[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > someone asked me about contracting rates for my work. > the last time i did contract work was in the go go 90s and things are > different now.
Yes, contract rates have plummeted since the late 90's. They're starting to recover. > can anyone offer any guidelines or websites where i can figure out a > decent hourly rate for my work? An obvious source is to check job postings for comparable skills, conditions, and locations, if you can. realrates.com was mentioned, which I've looked at before, but their data set is rather small and unscientific. For example, search on perl in MA and you get 4 data points, with rates ranging from $50 to $100, and most were reports from 2002, one from 2004, and one dated 12/31/2006. It's a good concept, but the data is inadequate. You might be better off using a site like salary.com just to get a feel for current full time rates for comparable skills, and process that through a formula to arrive at a contract rate. I had a few other sites bookmarked that supposedly had contract rate data, but they all have gone away. If you have any friends that are contract placement recruiters (or can make some new ones), they can be a good source. Though if you plan to work independently, agency rates are often not the most useful data. (What they pay consultants is often below market, and what they get paid (if you can get them to disclose it), due to their customers typically being large organizations, can be above market.) You might want to try posing your question on the bostoncontractors Yahoo! Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bostoncontractors/ But ultimately the best way to arrive at a rate is to make sure your clients know you're willing to negotiate a rate they feel is reasonable, do a little bit of homework to see what the range of possibilities are, start at the high side, and work your way back until you both agree on a rate. A reasonably honest client can also be a good source of market rates if they've been shopping around to hire someone. -Tom -- Tom Metro Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA "Enterprise solutions through open source." Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/ _______________________________________________ Boston-pm mailing list [email protected] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
