I do federal contracting for a parent company and I get billed out around $320-350/hr as far as I can tell. I, of course, only see a fraction of that though =P
As a management consultant, I was billed out at about $875/hr. My salary was about $50/hr. That's a ratio of about 18:1. This felt fair to me. The billing had to cover a lot more than my salary.
Adding this for data. I charge $500 an hour for contracting. It's gotta be at least that as it's costing time I would otherwise spend with my family. Family time / time away from my core job is incredibly valuable.
I’m at a small software company that does lots of smallish (500k-1.5M) contracts like this. The government does audits to determine our overhead rate. Our is 2.8. That is my billing rate to the government is 2.8 times my hourly rate as determined by my salary. That pays for rent, benefits, and for things like the employees who aren’t on direct labor (e.g. accounting, HR, etc)
Being a contractor would require me to spend about $10,000 more for health insurance above what my workplace premiums are. US, obvi.
When I was a contractor fifteen years ago, I billed at $1,000 a day ($125/hr) in the US, not remote. Seems like wage stagnation has hit the software market as well.
Really enjoyed the story. I love seeing the personal histories of people in my profession.
Interesting. When I was younger (just starting out) I didn't have much idea of how much markup others had when I was working for them (as employee or contractor). I typically thought it might be 20-25% markup. And... in some cases I know it's that, but that has tended to be the low end. It's usually more like minimum 50% markup; if you're getting $50/hr from an agency, they're charging at least $75/hr, probably more. If you're getting $60/hr, they're probably charging at least $90/hr, and so on.
I haven't seen this at all, I'm currently contracting and I see rates anywhere from 63.50 per hour to 80+. Depending on the locale and whether we're talking FAANG or not those are pretty good rates. (130-150+ respectively)
Doesn't seem that far off what I've seen. Example would be $130/hr billed, $80/hr paid to a contractor or $50/hr paid to a FT employee. We don't have any "self-employment tax" though (beyond standard income tax).
Juniors on the other hand get pretty exploited in the name of "earning their stripes" - I've seen a few accounts over the years of billing at $80-150/hr and the employees getting $15-25/hr..
I think the local average for recruiters and agencies (usually one and the same here) is 15% of first-year wage for FT placements, or $30/hr margin for contract work.
For a couple of longer term customers I charge $145/hr.
I'm working a full time gig now and haven't taken on any additional work in ages, but depending on contract length I would start at $170 and up.
As I've seen posted here and elsewhere if you're experienced and charge less than yearly salary/2080 * 3 you are giving money back.
(My wife worked as a buyer at one of the national labs and had to purchase contractors, should used to have to tell them what to ask for because more often than not it would be too low for her to quote them out.)
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