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Comment by edabobojr | Hacker News Reader

One question I have - were the high-tech wizards paid standard gsa rates?

https://www.gsaadvantage.gov/ref_text/GS35F5457H/0LUS2P.2NVK...

Page 25. Top developer rate for 2014 is $99/hr which requires 10 years of experience.

Would explain a lot if so. Any developer you can get for that rate who has been working for 10 years likely does not have 10 years of experience, but 1 year of experience repeated 10 times.

40x99x50=~$200k/year. That doesn't seem unreasonable compensation, what am I missing?

That $99 goes to the contractor, not the employee. There's a ton of overhead and profiting that comes out of that $99. I won't even hazard a guess at how much of that $99 actually makes it to the guy or gal's pocket.

That said, it's not a bad living wage. I suspect below industry standard though, is what these folks are saying.

Ah, I thought it was a direct contract with the government, not a contracted person from an agency, my mistake.

Of course, I guess I should have assumed that, there aren't many direct government jobs for this type of thing anymore, it seems.

Yep, the government contracts out to a gigantic company who then "hires" you and has you work on the thing, and takes half the money in exchange for doing not a whole lot. It's a sad system.

From my experience as a contractor, I'm betting the actual employee sees less than half of that. Perhaps a lot less.

You can't compare contracting rates with regular salaries. There are a lot of costs involved for equipment, facilities, taxes, and just plain uncertainty (a contractor is often not working 50 weeks per year, not even close, because they have to find a new project frequently). Rule of thumb is to consider a contracting rate as equivalent to a regular job that pays half as much.

That doesn't include benefits. Any benefits (such as health insurance) would come out of that. I believe the rule of thumb is to add on 20% of a salary for cost of benefits. So this would be closer to a salary of $165k, plus benefits.

$99 an hour turns into about 50$ after it goes through companies pockets.

Speaking from experience as capture manager.

That was not the hourly rate

No.

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