[wjg]

Wow. This thread is blowing my mind. I'm a js fullstacker who is moving to Europe within two weeks and and I'm having trouble even getting replies to job postings when I offer a rate of $60/hr (I'm wondering now if that's too "cheap"?)! I feel like I'm missing something big on my resume, my approach, something (if curious, github is on my profile)...

How did you all find your jobs? My blindly applying online doesn't seem to be working out well.

[vemv]

Just keep in mind that European companies don't pay US rates!

London is bit of an exception, but lifestyle there is crazy expensive obviously

If you want a US rate you have to compete globally, which is quite discouraging to me.

So as a freelancer I'm happy to have a theoretically 'low' rate but which in practice lets me live more than well in Spain.

[passiveincomelg]

The rates in London I've seen were pretty much the same as what I make in Berlin (400-500 GBP/day). These are from job postings by contracting agencies like Computer Futures. The only exception seems to be finance. Which, I think, requires domain knowledge.

[vemv]

First time I heard of such rates in Berlin!

I guess they pay that in order to compete with London?

Else they don't seem to correspond with Germany's market and cost-of-living...

[passiveincomelg]

Where have you been looking? Examples of companies hiring freelancers at those rates are T-Labs, ImmobilienScout, eBay and HERE. Berlin is actually lower than other regions that have higher cost of living (Frankfurt, Stuttgart, München) so it's not about competing with London.

Check out http://gulp.de/. They have a regular survey among their users with a good breakdown by location, experience and the type of work the freelancers do. You can also browse profiles there or project listings on http://etengo.de.

[vemv]

Great to hear!

Answering your question, I've not been looking anywhere - just what I read or could infer.

500 euros/day/head sounds beyond wasteful to me, at least when not in SF/London.

I can only imagine there's got to be an awful ASAP culture in those environments...

[passiveincomelg]

Not really. These are big companies, not hysteric startups where everyone works 12 hours a day, deluding themselves that they get more done that way (dunno how common that is with Berlin startups TBH).

Personally I am much less stressed out doing corporate contracting than I was with the shitty freelance work I did before, subcontracting with web agencies that haggle about every hour.

This is how my rate developed over the years:

* 50 DM/h working for a great agency as a student (that was in 2000) * 15 €/h working for an agency as a student (Yep, I was dense enough to take a paycut. Didn't even occur to me to ask for at least 25. So much facepalming...) * 30 €/h working for the same agency when I decided to do freelancing full-time * 30 €/h, then 40 €/h working for a small software company (First time I got to 40 hours a week of billable time. I was swimming in money! ;) * 45 €/h working for another agency (iOS development) * 50 €/h first contracting gig at $BIGCORP (160 hours a month - 8000€) * 65 €/h second contracting gig at $BIGCORP2 (which is where I still am, 160+ hours a month - > 10k) * 65 €/h working for a friend with a product idea (only a few hours, far from full-time) * a few fixed-price projects in between, most of them were a desaster, one was decent

Regarding "wasteful"; It's supply and demand. For some reason the capitalism game works much better in contracting than with permanent jobs in Germany. I think part of it is that employees are so hard to get rid of and the overhead is high (~40%?).

[nicolas_t]

Having a rate that's too cheap definitely doesn't help... After that, it's really networking. I found the first few freelance jobs through people I met at meetups and through the blog I had. From then on, it's mostly been recommendations from people who worked with me before.

[wjg]

Ha, cool. I am actually in the process of writing up a blogpost on building an SPA w/ React/Redux/Node/Postgres/GraphQL front-to-back in hopes of getting some traction. :)

The networking makes sense, I don't have a big one and not a lot of remote stuff within it. I'll have to begin to remedy that. Thanks for the advice.

[nicolas_t]

You're off to a good start with Flytrap. It looks interesting. You should show it here with a Show HN post. Also add somewhere in the doc or readme file that you're available for consulting engagements.

The best clients are the ones who contact you directly so reminding people you're available in your projects is important.

[wjg]

Thanks man, really appreciate your thoughts. I've put it on a Show HN before, but as it's tough to get off the New page, got discouraged and kinda gave up on getting it traction. :)

I'll do another ShowHN and the like, and make it clear I'm available for work on the readmes, etc.

[BlackjackCF]

I think it's probably building up a network and just having loads of experience? From what I've seen, most folks in the community kind of get lucky with their first job, build a network, and then just find jobs through their network after their first few years.

[ThrowCatchElse]

Yep, I got all my (good) jobs through peers I interacted with in an open-source community.

"Cold calling" a company by sending in my resume never worked for me.