[juanpdelat]

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

So, in order to make the same $75k/year the employee makes in the example, the manager would have to hire around 6 employees with the same structure and have at least 6 projects per year.

[jtbigwoo]

Most consulting companies that I've worked with don't have very many non-billable employees. For a company of under 50, you probably only need a handful of sales and support folks. For billable employees, that other 30% is supposed to cover management and business development tasks.

Once a company got the size of needing non-billable managers, I assume that you'd add a fraction of that person's salary to the overhead numbers.

[rm445]

In practice the manager/director is billable at a higher rate and has some hours on every project, if only reviewing the work.

But you're right in the general case, that a company whose income is from billed hours needs to bill enough to cover the whole company.

[driverdan]

Operating a dev company on a 15% margin would be crazy. 30% is more realistic.