[yourapostasy]

In this kind of discussion context, typically the OP's rates are the bill rates to clients (the OP's company). I normally see the smaller agencies clear 40-50% margin, and the big names are clearing 50-80%, so I wouldn't be surprised if those agencies in Ukraine and India were paying their teams in the $60-75 per hour USD range at most, which is considered really good in those parts of the world.

[rakamotog]

Margins are much higher. Large scale IT Services pay around 40$-60$/day for skilled specialists. I briefly worked in a specialised consulting role where the charge to company was $2000 per day and my cost to the company was $55/day.

[ska]

This is why it's not hard to bill $1000-1500/day as a freelancer with the right skills. One of those skills has to be sales, though.

[tootie]

I used to do margin calculations at a mid-size US agency that staffed a lot of roles. In terms of actual project margin, we rarely got past 30% and was usually more like 15-20. The trick is that there is a lot of cost in operating an agency beyond just salary. The cost to the agency of employing a developer (or a designer or a tester or whatever) is more than just what they're paid.

We had a rate card that included both the cost to the agency per hour for a particular role and the agreed rate we had settled with the client. We had a fixed rate for each role/locale even though we paid people different amounts. I knew my own salary and handful for my direct reports and the "cost" side of the rate card was a lot more than I was getting paid. And that cost was the base on which padded to get profit from the client.

And that profit itself wasn't pure profit for the company because a lot of paid for our fixed costs (office space, hardware) and non-billable roles (HR, receptionists). And of course a lot of it ends up in the hands of our holding company and their stock holders.