[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%?).

[passiveincomelg]

Since I can't edit it, let me try again to make a bullet list (srsly?):

  * 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