
Ask HN: Remote ROR developers, how much per hour you make? - byEngineer
How much per hour on w2 you make when working remotely as a rails developer?
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cpursley
These numbers would be more helpful by stating your level/years of experience
and nationality/location.

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nfriedly
Note: the OP asked about W2 earnings which implies, among other things, that
the employer is paying part of your taxes.

I don't do a lot of RoR work but it does come up occasionally. My day job is
salary but it works out to about $60 per hour (w2). However, when I do
occasional freelance work, I charge $125 per hour - but its 1099 income where
I pay all of the taxes, not w2. (Both are remote.)

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cookiecaper
I make $45/hr on W2 doing remote work. Rails dev is one of my tertiary
responsibilities. I also do Java dev and sysadmin.

When I contract, I try to base my rates around $125/hr, but I'll give a dose
of reality to the fantasy that HN always promotes: it's not easy to get people
to pay that. I've been more successful getting clients in the $75-80/hr range
and found that to be about the top of the tolerable range for most people, and
even that is often a stretch.

It really comes down to what type of client you're pitching. Anything mid-
medium-sized or less in terms of revenue is going to snicker at decent rates.
I've had a couple of bigger clients that were surprised they weren't paying me
more than $125/hr, but I stopped freelancing full-time shortly after getting
them (one of them successfully courted me over to W2; I probably shouldn't
have taken it). I always found it hard to break into the bigger clients that
were willing to pay good rates; they usually already have vendors and everyone
wants _their_ associate to get a piece of the pie.

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jerguismi
This kind of raw comparison somewhat useless, since domain knowledge adds up +
numerous other contract-specific things. For example, it is not unreasonable
to ask $200 a hour in my country for a short gig, however if the contract is
longer, usually the billable amount goes lower as well.

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robflynn
$50 - $100/hr depending on the project. Planning to increase the rate soon.
1099. My non-remote W2 salary is less than that.

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throw123123
I work full time remote in a salaried position. Lead engineer for a publicly
traded company, made around 200k USD last year (salary + bonus + stock).

/throwaway account

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dm03514
$35 / hr plus equity full remote python web development, With 5 years
experience

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hellbanner
How much equity did you get & can you talk about that arrangement more?

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ppihc
(throwaway)

Full-time remote, salaried at $85k. (Roughly $40 USD per hour). Company pays
market rate wherever employees are. I am located in NYC (so I'm probably a bit
under market rate).

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nolite
$110 on 1099, SF startup post Series B

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stevelaz
Not to hijack this thread, but I'd like to hear more about remote rates of
other platform developers as well (php,nodejs,python,.net, etc). A nice
comparison matrix would be awesome. Anyone know of a site that specifically
compares these rates across the globe?

I could see a matrix like this being a great addon to remote job sites. Those
of you who have created a work-remote job site and are competing to
weworkremotely, etc... I would think that this would bring you a lot more
traffic.

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odev
my answer is already there($100 max, sorry didn't see your question), but I do
RoR, single page JS and JS/Cordova mobile.

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nyargh
$100/h - $125/h 1099

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taf2
About 7 years ago on a project I earned 100 an hour... No idea though these
days...

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pookieinc
Amazing! This thread makes me consider doing freelance work myself...

Regarding freelance: Where do you advertise your work and do you follow a
specific standard when working with clients, or is it mainly your own DIY
standard?

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nfriedly
I used to freelance full time, and my main sources of clients were word-of-
mouth, elance, and Google (in that order.)

My standard was DIY - I had a short 1-page contract, and I'd ask for 40% up-
front for new clients.

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th1agofm
Sorry to sabotage this thread, but I want to be a freelancer.

I have a lot of experience with ruby/rails(have maintained good gems and all
that jazz) but I work for a major media company, currently in high scale apps,
here in my country and I make about ~$30h/hour.

Does anybody that is in around ~$50/100 hourly rate want to get me aboard
freelancing? I would gadly share some of my rate.

