The author of the post is a full-time employee, despite what he is (possibly illegally) classified as. He should be negotiating as such.
A previous job made us track our hours so that we could "improve estimates," but mostly it only made people unhappy.
We ask all of our employees and contractors to track time against tasks. Yes it can be a pain but it helps prevent people from spending way more time on a task than there was budget for.
I think you should double what you're charging. I'd shoot for $100 and not go below $50, probably end up with 70-80.
You should definitely be getting more than 37 USD/hour as a contractor. That's wildly low.
And yes, as a DevOps developer a few years back, I was able to charge $120 an hour without an issue. My roughly desired pay per hour, times two to cover the un-billable, yet still required, work to be an independent contractor, and another 2x for taxes and health benefits.
I’ve seen the comments about “just go to FAANG” and it’s one of those odd dualities I see on HN. On some threads, I see comments full of how their interviews are IQ proxies and how FAANG only hires the best or top X% so it’s not viable for most devs. On the other hand there are plenty of comments that just suggest casually walking into a FAANG job. So which is it?
The thing is, you can adjust luck to be in your favor. While certainly nowhere near 100%, if you feel you're being paid below market, becoming a master at leetcode will probably help you tremendously in increasing your compensation whether it be at a FAANG company or some other company that will still give you a raise.
My best friend's FAANG job sounds incredible mundane to be honest. An entire team seems to be dedicated towards working on the backend piece of what seems like a very small feature, plus another entire sister team is working on the frontend piece of same feature. Granted there is probably a level of scale involved that adds complexity, but just hearing him talk about what he and his team does makes my unsexy non-tech company work more interesting.
I would be paying about £25 weekly or £100 a month for an umbarella company if I went contract in the UK at a £800 day rate.
And for experienced professionals like the OP a day rate is the better way to go
2011 - Graduated with double degree B.S. in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science from Texas Tech University
Software Engineer @ Raytheon II&S in Garland, TX
2011 $61k/year (all # values are in $k)
2012 $63
Software Development Engineer I (SDE1) @ Amazon in Seattle
2013 $90 salary + $20 signing bonus + $53 stock bonus (vested over the next 4 years)
2014 $117 Total Compensation (TC) = $92 base salary + $13 2nd year bonus + $11 stocks value
Promoted to SDE2
2015 $138 TC = $105 + $33 stocks
2016 $171 TC = $108 + $63 stocks
2017 $195 TC = $110 + $84 stocks
19% bump after switching teams within Amazon and getting a new manager
2018 $251 TC = $131 + $119 stocks
2019 $245 TC = $150 + $96
2020 $255 TC = $157 + $97
Promoted to SDE3 (Senior Software Engineer)
2021 $309 TC = $160 + 149
I'm currently a full-stack engineer, as in I've worked with or currently work with:
- Backend service development: Java, Scala, & C++
- Front-end development: CSS, JavaScript & Typescript
- Server-side rendering: Perl & Java
- App Development in Android (Java & Kotlin) & iOS (Objective-C & Swift)
- Script development in Java, Ruby, Python, & SQL
- System design, design reviews, AWS, etc.
- DevOps (Oncall, CD/CI, Integration testing, Chaos testing, Agile process improvements etc.)
- Interview candidates, mentor new hires & teammates, promotion recommendations & reviews
I then started charging 100$/hour and I got better results when looking for clients, ended up being more respected by those same clients and was less overworked so happier overall.
Over the last 10 years, I've steadily increased that rate until it's now 300$/hour. I don't charge that all clients, in some cases I worked for a lot less in exchange for equity (which has proven to be a very good idea) but having a high rate allows me to have the flexibility to offer that with some clients.
But they basically said that they don't have any more money to pay me, so we just need to get by with what we have as a team.
I was like, what should my motivation be in this? It's not my startup...
Equity
There are two sides of me when I think about the salary and location:
1) you write code and produce stuff and it doesn't matter where you live. you can live anywhere you want, just do the job and get paid. from that POV it seems weird to think that one person gets a lot more money than the other for the same output, the same work
2) another POV in me is that your costs are different depending on where you live. so while the salary's number on paper can be the same for people working from different countries, the "worth" of the money is different.
But mostly I tend to agree with POV number 1 I think.
Would be helpful to hear about your salary and hourly price?
I have to track my hours because I work for an agency that bills it's time to clients, but for the most part, I'm working on one/two Jira tickets in a day so it's fairly manageable. 4 hours spent on one ticket, 2 hours on another, and an hour or two of meetings per day (stand ups, grooming, etc). Some days I work on one ticket and call it quits.
