Post: #176

(09-22-2014 11:08 PM)allthethings Wrote:  These are all direct clients that I met either from networking events or from referrals from friends / old colleagues. My shortest contract was 3 months and the longest 10.

A few years ago I did remote consulting but back then I was only making $560 a day. I'd like to do remote consulting again but I'm concerned that I wouldn't be able to make as much as if I were in the client's office on a regular basis. The question I need to ask myself is: Am I willing to take a paycut so I have the flexibility to game in target rich environments (which SF is not)?

Question for you: to what extent do you think your ability to pull $1000 a day contracts is related to networking skills and putting yourself out there versus your technical abilities and track record? Now, I know that this isn't entirely a fair question since your track record most likely is what gave you many of these contacts, but I think you know the gist of what I'm trying to ask.

Also, what is it (in a general sense) that sets you apart from the pack? I'm working in the PMO of a giant (500 + people) IT project right now and for damn sure nobody here is making close to $1000 a day, not even the business sponsors and IT Director responsible for the whole effort. Is it that you have a niche skill, a rarely seen combination of skills and experiences, or "who you know?"

Post: #177

(09-22-2014 11:08 PM)allthethings Wrote:  

(09-22-2014 05:33 AM)bad guy Wrote:  I used to make $1200-1500 per day in SF. My contracts last as short as 3 months but usually go over a year. Are these direct clients or do you subcontract (work with agencies)?

hey bad buy,

These are all direct clients that I met either from networking events or from referrals from friends / old colleagues. My shortest contract was 3 months and the longest 10.

A few years ago I did remote consulting but back then I was only making $560 a day. I'd like to do remote consulting again but I'm concerned that I wouldn't be able to make as much as if I were in the client's office on a regular basis. The question I need to ask myself is: Am I willing to take a paycut so I have the flexibility to game in target rich environments (which SF is not)?

I'm going to hit you up with a PM.

Are you actually charging a per diem, where you work a 9 or 10 hour workday? Or do you work per hour and just state how much you make per day on average? I ask as I charge per hour only.

One of the contracts I was making over $135 an hour. It was 99% remote where I would go into the clients office once every 1-3 months or so. Doing it this way can eliminate the competition, ie: the fully remote guys from India, etc. The onsite meetings usually only lasted an hour or so.

While this type of consulting is not totally rare, you'd have to work on it, even develop & train the client so they're fine with you working remotely.

My challenge right now is finding new direct clients in a city where I'm new to, as I'm not in SF anymore. There's a lot more competition. Seems like there are more agencies/staffing firms who are pretty good at networking & developing their clients. I find it almost impossible to land a big name client with all the agencies & staffing firms dog-piling to get in. The sales people at these agencies do have many years of building relationships with the hiring managers at these companies, so they end up being the hiring managers' go-to person when looking for someone. I guess I'll just have to step up my own networking efforts.

I could work with these agencies and staffing firms on a sub-contract but they take a big chunk - so the pay ends up around $50-75 per hour instead of $135.

Post: #178

(09-23-2014 11:19 AM)rekruler Wrote:  

(09-22-2014 11:08 PM)allthethings Wrote:  These are all direct clients that I met either from networking events or from referrals from friends / old colleagues. My shortest contract was 3 months and the longest 10.

A few years ago I did remote consulting but back then I was only making $560 a day. I'd like to do remote consulting again but I'm concerned that I wouldn't be able to make as much as if I were in the client's office on a regular basis. The question I need to ask myself is: Am I willing to take a paycut so I have the flexibility to game in target rich environments (which SF is not)?

Question for you: to what extent do you think your ability to pull $1000 a day contracts is related to networking skills and putting yourself out there versus your technical abilities and track record? Now, I know that this isn't entirely a fair question since your track record most likely is what gave you many of these contacts, but I think you know the gist of what I'm trying to ask.

Also, what is it (in a general sense) that sets you apart from the pack? I'm working in the PMO of a giant (500 + people) IT project right now and for damn sure nobody here is making close to $1000 a day, not even the business sponsors and IT Director responsible for the whole effort. Is it that you have a niche skill, a rarely seen combination of skills and experiences, or "who you know?"

If I may answer your question..when landing a direct client, in my experience, it's 90% networking skills (charm, hustle, etc). My track record did not matter as much: I did not have to provide my resume, no one asked me technical interview questions. I find this is the case when dealing with the president, CEO or executive level people. They're not technical but they usually make the decisions.

As for pay, if I may ask, as all the people internal (in-house)? And how do you know what everyone's pay is? In a large project like that, there's almost always a consulting firm or staffing agency that has placed all those project resources (people). They bill the client company $150-300 per hour while paying the consultants $50-100 (or perhaps more) per hour. In-house people (employees) are not making this.

Post: #179

(09-23-2014 07:43 PM)bad guy Wrote:  

(09-23-2014 11:19 AM)rekruler Wrote:  

(09-22-2014 11:08 PM)allthethings Wrote:  These are all direct clients that I met either from networking events or from referrals from friends / old colleagues. My shortest contract was 3 months and the longest 10.

A few years ago I did remote consulting but back then I was only making $560 a day. I'd like to do remote consulting again but I'm concerned that I wouldn't be able to make as much as if I were in the client's office on a regular basis. The question I need to ask myself is: Am I willing to take a paycut so I have the flexibility to game in target rich environments (which SF is not)?

Question for you: to what extent do you think your ability to pull $1000 a day contracts is related to networking skills and putting yourself out there versus your technical abilities and track record? Now, I know that this isn't entirely a fair question since your track record most likely is what gave you many of these contacts, but I think you know the gist of what I'm trying to ask.

