what is CoL ?

Everyone I know that does is a C2C contractor, outside of the FAANG companies fwiw. It's possible otherwise but I feel like that's the easiest way/ highest percentage.

Cost of living I think

You know people getting $250+ an hour?

the prince of 2+2

https://haseebq.com/

loool


also, thanks for the input everyone!

I know one dude who was $250/hr and booked 6-12 months out several years ago.

Many who are between 100-150/he.

250/hr is 500k/yr gross

What'd he do? Did you think he was worth it as far as what he could deliver, or was it more about marketing/soft skills?

I made close to $300k with the two jobs there for a year. Main job was about $180k in LA. Good but not breaking the bank. I think the FANG people are the only engineers breaking the bank.

$180k is enough for me to maybe save $1k/month if I'm stingy, which I am the exact opposite of. $300k was like Brewster's millions. I couldn't not save $8k/month. Which is now funding my trip and if I come back in a couple months I'll still have a bunch left over.

Of course if I made $300k every year I'd probably have some ridiculous mortgage and still not be saving. But at least it's not completely pissed away.

He was a database engineer/architect/consultant for a particular database product. He had been a senior engineer at the company building the database, and then left and became a consultant for companies using it.

He had really unique knowledge that was super valuable.

Before he worked at that database company he had been responsible for databases at a bank for a decade.

Another highly paid contractor was really into Puppet and Linux sys admin stuff and he was a one man Ops department. He had worked at a bank for a while responsible for a 10k node system and when he wanted to leave they let him work 100% remote with a light workload for 110/hr for 40 hours, and he would pick up other contracting gigs.

A guy who was dating my friend makes $150/hr at a bank doing react/d3. He just goes from contract to contract like 12 months+ each.

Coming from the business side for this exact type of stuff and similar for 7+ years, companies absolutely love spending money on contractors. I don't really get it, but apparently it's a million times easier at behemoth BigCo to get approval to hire an expensive contractor vs hiring and training new or existing employees or an off the shelf solution. They see it as a panacea to all of their typical software development issues.

It's also roughly a million times easier to sell a service that is directly tied to people billing vs a product that has its own cost.

Software that costs 100k/yr in licensing, good luck buddy.

A contractor for 6 months at $100/hr to take your terrible existing app and add a clunky half baked feature that achieves 20% utility of that comparable software product, where can we sign?

There's a whole layer of medium sized companies that have either IPO'd or are on a good path to IPO/Acquisition where there are a bunch of engineers making 150-250 salary and another 100-200 in stock based compensation. It's really not that rare.

You can get a sense of the number and companies by looking at one of the h1b salary databases that are online. These numbers are just base salary at the application time so don't count any bonuses, equity, or raises.

I'm curious what the license requirements will be for sports betting websites after the SC ruling.

1. Grind yourself a solid profile:
- collect certifications/degrees
- build a resume
- network
2. Try to sell the profile you built: do interviews, contact recruiters, get rejected, persist, jobhop

A ccie cert for example is relatively easy to achieve and pays 100$/h easily in .eu/uk/us. This does take a couple of years though, so you better enjoy what you are doing.

Wasn't really talking about $100/hr contracts.

Are you interested in management roles or just technical?

Either? IDK. I'm 42 can't crank out code forever but have a good 10 years or something. Just would like to keep growing career/$ but don't see an easy way to do either. Anyways I'll stop this derail just was curious if anyone out there personally was pulling the #s I posted earlier and how they got their but no one stepping up

I'd be happy to discuss but only over pm.

I’m not sure what you’re expecting to find to be honest. It’s really easy to see companies and positions paying in the ranges you asked about. The question of how to get those jobs then depends a lot on the specific companies and positions that you’re interested in and qualified for.

100/h is 180k/y

If you have only 10 years of experience at 42, you will probably never be the 300k/y expert.
Most people making more than 250k/y have leadership roles and make money by managing/selling ( rent-seeking ) junior dev services.

There are lots of companies that will be giving in the range of 300k/year in compensation to good engineers or managers with less than 10 years of experience. Many don’t do it with straight salary though and rely on stock based compensation and bonuses on top of a healthy salary.

He means 10 years left to code.

I'm 53. Did I miss something happening to my coding last year?

as someone has done a decent amount of contracting it is emphatically not.

What happened to the other 20k?