Is $400/h entirely unreasonable to ask?
Pretty experienced system architect/researcher (hundreds of patents, papers, a book), reasonably well known in the field, after 10 years of working for the same company is now considering to get a contractor job. Trying to figure out what is the highest rate I can ask for, without them thinking that I've lost my mind. The company is not a Big-N, but pretty large US-based corporation.
wow 🍿
what's hourly rate for an experienced lawyer? maybe reference that and go with 80%~100% of that
What is you hourly rate in your current job?
I've seen Short term contractors come in on 1.5x the rate of full timers. These weren't as senior as you though, and not famous obv
I'm currently a full time employee, making about $300TC. I suspect I'm underpaid (for the field I'm working in and what I can bring to the table)
Good lawyers are $450-750 / hr
good lawyers are $1200
Maybe rip-off lawyers 😂
The TC seems reasonable for an industry expert with hundreds of papers and patents. However, a full time employee usually doesn’t get that money in cash and a big portion of it would be equity/stock. Regardless, you should always ask them for an initial number before you say it. Get that number and then work your total compensation out. If you give a high rate they may not walk away, but may offer a shorter contract length.
>full time employee usually doesn’t get that money in cash and a big portion of it would be equity/stock. This is my issue exactly. Basically, the question can be rephrased as - how one translates say $500 full time employee TC into a long-term contractor rate, considering that a big portion of that $500T C is not cash.
No, that is completely fine. If the project is longer than a couple weeks and you are going to work on it on a full-time basis then discount the rate a bit and bill by week instead.
It is actually going to be a long-term contract, pretty close to a full time employment (but without the benefits, of course)
https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/consulting_1
You are out of your mind if you think that companies gonna pay that much in cash for contracting.
Haha. This is what I'm trying to figure out - am I out of my mind :). So let me ask you this - how else would you translate say $500 TC into hourly contractor rate?
The way you are thinking is totally wrong. For contractors the company is going to budget and pay according to the value you will be adding during your contract duration. Your patents or full time tc doesn’t matter. I never heard any Architect getting more than $250/hr. Also they are not going to contract core work to a contractor. They would rather hire a FTE to do important work. So the work you might be doing might not be all that important to charge $400/hr. There are exceptions so you might as well throw your avg expecting number and see what they say
Sounds a little bit high. Average is around $250/hr
My bf previously got $300k/year pre-tax consulting as a senior software engineer. Feel free to do the math and use a similar number
$300/y roughly translates to $200/h. I think I can do better ;)
Ok good luck and have fun
400*2080 = 832k TC annually. Been reading too much blind?
that’s paid by contract/ project. So the reasonable hours expectation is ~1600 hours, if he’s good selling himself. Yes a C level contractor in finance/ accounting field charges a little bit less than that, so I imagine this price is not above the sky. It is sorta within reach. $600/ hr is the typical expert contractor price.
Clueless as to how contract works, zero benefits and a host of other costs excluded. For experienced contracting that rate is totally within range.