[venus]

> Many contracting firms are taking anywhere from 50-75%

The only firms I know of taking that kind of cut target governments, which carries a lot of risk and is very high-touch. They need a fancy office and a lot of overhead just to stay in the game. Perverse, I know, but the way things are.

The firms in question then charge very high rates to cover all this, and keep a large percentage of it, as you say. The contractors who actually do the work end up seeing about as much as they'd see in private practise (~$800-1000/day from a chargeout of maybe 1800-2200)

Source: friends working for this kind of company in Australia.

[mathattack]

The highly branded companies (Accenture, PwC, IBM, etc) do take at least 50-75%. If the owner has a big name or a special in, they can still get 50%. It's a market that's ripe for disruption.

The reason this exists is fear. The project sponsor wants to be able to say, "Well, I hired the best," in case things go south.