what's your salary?

[pleigh]

just curious....do you like to earn $1.50/hour on programming?

[feyd]

$120 / hour.

Moved to The Enterprise.

[pleigh]

whoah!!!i bet your a genius..

[feyd]

well.. for 1, I'm American in America, which often makes my salary "high" compared to many countries, however it's also about what I bring to the table:

• Graphics Artist
• Programmer
• Marketing and Research
• Hardware Consulting
• various other tidbits...

[timvw]

I don't think it's possible to work freelance for less than $50 an hour. Not if you want to do it legal or if you want a little bit of insurance anyway (And even then you have to work a lot of hours to end up with a reasonable pay/month)

The $120 is more than acceptable if you compare it with the $200+ rates from consultants that come up with crappy solutions.

Offcourse you can hire some cheap forces, but in the end you'll spend more than 12 times $10 to get the same done. (Let alone the time you need to spend in explaining them what to do. And then repeating it a zillion times ;( )

[feyd]

yeah.. forgot to mention I bring speed to the table too.. Although I often write entirely new code bases for each client (non-repeat ones anyways), I'll often finish a project in half or less of the time it'd take most other people. Which is another reason I charge a bit more..

the new code base issue is because most of my clients want to own the code outright afterward. They incur a fee for transferring the rights, but that also forces me to come up with a new code base. .. So I get a lot of practice writing similar systems

[pleigh]

I don't think it's possible to work freelance for less than $50 an hour. Not if you want to do it legal or if you want a little bit of insurance anyway (And even then you have to work a lot of hours to end up with a reasonable pay/month)

The $120 is more than acceptable if you compare it with the $200+ rates from consultants that come up with crappy solutions.

Offcourse you can hire some cheap forces, but in the end you'll spend more than 12 times $10 to get the same done. (Let alone the time you need to spend in explaining them what to do. And then repeating it a zillion times ;( )

in my place, it is possible...like i have posted in different topic of this forum(enterprise), i am being paid $1.50/hour(converted from my currency to $) and of course it is a legal job...can't even raise 1 child, luckily, i don't have a child yet...

and of course, i earn higher than some other jobs here...its just that, it is not enough enough to live the day with that earnings...wouldn't you agree??

[Roja]

Dayjob/9-to-5: $40 per hour.

Freelancing/offhours: $60 per hour.

My personal time is much more valuable to me than money, so I don't generally take freelancing jobs anymore. When I did/do, its because its an interesting challenge, or for a friend that needs it.

Freelancing has more than a few 'dry spells', so you have to ensure that your rate takes that into account. If you are idle for even 20% of the time, your rate needs to be 25%+ higher to ensure that your salary gets paid. Then add in no benefits, no legal protections, and so forth, and you see that $100+ an hour for contracts isn't unreasonable.

[infolock]

Companies who pay small fees to get a job done get exactly what they pay for : crap in most cases. If they are very lucky, they may find one or 2 programmers that can actually do the job well. But that is a slim chance for it to ever happen. Most of the time, they will be hiring programmers who are not at all coders, but simply rewriters: they find the code on the net, and change text colors or wording to fit what the company is looking for. Meaning, it's never gonna be as secure as it could be, or versitile, or stable. When they break down and offer a 50$/hour or higher job, they are gonna be more picky about if the guy knows what he is doing, and then in turn get a better product. As for my salary? It's enough. Enough to get the bills paid and for me to have plenty of spending money on the side. But I also bring the company exactly what they are paying for : an experienced coder who works his ass off to get the jobs done they want right the first time around.

[cbrian]

$60 per hour for freelancing? That's a LOT! I get $5 a week for allowance from my parents

[josh]

I get $20 / hour subcontracting work from a local web design company and I'm still in high school so I would consider that very good. When I graduate in a few months, and have the zend certification my rates are going to $30-$35.

[patrikG]

$60 per hour for freelancing? That's a LOT! I get $5 a week for allowance from my parents

It's not really if you consider how much time goes into securing a contract with a client as a freelancer. Competition is fierce and unless you've been recommended, you have to spend a lot of time on getting contracts. You have to factor in time & costs spent on acquiring a contract. And that's quite a bit.

[Roja]

$60 per hour for freelancing? That's a LOT! I get $5 a week for allowance from my parents

You think? Lets do the math.

You sleep 8 hours a day, eat for 1 hour, and do body maintenance (shower, clean, etc) for another. So you have 14 hours a day.

If you work a 8 hours a day on weekdays, that leaves you just 6 hours a day to do "what you want", which has to include maintenance tasks like chores, shopping, cleaning, and what not. So lets just call it 5 hours a day of "what you want" time.

Now, granted, on weekends, you get a the whole day (in theory), if you don't spend any time on religion. So that brings us back those 8 hours from our day job for 5+8 = 13 hours a day.

Total free time in a week? : 25+13+13 = 51 hours.

Now, ask it this way: How much would I charge for 2% of my LIFETIME FREE TIME. Thats what it boils down to. Every hour you sell, you don't get it back. Its gone. Its spent. You look back years later and say "Where did the days go?". You sold them.

Time is the one thing you cannot replace, cannot buy back, cannot improve, and cannot bargain for. It is quite simply, the most valuable commodity in the world. The more knowledgable and useful you are, the more valuable it becomes to others.

Based on that, I've got no problems pegging my free time at $60 an hour. If anything, I'd say I'm undercharging.

[nielsene]

The few times I've looked into some freelance gigs, I've been quoting between $80-100. Had to turn down most of the offers because their NDA's and other legal documents were too restrictive and they weren't willing to budge or raise the compensation.

My day job is around $45/hour. I've often been told a good metric (in the US) is to take your equivalent hourly scale from a regular job and double it for contracting to cover the overhead (insurance, legal, etc) as a good starting point.

[Todd_Z]

I wish i could work per hour, but 80% of my freelance jobs are total project which bothers me because I keep close communication with webmasters during the process and they are often adding features - however, I do include some overhead, but its not enough!