Cheers

~~~
nfriedly
This isn't quite what you were looking for, but I'd say just go for it. If you
still want a safety net, then don't quit your day job right away, just
freelance on the side until you're more comfortable with it.

I do occasional side jobs, mostly through elance. They take about 8-10% of
your income in fees, but they do a couple of things to make up for it:

* They have a good pool of work ready for you to bid on.

* They automatically charge your client's credit card each week if you've recorded hours. (And you can set up [https://github.com/nfriedly/elance-withdrawal](https://github.com/nfriedly/elance-withdrawal) to automatically transfer it from elance to your bank.)

* You can differentiate yourself even without much experience by taking their skill tests.

Start your rates around $75 an hour and raise it up to $100 after you have 2-3
good jobs under your belt.

Don't get distracted by the folks charging ridiculously low rates - they are
_not_ competing with you, they're competing with each other for the clients
who either don't need quality work or don't understand that you get what you
pay for.

Oh, and put about 50% of your income into savings. Depending on your country,
you might end up owing a good portion of that in taxes, and regardless,
whatever's left makes for a nice emergency/rainy day/ vacation/retirement
fund.

Feel free to email me if you want to go down that route and have more
questions. (Or just post them here ;)

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eggie5
$100/hour

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byEngineer
I make 65/hr on a remote project. Had an offer of 95usd/hr on w2 for an onsite
project.

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cgarvis
Don't have a W2 rate but my 1099 Freelance rate is $150-$200

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claudiug
30$

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briandear
5 years experience. 1 job at $120k (w2) and long-term consulting contract with
40 billable weekly hours at $95. Fully remote. For short duration (<1 month,)
I bill at $115. Almost purely Rails.

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lastofus
How's working 2 full time jobs?

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briandear
It's rough. about 15 hour days plus a few hours on many weekends. But the idea
is to accumulate enough to buy some multi-family real estate. So it's one of
those things were you work your ass off to get a benefit. The whole idea of do
what other people won't do so you can live like other people don't live.

It's extremely tough, but it's a means to an end. Luckily, since I'm remote, I
get to see my kids any moment of the day and a difficult code issue is
generally mitigated by taking a five minute break to play with my kids.

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csdreamer7
To everyone who posted in this thread. How did you get your remote job?

~~~
lastofus
Good recruiters

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nfriedly
Yep, same. I freelanced remotely for a number of years, but my last two jobs
have been as an employee because a recruiter (or, in the first case, the CTO)
got a hold of me and made me an offer I couldn't refuse - which included
remote work.

Any recruiter that wants me to work on site gets an automatic no. (I might
consider an exception if they had an office within bicycling distance of my
house, but that's fairly unlikely.)

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gioele
For the non-US, could somebody please explain what W2 and 1099 are?

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Guvante
W2 means an employee, from a wage standpoint it means your employer must pay
for half your social security and medicaid.

1099 means a contractor, which means you are responsible for those.

There are many other differences, but usually when talking about wage the 7.5%
is the big one.

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odev
$100/h is my highest rate, but frankly plan to increase it to at least $150,
which I still don't have an idea of how to do :)

jus wondering: anyone followed
[http://doubleyourfreelancing.com/](http://doubleyourfreelancing.com/) rules
and succeeded?

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hellbanner
<1099, not w2>Yes. It's just a number. Double it. Do the same with your hourly
estimates. I quit my job making ~27 to doing contracting at 40. Then 60, 75,
80 now 85-100 across projects. (3 years rails, 6 years other stuff, USA)

The real kicker is the former company billed me out at $150+ when I had even
less experience!

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lewisvance
Do you have a few minutes to chat about your experience? I'm looking to make a
similar move and I'd love to hear about what worked and didn't work for you.
My contact info is in my profile (I didn't see any in yours). Thanks.

~~~
hellbanner
I emailed you.

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addict3d
$8.50/hr

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rjbwork
Why are you accepting such paltry wages? There must be something exceptional
about your situation.

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_random_
I wanted to say he could be from any country, but actually this shouldn't be a
reason to pay less.

~~~
lmz
It could be, depending on where the clients are. Maybe that's good money where
he is, and the clients are local?

