As someone who's done freelancing previously for years and also has run an agency previously for years, it really depends. I've certainly seen freelancers at double or triple these rates. If you already have clients, are well known, or you're good at selling the value of your time, you can ask for much higher. If you're just getting started or you're going through an agency, these rates seem pretty competitive. Also macro economic factors will change the equation and what you can ask for.
For those just getting started, my piece of advice is to be OK taking a lower rate initially, and just keep pushing it higher until you find resistance. If you're good at what you do, you will quickly find that you will get referrals (make sure to ask!) and can charge a ton more. It's a lot easier as a freelancer/contractor than a salaried employee since the market is much more liquid (you spend less time at one gig) and therefore you can test the waters with a higher rate much more often.
Regardless, what these companies list as what they will pay hourly isn't necessarily what you have to ask for. If you think about it from a negotiation perspective (and you have the ability to sell yourself), these are simply just the lower bound of what you can ask for.
That was my thought too. General rule of thumb for independent contracting is that you should take the annual salary you would normally make and chop off the zeroes to get the hourly rate. So 150K/yr becomes $150/hr. That’s about double the yearly salary and pays for your increased costs (payroll tax, healthcare, retirement, vacation) as well as your bench time between jobs.
Additionally, the going rate for an interim CTO was about $50K/month last time I checked, which doesn’t get you 40 hrs / week, so is north of $600/hr.
Yeah but the details don't matter when you say "full time equivilant". Just health insurance alone will be far far far more than you are allowing. Then there's all the tax implications. Like, if you said 2500x I might consider beleiving you. 3000x I'd probably believe you.
Every contractor already knows all this. And those who don't learn quick.
I'm not clear what you're arguing here.
When I evaluate an hourly rate, I multiply by 2100 and ask myself if this is a reasonable salary & benefits total package.
So if my rate is $125 an hour, that comes to $263k, which is a base salary of around $200k plus healthcare, self-employment taxes and sick/vacation time, etc. Now my healthcare costs might be lower than others and I don't factor in retirement because I work primarily for startups, but again this is why each contractor calculates differently.
I wouldn't multiply it by more hours if it was insufficient, I would just raise my rate.
> My rule of thumb as a contractor is to take the hourly rate x2100 to get an equivalent full-time salary plus benefits, 401k, vacation, etc.
I thought you meant to include everything on top of salary. Reading it again after this thread, maybe you meant to this is the calculation for hourly from full time salary, and then you need to also do ("plus") a calculation for everything else.
The higher rates come through trusted referrals. If you arrive at a company via referral from someone they trust, they will usually pay a lot more than hiring random people who apply.
For those just getting started, my piece of advice is to be OK taking a lower rate initially, and just keep pushing it higher until you find resistance. If you're good at what you do, you will quickly find that you will get referrals (make sure to ask!) and can charge a ton more. It's a lot easier as a freelancer/contractor than a salaried employee since the market is much more liquid (you spend less time at one gig) and therefore you can test the waters with a higher rate much more often.
Regardless, what these companies list as what they will pay hourly isn't necessarily what you have to ask for. If you think about it from a negotiation perspective (and you have the ability to sell yourself), these are simply just the lower bound of what you can ask for.