> I've had about two years of experience with perl, and one year of
> experience with mod_perl and MySQL.
>
> I've been doing contract programming jobs for people and charged by the
> hour. The rate I currently charge them ($40) was kind of chosen randomly.
> I'd like to find out if this figure is too high/too low. Does anyone here
> have any experiences to share?
Contract programming is entirely different from salaried work.
Assuming you live in the United States and are charging US dollars,
Consider:
Taxes (including an additional self-employment tax).
Insurance (health, general liability, and possibly others)
(Home) Office Expenses -- stuff you use to generate invoices, stuff you
use to do your actual work if done in your home, rent, etc.
Continued education -- consultants are expected to be experts.
Greater risk. You generally will also never work as much as
you'd like to.
Your clients also get to wash their hands of you completely. Your
expenses are a direct tax writeoff, rather than an additional
accounting headache.
After deducting all of the above, a $40/hr rate starts looking more like
an $18/hr rate, and maybe even less. Consultants don't _just_ bill
$100/hr because they're scam artists. :)
You're charging effectively half of what a salaried perl/mysql hacker
costs. Humility is a valuable business trait, but I'm positive you're
worth more than you're charging.
---
Michael Bacarella | 545 Eighth Ave #401
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