[acbellini]

I've been working with Toptal for two years, and it's a fair marketplace. As a developer, you get a completely different service from Toptal than from other freelancing sites: as developers are vetted, so clients are selected to make sure you don't end up working on unsubstantial projects or clients that cannot pay. You don't have to pitch yourself to clients to get a job: when you have the qualifications for a gig, a dedicated recruiter will introduce you to the client, and follow through the interview process. Once you get a job, Toptal guarantees your payments against non-paying clients, on a NET20 term, and takes off of you all the hassle of the extra work you have to face as a freelancer, like contracts, NDAs, invoicing, getting paid.

There is a very well documented screening process, that requires surely a bit of your time to go through, just as any other application to any company you'd like to work with. In my career I've interviewed with several European and U.S. companies, and the more the company is cool, the more they will test you, Toptal does just the same. Three steps out of four of the process are live interviews. I took my testing in August 2013, it took less than a couple of weeks and in total I spent a couple of days' worth of my time. It's definitely been worth it.

The algorithms I got tested on were of the same difficulty of the ones detailed in many books that prepare you for coding interviews, the same ones you'd go through if you were applying for Facebook or Google or other similar companies, nothing out of the ordinary in the tech world.

You can ultimately set your rate as you like, but recruiters will give you advice so that you can be in line with the market: I have about 20 years of professional experience and I live in Italy, my rate takes both those factors in consideration, and I am more than happy about it. If you have very niche skills, and as such ask for a high rate, Toptal will allow it, but then it will be harder for you to get hired. But you're not doing the price war with unqualified developers that ask for $5/hour, that's not how it works! Simply, if you have several patents and say your rate is $100/hour, and you want to apply for a 1 week Wordpress theme gig, it will not work out, but that's just common sense.

After several months of working as a developer, I joined the recruiter team, and I can witness that Toptal developers are all qualified and smart: for as experienced as I may be, I am surely not the one with the most years. I have spoken with Toptalers that worked at Apple and then NEXT in the 80's, researchers that work at CERN, creators of famous frameworks, that's who you are competing with, especially if your rate is above the market average. It's your call in the end.

All in all the experience is very personal, very human, the projects are great and, as long as you work well, are reasonable with your rate and have skills that are in demand, you will hardly be without work.

[viraptor]

> about 20 years of professional experience and I live in Italy, my rate takes both those factors in consideration, and I am more than happy about it

I'm curious, why do you think the place you live should be taken into consideration? I always thought that in case of remote work location/nationality should be irrelevant, or it's just discrimination.

Unless you meant it as: you're in Italy and set the rate for Italian employers?

[acbellini]

I'll be honest: when I joined Toptal, I saw things just as you do. After very little, like as soon as I got my first gig, I understood it's just fair market rules, it's no discrimination at all. I'll try to explain, using this as a reference: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_b...

If you are a developer say in Croatia, where we have a large community, the average wage of your fellow citizens is around €750, or $860

If you make $30/hour and you work full time, your monthly wage is a little over $4.800, five or six times what your neighbour makes. You've got a lot of slack there. If you live in Zurich, with $4.800 you cannot even pay the bills or rental. I'm not even mentioning what it takes to live in the Bay Area.

So, a good part of it is just being competitive. Another side of it is that clients know the cost of living where you are, and they will not pay your average iOS developer living in Croatia the same as they would pay her if she lived in San Francisco.

The goal there is to maximise the chances of a developer being hired.

[EugeneOZ]

It just means they pushed their idea to your brains just to make money on you. Rate should not depend on your location, everything else is manipulation to negotiate your rate.

[rushafi]

(Disclaimer: I also work as an engineer at Toptal and I love it) It's true they are making money on me, but I'm making good money as well, so what's the problem? Also for example, if I'm charging the same as someone who is living in the Bay Area, why do you think a US Startup should hire me instead of him? Developers in the US have the advantage of being in the middle of the culture which I don't. So even if I have the same expertise I can offer my service at a lower rate because (1) the "lower" rate is still very good for me, (2) the number of developers in the US won't grow significantly overnight but if the world is considered, the hirable pool becomes much larger.

[EugeneOZ]

1) it's better for them to have more clients and fill their needs by cheaper developers. But you need just 1 client with as high rate as possible - only limitation should be cost of your skills on market, not your nationality.

2) because you're better - the only reason somebody should hire you at all. Not because of colors of your eyes, skin or passport, definitely.

[rushafi]

1) It's not my nationality for what I'm charging less. I'm charging less because my living cost is less than the people in the US. I would've charged the same as US developers if I lived in San Francisco. Why do you think Apple manufactured their products in China instead of US? It's the same reason people outsource software development to other countries. It's a win win situation for both.

2) Consider that, my salary is x in my country and my living cost is y. And one of my colleague who lives in the bay area and works onsite has a salary of 4x with a living cost 4y. Now if I start to charge 4x, my savings would be (4x-y) when at the same time his savings would be 4x-4y. Do you think that's fare? And why on Earth people will hire a remote developer of same quality if he has to pay the same to get a onsite developer in the same time zone?

Footnote: I'm not even nearly sure why you're trying to convince me that they are exploiting me! They takes the hassle to hire great developers and manage great clients with quality jobs and money which I won't be able to do on my own. I'm getting way more than my friends are making in local companies and getting the opportunity to work on great projects. I am not seeing any reason not to be delighted.

[viraptor]

I understand what you're saying, but the question is - have you tried to go for "average for experience" rather than "average for experience, country adjusted" rate? How much time was filled with work / how did it work?

Of course chances to get hired matter, but if there's a chance that you can get 2x rate with half the work (or other more realistic proportions), that's even better! Hell, why not go all the way and get a POBOX / virtual company from the most expensive neighbouring country if that increases your rate?

[acbellini]

Honestly, it never even crossed my mind to lie in a job application. Maybe I'm just not smart enough, or not greedy enough, but it's simply something I wouldn't do.

Ever since I started working, even before joining the core team, I had continuous work, barely two weeks off between two projects as I was moving and I could use a break. For me it worked very well, I stopped worrying about the next client and if they would pay, I stopped waking up at 5 am and coming back home at 8pm for 7 hours of teaching and seven of commuting, I stopped taking crappy projects and started working with Silicon Valley startups, I got rid of onsite meetings and started traveling. I know you may think this is just company talk, but I wouldn't be working for Toptal if I didn't love the way it changed my life!

[mirimir]

With lower overhead, one can ask for less.

[viraptor]

You can, but why? If there are non-Italians on this site, then why not ask for the same (higher) price they do? There's always someone out there who spends less than you daily and can outbid you however low you go.

That's provided you get continuous jobs of course - but you won't know if you do unless you try with the high rate first.

[mirimir]

Finding ones optimum billing rate is nontrivial. It's true that testing the market is far easier for freelances than for employees. But having less overhead still helps. You can quote lower when you're idle, and higher when you're busy. Indeed, you can even take more risk quoting high, because you can better afford to forgo work.

[EugeneOZ]

because demping allows you to find clients faster and without additional conversations - some people feel very scared about money-related conversations. I think this behavior is stupid and destructive for whole market.