Don't sell yourself short. You're worth a hell of a lot more than you're making now. I think you have every right to demand double your take home pay, at least.
I basically said: "Now that I have to log my every hour, it got me thinking about my hourly price. Some of my friends (actually referring to HN people as you understand here) are making $250/h. I'm making $37/h. Are we able to increase my price?"
And they basically said: "We don't have any more money to pay you. Yes, I too can see some of my friends with nicer houses and clothes, but so what. We're building this startup and we all make sacrifices."
Well, they do offer me a percentage after a few years, but the company isn't worth anything right now, so this does not motivate ma at all. They own 99% of the company anyways.
And this is what I said to them. And they told me to come back in a few days and see if there are any other arrangements we can make (like give me a part of the company or something like this).
I don't now. Let's see what they say, but probably I'll need to start looking for something else.
Just curious, why is your blended tax rate 50%
https://www.glassdoor.sg/Salary/Toptal-US-Salaries-EI_IE8820...
Edit: See also X-team salaries:
https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/X-Team-Salaries-E1274500.ht...
between 40/hr and 60/hr.
A US-based Sr Dev contractor working remotely, making 75/hr, is being massively ripped off if they're capable of working with any even remotely commercially viable technology.
IOW it is very, very low for a contracting rate just about anywhere in the US. It's under normal for a junior in flyover country. If you're getting a bunch of free time out of this gig, consider going part-time without changing what you're asking. $6k/m is what you could charge for a per-week commitment of 10-20 hours (depending on your experience, stack, et c). Then either officially slack off during your down time since you're not "on the clock" at all, or take other gigs. Or jump ship. You can easily beat that rate somewhere else, with a remote job, and probably locally unless you live nowhere near anything resembling a city. Most jobs that'd pay you double that (or more) won't have you killing yourself with work, either, though your workload might be higher than it is now.
But basically they said they don't have any more money and we should all work with what is possible right now.
Wat...
Rule of thumb: Whatever you were making as a full-time employee, divide your annual salary by 2,000 to get your hourly rate, then multiply by 2-3x to cover your overhead costs (rent, equipment, health insurance), as well as client uncertainty (won't pay (on time), time between projects, etc.).
Contracting for public tech companies / big entities, I shoot for $250/hr and am happy with anything above $175/hr. Contracting for smaller companies / startups, absolute minimum $75/hr, and only if I really like them.
Also look into lowering taxes, 50% is super high. I manage to pay low (flat) tax in my country because I registered self-proprietorship/registered entrepreneur company and have flat tax rate (it's an option if you meet some conditions). Maybe something similar exist in your country, do the research, contact professional accountant if needed.
Well, I myself hate logging hours. But I think it's a personal issue of mine.
In short, it's maybe my ego thing. I somehow hate when people measure my minutes. I know what I do and I can manage any task they give me, quickly. But I hate when someone asks: "how many hours did you exactly work yesterday".
I finished all necessary tasks and a bit more :D like what's your problem with my hours?
But I know. I can be a complicated person in that sense...
Your salary would be low in most markets for software developers.
And then they ask: "why?". What should I say then? :|
Well, there are a few real reasons why I don't want to track my time:
1. I just don't like to track time. I know that I'm good at what I do and can finish tasks very quickly. I guess it's a bit like my ego thing I admit. I somehow hate when people measure my every minute...
2. Some days I work very little. Just a few hours maybe. But I do everything that's asked of me. It's just I can finish the necessary things really quickly. And I don't want them to know that. Because then they say: "you are working only 2h per day and you should be working 8h per day".
Of course, this doesn't take into account that it's a progressive tax, etc., but I regularly take home only about 50-60% of what I make, after benefits.
Also, no benefits being deducted in this case.
fascinating
But when I needed to log my hours, yes – this got me thinking about my hourly price. Because now I just don't do a flat $6k invoice every month, but have to present the hours...
Location seems to be a factor for some companies but not for others. It’s best to have multiple offers on hand when deciding.
I'm not recommending it but it works for me.
FAANG jobs are, quite frankly, an insignificant fraction of the market. The overwhelming majority of developers are like the OP.
Why would you imagine that? Plenty of highly skilled people do not hold a FAANG job up as some kind of holy grail of jobs.
It's a free market, there's a million job ads, recruiters and what else. If you are worth $500k/year, you'll get $500k/year. If you can't take $500k/year either coze you're incapable of putting up with the job requirements or you're just incompetent in general, that's entirely on you.
You're not starving. Just penible.
And it was super helpful, really. After reading the comments, I had a call with the startup this morning and here's the result: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27140093
