No offense, but my lawyer doesn't even charge me $400/hour. Who is paying that much and for what? I've been in the contracting game for almost a decade now and have rarely, if ever, seen anything like that for programming work.
I'm not disparaging, I'm really just curious. Thanks.
There's a cottage industry of firms specializing in conversion rate optimization for X. (My consulting practice was in no small bit doing this for B2B software firms. "Conversion optimization for e-commerce", "conversion optimization for insurance industry", etc etc are also common specialties.)
If you were hypothetically a client desiring top-tier talent, and you asked what $400 an hour would buy you, I'd say "One journeyman at a boutique firm... if you can find anybody with availability at that price." I was priced rather north of that for some of my consulting career. There were likely folks priced at a substantial premium to me.
There are substantial programming/design skills implicated in this, obviously. (At some firms there is specialization of labor but at boutique firms typically all consultants do everything required to ship.)
Edit to add: You asked who is buying this sort of thing. In my case, largely B2B software companies with revenues in the $10 to $X0 million range. In broader terms, almost every company which either does direct transactions or collects leads with value over $1 million per year should probably be buying this sort of consulting, and many of them do. What's your guesstimate on how many insurance companies there are which sell direct-to-consumer products in the US, for example? All of them are potential customers are this.
(a) Your lawyer makes you less money than a lot of software developers make for a lot for a lot of companies. Your lawyer is also considerably less scarce than a lot of software subspecialty practitioners are.
(b) Your lawyer is also cheap. Sell a company and see what they charge.
(c) I'm not saying it's wrong not to be charging $400/hr; I'm saying, if you want a representative sample of the spectrum of hourly rates consultant, $150 is much too low. There are technical subspecialties --- not business or vertical-focused --- that routinely beat $150.
Any tips on finding/learning a highly profitable subspecialty? I've changed niches and increased my rates before, but I don't even know how to begin getting to $400.
Ideally you would want to be in a niche that will directly influence revenue, makes it easier to sell your service for a high price.
patio11's post in this thread is a good example (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5769870), increasing conversion rates for X will directly effect the bottom line by Y. As long as the price you charge is lower than Y, you should be able to sell it.
Other than that, specialized knowledge is always handy of course. I know of consultants doing compliance/IT systems for banks, highly profitable since the banks only change IT systems every 10 years or so and therefore it makes no sense to keep the cutting edge expertise in house but there are enough banks so they always have work.
It does vary depending on where you live though, I don't know of many charging $400/hr (or equivalent) in Sweden. Same rings true for the limited experience I have in The Netherlands.
Edit: Edited for clarity.
Edit2: Looking at your HN profile: why not consulting in Big data or such? Big data is all the rage at the moment and it is a new niche that everyone wants in on.
Thanks for the advice. I do work in Big Data (and have consulted) but perhaps I need to specialize further?
This post brings up 2 ideas:
1. Look into marketing or other areas where applied Machine Learning would make a direct impact to the bottom line. I'm guessing it's a lot easier to charge more if your value proposition is "increase sales/revenue by $X" vs. "increase the lift of this random model by Y%".
2.It might be worth looking into banks/hedge funds. They presumably are much more willing to throw large amounts of money at the right problems.
I think both seem like very valid ideas, though I have little knowledge regarding Big Data so I cannot tell you for sure.
It is still up and coming so I think there are large opportunities for those with enough knowledge how to handle Big Data. If you can visualize the data in a clear and coherent manner you should be able to make some big money :)
I'm asking WHAT specialties are charging this rate in the technical fields, because I haven't seen them, so I'm curious.
Admittedly, my lawyer is general practice, so, yes, what they charge is based on that. But, still, $400/hr for a long term contract for a programmer/developer is very high for the majority of the US market from what I have seen unless you are working on Wall St. as a specialized Quant or something.
Add to "expert developers with domain expertise in finance" also "cryptographic security specialists", "hardware reverse engineers", and "high-end SEO". There, you have 4 subspecialties of software development. Can we agree that the poll tops out too low now? :)
Ok, that kind of specialization may make some sense then for that rate. I was just inquiring because I had never seen a rate like that on a long-term contract before. I've personally run the typical gamut of development and project management contracts charging anywhere between $100/hr and $220/hr, but nothing heavily specialized (yet, anyway).
There may be some communication issues here. Do companies even contract the services of reverse engineers for very long periods? I wonder if perhaps they are on some kind of agreement where they do an hour or three a week, or don't work regularly but are "on call"?
Reverse engineers, no. High-end software security? Yes. But high-end/hardware reverse engineers can keep themselves utilized year round, too, just at multiple clients.
Since you are on a related field. How much do you think we must charge for specialization in reverse engineering, application virtualization, and windows drivers?
In my experience, dealing with US companies from abroad, it is difficult to sell at very high prices. It happens but my company cannot loose prospective customers if the price is lower but convenient.
Absolutely no less than $1600/day. If you're doing reversing work or special-case driver stuff (can't speak to virtualization, but I'd assume similar), at least $2000/day. This sort of work is very niche, which means that if you're established, you can bill quite high up.
I'm pretty sure if you just ask anyone who has ever contributed a driver to the Linux kernel you can find someone who is willing to do "revesing work or special-case driver stuff" for WAY less than $2000/day.
HNOfficeHours
Designed to allow people to offer advice/expertise, or seek people offering advice for a given problem/specialty. Includes scheduling and search. Fun weekend hack from 2.5 years ago. Now deprecated in favor of better alternatives.
> No offense, but my lawyer doesn't even charge me $400/hour.
Just as with developers, if you're getting $400/hour you're not an ordinary lawyer working with ordinary people. You can get that if you've experience and knowledge in a particular domain.
It wouldn't be for programming work qua programming work. It'll be soft skills, specialist services and consulting related to that work.
