

Ask HN: How much should I be paid an hour? (Australia, Contract FED) - ausdevthrowaway

I&#x27;m a freelance front-end dev in Australia. I currently get paid $420 a day. I have no idea how much the recruitment agency who placed me are skimming off the top.<p>I can&#x27;t shake the feeling that my rate is at the low end, but because of the secrecy between other devs and the recruiters I have nothing to gauge myself against.<p>Am I being shafted?
======
dsacco
I'll preface by saying that it's hard for me to really critique that number
because I don't know where in Australia you live and what the cost of living
is there.

That said, intuitively I feel that is insanely low. If you are framing
yourself as a consultant who can solve quantifiable business problems using
frontend development, then ~$400 per _day_ is absurd. I would say increase
regardless of your living costs. Asssuming 30 weeks of utilization, you're
working for $60,000 per year. If you're doing remote freelance work then you
can target US companies and literally quadruple this.

I live in NY and I charge between $1000 and $2000 per day for information
security services that normally take 2 - 4 weeks per engagement. Mind you -
information security is a specialization that is not as quantifiable as
developing a website for business purposes, so in theory you should be able to
achieve higher rates than that (Brennan Dunn, as an example, charges $20,000
per week as of 2014, and he does a mixture of web development and
copywriting).

If you follow 'patio11's advice you can certainly increase this. The beautiful
thing about being a consultant is that you can choose to work remotely, which
means you can anchor your cost to the living costs of your _client 's
location._ I'd be charging the same if I lived in Kansas.

Increase your rates, and if necessary rebrand/reframe your value proposition.
Also - get rid of the recruitment agency. Agencies can be good, but you need
transparency regarding your rate and how much they are taking for placing you.
You should also try to develop a strong personal network for referrals.

You will know when you're successful because you start saying no to potential
clients as much or more than you say yes.

------
xytop
Oh guys.. I'm a senior web developer (working on a leading position in a
company which runs 3 startups), I speak natively Rails, PHP.. fluent in SQL
and still i get..

$25/h..

I'm in Europe though.. but when I look at your numbers I want to cry.

That's very a lot to my taste.

Edit: did calculations.. even $24/h ($46800/year)

~~~
candeira
I'm not going to complain about rates, but I can tell you that you can't just
compare currencies without comparing also your cost of life.

It depends where in Europe you live, and what are your other costs.

I'm Spanish, and in Spain I can go to the doctor and (for now) not have to pay
at the front desk. In Australia, my local doctor charges an $30 Australian (20
Euro) co-pay per visit.

Coffee and churros in Madrid is 1.70 Euro ($2.50 Australian). Coffee alone in
our neighbourhood in Australia is never under $3 Au (2 euro). Thanks to the
Coles/Woolworths duopoly, I reckon Aussie supermarket prices in general are
from 1.5 to 3 times more expensive in Australia than in Spain. Only beef is
consistently cheaper in Australia, and milk is the same price, being a loss
leader.

And the real estate bubble continues in Australia, so house prices and rents
keep going up. This is why I asked Aussie devs to share their rates: they are
working in the same market, but also they are paying for food, housing,
healthcare etc. in the same market.

Also, remember that if you are a full time employee you are accruing other
benefits, and your pay is calculated taking into account you lower risk of
unemployment and higher severance in case of dismissal (especially in the many
European countries with very strict labor laws favouring employees, like
Spain). I reckon $50-$60/h is the freelance-equivalent rate of $46800/year
full time salary in Europe.

And if you work on 3 startups, you may be giving up some salary in exchange
for equity. If you don't get equity, well, your problem is not your salary.

~~~
xytop
Yeah, im working full-time, but remotely. Company is based in UK and im living
in Moldova. Although rate is pretty good for Moldova (life here is very cheap)
I still need more and work part-time at Toptal for $30/h.. so constantly
overworking to get to the better living. I have a wife and 2 children, soon
3rd one will born and I want to start building a house and I cant say I have
enough money for this but family requires so. I/family spend about $1500-$2000
a month for current needs, like food, clothing etc.. then we usually have 1-2
trips a year to rest somewhere. And after all I have about $5-$10k a year in
savings. To build a house I need to have about $120-$150k. Which will be in 10
years in best case. Also to add here, I don't pay fees to government, working
unofficially because again I dont want to lose any money there (like about
20%) that maybe risky but most of people in my area work like that.

~~~
zerr
As I remember, Toptal charges fixed $3200 (full-time) and $1600 (part-time)
per WEEK to the client, in addition to your tiny $30/hr rate... Why didn't you
ask $XXX/hr for toptal client? That is the norm there.. Please increase your
rate as soon as possible. Do not believe toptal personnel if they try to
convince you to keep rates such low...

