor specialising in Symfony 2, working predominantly remotely (where possible, seeing my family is very important to me!) and am based in the NW of the UK.
You can find me at mossco.co.uk, or christopherdmoss at googles mail. Thanks :)
Im in the 50 an hour band myself,would be interested in scaling up a bit.