[cpncrunch]

Actually, I was just thinking that rates haven't really changed much in the last 20 years. I was earning about 350GBP/day in London, and 300GBP/day in Belfast around 2000, with only a couple of years experience. That was for non-finance work. (Finance work paid 400-500GBP/day).

Now the rates are about the same (maybe 50GBP/day more at most), but the price of housing (both to buy and rent) is 50% to 100% higher than back then.

Still, the UK remains one of the best places in the world to be a contractor. Rates in USA and Canada are a lot lower for contract work, mainly because there isn't as much contact work available.

Your best option is probably to live somewhere cheap on the outskirts of London, contract for a few years, and save as much as you can. (Try not to buy too many expensive toys :)

[mancerayder]

"Still, the UK remains one of the best places in the world to be a contractor. Rates in USA and Canada are a lot lower for contract work, mainly because there isn't as much contact work available."

I don't know what the overall stats are, but it's safe to say that in the Bay Area or NYC you can pretty strong rates, and by pretty strong I say in the ~800/day USD or higher range. That's similar to the 500/day GBP rates I saw in London. But of course these numbers vary highly by industry and speciality. My numbers are DevOps/SA senior roles.

I'm a contractor and not a big fanatic of day rates. Go hourly, if you can, since 40 hour weeks are rare in today's world, so daily rates at places like the large investment banks are 10+ hour days, frequently. I'd ask 100/hr at a bare minimum for a senior role. You might not get a contract as quickly as you'd get a full-time role, but the demand is there.

Back to the point you raised - there are a great many contract roles in the U.S., but it's very hard to go corp to corp with the client. The recruiters / consulting firms love to skim 40-60% overhead, and it's hard to market yourself directly to clients without knowing people.

As another datapoint, I had a buddy in the UK who was contracting and there was this scheme where he was being taxed at some absurd rate in the 25% range due to being paid from a trust. No idea how common or known that is, but in NYC my tax rate's in the 45% range (after expenses).

[smm2000]

100/hr works out to around $200k/year using standard 2087 hours/year for full time work. You can get better or comparable salary as FTE + benefits. It's not much.

[mancerayder]

Well sure, because in salaried jobs no one counts your hours. However, in my experience in both finance and ad tech, you end up working more than 40 hours. My IT buddies making 250k+ work 55-60 hour weeks, easy. It's not much better in the UK, where I have also worked. When you do the math, the contractor is ahead, because that 200k figure you cited is a 40 hour week.

[odonnellryan]

> Still, the UK remains one of the best places in the world to be a contractor. Rates in USA and Canada are a lot lower for contract work, mainly because there isn't as much contact work available.

Contract work in the US seems to be a lot of B2B. But, if you get in that area, you can easily charge $250+/hr for development.

[sofaofthedamned]

Last time I was contracting (around y2k) I was seeing rates as a (then) dev of around £500 a day, but then again y2k itself was a blip. A very lucrative blip :)