[jlokier]

Here on HN I've occasionally seen people talk about $150/hr as a "low" contracting rate.

And others talk about how they could not achieve that in their wildest dreams, and consider $80/hr "good".

I was recently contacted about a contract proposal, in the USA, and they were offering $50/hr for some quite advanced cryptography work for a BigCorp end customer. I turned it down but it's good to get an idea of the market rate.

Rate expectation seems to vary a great deal depending on which geography and network-bubble people are in.