Eg, penetration testing. Software project management advice. Audits of IT processes. Requirements gathering workshops. Etc etc.
Also, $400/hr would be high for a general suburban lawyer / solicitor. It's low to mid for a specialist. And suspiciously cheap for a barrister / trial lawyer (multiply by ten).
4000 $/hour for a trial lawyer ? I hope I never get arrested for anything in the US, my lawyer would cost me more in 2 days than what I make in a year (after taxes).
I understand better why people settle all the time - who can afford to defend himself unless he is risking lifetime in jail ?
Have you ever hired, worked with, met, talked to or at least seen the bill from a top corporate attorney? They're expensive for sure, but not that expensive. Much of the cost of those cases comes from the army of junior associates reading through thousands of pages of evidence, etc.
Didn't mean to be flippant as I'm not an expert either, but through the course of my career I've spoken to a ton of attorneys including a few who routinely represent companies all of us know well. The top corporate litigators I've met charge in the $1000/hr range, but not much more than that. Their rates tend to be somewhat negotiable as well depending on the task.
You can settle criminal charges in most countries. In Canada specifically, it's Section 11 of the Criminal Code that allows this. I know there's a similar section in US Code, but I can't remember. Any lawyer wish to do my homework for me? :)
Were you paying attention to the Aaron Swartz mess?
Typical numbers if you're charged with a federal felony are that the statutory limit might be 50 years, if it goes to court and you lose it might be 5-7 years, if you declare guilty it might be 6 months, and the cost of defending (which could wind up with 0 or 5-7 years) is about 1.5 million.
Even if you're in the right, the cost of fighting frequently exceeds what you're capable of, and the risk of fighting may as well. Thus plenty of innocent people are likely to settle.
(Kafka would be proud. But that is reality today in "the land of the free".)
That innocent people currently find it relieving that they are able to settle (and to be clear, they currently do) is a symptom of an unhealthy justice system.
In a just system, the innocent are not afraid to stand up for themselves. With the system we currently have this is not so.
having no faith in the justice system is probably the healthiest mindset. imagine having faith in LLVM to compile your code because you believe that the compiler will do the right thing. the Justice System, much like LLVM, doesn't require faith to run; it requires valid code.
That said, if you're in court, you're pretty much guilty. It doesn't matter that you've done nothing wrong (no "innocent" plea, remember?); you're in their court, and that means someone has charged you and is demanding payment. "Guilty" means "to pay", according to Black's/Bouvier's. that means that Not Guilty is somewhere you don't want to be (committing a commercial dishonor in their court == contempt).
Just pay the fine (you can pay with securities/commercial paper if you don't want to use cash/cheques), and be done with the matter. Once you've settled, file a motion to expunge with a higher court in order to clear your record.
As the guilty, I guess I find being able to settle pretty relieving. :)
while that's true, you notice that there's no "innocent" pleading in any of our courts; only two versions of "guilty". If you're charged in a court, you're either guilty, or guilty with the dishonor of a trial.
While 100% exploitable by criminals, provisions like Section 11 are there to mitigate actual miscarriages of justice while keeping all parties in honor.
Ok, that I might be able to see. I was thinking programming because that is what the poster asked about. I've charged in the $200/hr ballpark for project management work before, but, still, $400/hour seems way high for a long-term contract.
Basically, the path to $400/hr is to just keep upgrading your skills, keep networking and keep walking up your rates. There are businesses who'll pay without blinking.
No, and for a short term (like 2-hour job) is not all that high, not all that unusual. He has about 30 years experience reviewing IP contracts and computer-related contracting agreements. I don't have to explain anything to him about the field.
The op was asking about contracts of 6 months or greater, full-time. $400/hour may be your billing rate but I doubt you'd be billing that to the same customer for 8 hours per day for six months or more. Or am I really wrong about that?
You are absolutely right. I was asking exactly that, because all the previous polls were tailored for non-long-term freelancers/consultants, including what tptacek might thought about.
When this topic comes up on HN, discussion is normally focused on consultancy rates, because consultancy is more compatible with a startup side-project - it's easier to dial up or down the hours you do as a consultant, whereas contractors are locked in to hard agreements about time which makes them much more like salaried employees.
However, I'd like to see more discussion of contracting because it's still a good step away from being an employee. For me, contracting has meant:
1) Doubling of my take-home pay compared to working as an employee
2) I have my own limited-liability company now, through which I am paid. You don't always need this as a contractor, but it's a good way to learn the essentials of setting up a company, paying tax, etc.
3) If you save a good portion of your income within a company, you can fairly easily build up a fund which would enable you to work solidly for 6 months on a startup without external funding (though some paying customers would be good!). I've got about $50,000 saved from a few years of contracting, and that really hasn't been difficult.
Sadly, information about contractor rates is hard to find. In my (albeit limited) experience, the best rates can often be in doing un-sexy "enterprise" stuff, not Rails or Node or anything likely to make the front page on HN. Most PHP devs I know make more money than Ruby devs (the trick is to be a "Drupal" or "Magento" developer rather than a "PHP" developer). This doesn't really match up at all with what gets the most buzz in the startup world.
>(a) This poll tops out way way too low. Put the plus sign on $400.
I actually think the $150 point is a sufficient number standard deviations from the the mean to warrant a cutoff point. Sure some developers are making much more, but not enough to be interesting.
You are wrong, in that HN myopic "what is a typical bill rate" way. I don't find it difficult at all to be blunt and rude in making the point that you're worth more than you think you are. :)
Is this for long term contracts though, eg 3 months guaranteed work so long as you're not completely useless, implied that it could go on indefinitely?
(b) Based purely on statistical intuition a lot of you people are undercharging.
(c) Don't charge hourly.