~~~
xytop
No, they're flexible here.. they charge as much as they can from a client. So,
from some they charge $80/h as you say, but some of them pay just $45/h.
Toptal's lowest rate for companies is $40/h

~~~
zerr
Well, and what are obstacles for you to charge 3-figure per hour? I'm as well
from eastern Europe, and as you mention, it is possible to live with $xx/hr
rate (if the work is enough), but do we only want to live month-to-month or
maybe we also want to buy some new apartment? build a private house, and
another country-side house? $xx/hr is just not enough.

------
girvo
Depends. Freelance, or consultant? I've done both, and am in Brisbane. I
charged $400/day as my normal rate for the latter. The former was project
dependant. And could be from $10/h if I messed up quoting to $1000/h if I
quoted well and everything went well.

Working as a full time "full stack" engineer I'm earning $50/hr with 8 years
of experience under my belt. Which I prefer, as I earn good money for my age
and location, without the stress of finding work.

------
nness
Depends on the number of hours you are working a day, and assuming you're
being charged out at time and materials, that would be $50-60 p/hour.

------
stephenr
In my experience pimps (Im sorry, "contract agencies") just add their costs on
top of your requested rate, and offer that to the client.

------
candeira
You don't say how much experience you have, how many hours/day, which city you
work in, or in which industry. So I'll answer assuming you're junior but
you've been doing this for at least a year, you can write good code and good
English, you're working 8 hour days, you're in Sydney or Melbourne, and you
contract out to an agency doing work for mid-size companies.

I'd say you are at the very very low end of the scale, if not falling off the
scale. If you have any skill in front-end JS, and aren't a trainee or a recent
graduate with zero experience, you should be getting twice that money easily.

For a comparison, I do back-end and devops work, and I charge in the range
between $85 and $175 per hour (1), depending on the client and the work. Right
now I have a project of each. I suspect I'm also undercharging some clients,
and that intermediaries who genuinely can't pay me more are also
undercharging. However, I don't work for recruiters/outsourcers, but directly
for companies shipping software, though some of them are intermediaries in the
sense that they run a project for a client, and then hire me as a contractor
instead of as an employee. Also, I haven't done almost any front-end work, but
it's my impression that front-end skills are in higher demand, and rates are
higher on average.

(1) AUD, not USD.

You say you don't have other people's salaries to compare. I too wish Aussie
JS and front-end freelancers shared their fees here. Here's how to compare
freelance day/hour rates to a full time salary, by the way:

A full time worker puts in about 2000 hours a year. As a freelancer, you have
to put in your own training, sales (finding work), you pay your own
superannuation (because you do, right?), equipment (you buy your own laptop),
training (you buy your own books and courses, you pay your own way to attend
conferences), etc.

Thus, when comparing your day rates with the money a full time worker gets,
you should take into account extra benefits paid by their employer like super
(for non-australians, this is a retirement account, by law employers'
contributions are about 9%, but some companies pay more, up to the mid-10s),
training courses and conferences, etc.

As a freelancer, you don't have sickies or paid holiday of any kind, so you
should account for 1000 billable hours a year. Working more is the cherry on
top, and less is a risk that you hedge by having good rates.

Therefore, $85/hour is more or less equivalent to an $85.000/yr salary +
benefits. $175/hour would be equivalent to $175.000/year salary + benefits.

Obviously this is without taking into account tax brackets, forced downtime if
you have health issues, and the averaging of good and bad weeks/months/years.
Also, perceptions of salaries/rates aren't linear, neither for you nor for
potential employers.

(((

Note: this advice is for an hourly rate programmer. HN legends patio11 and
tptacek will rightly advise you to get out of this game if you can, and I
agree with them. I'm trying to do it myself. But while you're in it, this is
what I've learnt that I can share.

[http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-
pro...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/)

[http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/09/17/ramit-sethi-and-
patrick-...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/09/17/ramit-sethi-and-patrick-
mckenzie-on-getting-your-first-consulting-client/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6974166](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6974166)

)))

There is a lot of the above advice that you start applying now while still in
the hourly rate game, so I'm pasting the link to tptacek's comment again,
because it's hella relevant and pithy.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6974166](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6974166)

Good luck. And to my fellow Aussie freelancers, please share your rates and
help everybody negotiate better with clients and employers.

~~~
ausdevthrowaway
Thanks so much for your reply. Sorry I wasn't very specific, you're spot on
except I've been freelancing for about 3 years now. I've pretty much worked
exclusively for digital agencies building websites for external clients,
ranging in size from five to three hundred people in the office. The front-end
dev team size ranges from one to twenty, but it isn't proportional. I'd rate
my JS skills highly.

I've always thought the order of pay for people with similar experience in
their field was: front-end, back-end, design, UI, UX, project managers,
anything client facing.

The stress of finding work has been getting to me lately, and at my current
daily rate it isn't enough to get me through the troughs.

In comparison to your rates I'm getting shafted royally.

(Thanks for pointing out superannuation, I really should put more into it.)

~~~
seekingcharlie
You don't have to contribute to your super if you're self-employed.

If you're planning to buy a house in the next 10 years, it makes zero sense to
lock away what could effectively be money off a mortgage.

Save what would be your super in a high interest account. Better yet, invest
in ETFs.

~~~
candeira
You don't _have_ to contribute to super, but you should consider the super
contribution your employer makes for you (and that both of you and your
employer pay lower taxes on) when you compare a salary with your yearly take
home as a freelancer.

~~~
seekingcharlie
Agreed. You should definitely factor your own super payments into your rate
(whether or not you pay super is up to you).