Also, what is it (in a general sense) that sets you apart from the pack? I'm working in the PMO of a giant (500 + people) IT project right now and for damn sure nobody here is making close to $1000 a day, not even the business sponsors and IT Director responsible for the whole effort. Is it that you have a niche skill, a rarely seen combination of skills and experiences, or "who you know?"

If I may answer your question..when landing a direct client, in my experience, it's 90% networking skills (charm, hustle, etc). My track record did not matter as much: I did not have to provide my resume, no one asked me technical interview questions. I find this is the case when dealing with the president, CEO or executive level people. They're not technical but they usually make the decisions.

As for pay, if I may ask, as all the people internal (in-house)? And how do you know what everyone's pay is? In a large project like that, there's almost always a consulting firm or staffing agency that has placed all those project resources (people). They bill the client company $150-300 per hour while paying the consultants $50-100 (or perhaps more) per hour. In-house people (employees) are not making this.

That's kind of what I figured, re the networking vs expertise as the primary determinant of success.. In that sense, allthethings' ability to pull such outrageous daily rates is agnostic of him being in the IT industry. If you're a great salesman you will make mad $$$ irrespective of industry, so it's not really useful to say "look, I'm in IT and I make $1000 a day you can too." He's basically analogous to a superstar lawyer: some famous litigators make millions a year but you are far more likely to end up working $20/hr temp jobs going into law than becoming a millionaire.

To answer your question, I work for a consulting company that's a major partner in this particular engagement. Working in the PMO, I was able to see all the bill rates of contractor resources. The highest bill rate I saw was around $250 per hour and that was for the lead architect of the entire effort. That's how much my company is billing for him, not his take home pay, not by a long shot. This guy was a "senior manager" on the corporate hierarchy tree of our company and as such pulled well under $200k a year. The people on the client side make even less. If you extrapolate $1000 a day over a year, you're talking over $300k.

Post: #180

(09-23-2014 09:53 PM)rekruler Wrote:  He's basically analogous to a superstar lawyer: some famous litigators make millions a year but you are far more likely to end up working $20/hr temp jobs going into law than becoming a millionaire.

To answer your question, I work for a consulting company that's a major partner in this particular engagement. Working in the PMO, I was able to see all the bill rates of contractor resources. The highest bill rate I saw was around $250 per hour and that was for the lead architect of the entire effort. That's how much my company is billing for him, not his take home pay, not by a long shot. This guy was a "senior manager" on the corporate hierarchy tree of our company and as such pulled well under $200k a year. The people on the client side make even less. If you extrapolate $1000 a day over a year, you're talking over $300k.

RE: the lawyer comment - oh, I could go on...too true!

As to your numbers, a $250 bill rate is pretty high for the professional services I've seen, but it's possible for a senior person. FTEs (full time equivalent - a person filling a contract billet) are calculated on billable hours, the exact number varies with each agency. The number I've seen used is 2080 billable hours in a year (minus weekends, holidays, etc.) Using that metric that guy was costing over half a million, at $520k (annualized). Again, that number can vary - I've seen it down to 1840 hours or less - depends on the company.

Even using the lower number of hours that's still $460k cost per year. If he's pulling well under $200k for a salary he's getting fleeced - my bill rate was a lot less than $250/hour last year and I was probably right where he was, salary wise. This is why a lot of big consulting companies will fire a manager who lets the FTEs know what their bill rates are - so be careful who you tell that to!

Of course he probably didn't bill all those hours, but it's still hard to imagine anyone pulling much more than that per hour - must be good.

Post: #181

(09-23-2014 09:53 PM)rekruler Wrote:  

(09-23-2014 07:43 PM)bad guy Wrote:  

(09-23-2014 11:19 AM)rekruler Wrote:  

(09-22-2014 11:08 PM)allthethings Wrote:  These are all direct clients that I met either from networking events or from referrals from friends / old colleagues. My shortest contract was 3 months and the longest 10.

A few years ago I did remote consulting but back then I was only making $560 a day. I'd like to do remote consulting again but I'm concerned that I wouldn't be able to make as much as if I were in the client's office on a regular basis. The question I need to ask myself is: Am I willing to take a paycut so I have the flexibility to game in target rich environments (which SF is not)?

Question for you: to what extent do you think your ability to pull $1000 a day contracts is related to networking skills and putting yourself out there versus your technical abilities and track record? Now, I know that this isn't entirely a fair question since your track record most likely is what gave you many of these contacts, but I think you know the gist of what I'm trying to ask.

Also, what is it (in a general sense) that sets you apart from the pack? I'm working in the PMO of a giant (500 + people) IT project right now and for damn sure nobody here is making close to $1000 a day, not even the business sponsors and IT Director responsible for the whole effort. Is it that you have a niche skill, a rarely seen combination of skills and experiences, or "who you know?"

If I may answer your question..when landing a direct client, in my experience, it's 90% networking skills (charm, hustle, etc). My track record did not matter as much: I did not have to provide my resume, no one asked me technical interview questions. I find this is the case when dealing with the president, CEO or executive level people. They're not technical but they usually make the decisions.

As for pay, if I may ask, as all the people internal (in-house)? And how do you know what everyone's pay is? In a large project like that, there's almost always a consulting firm or staffing agency that has placed all those project resources (people). They bill the client company $150-300 per hour while paying the consultants $50-100 (or perhaps more) per hour. In-house people (employees) are not making this.

That's kind of what I figured, re the networking vs expertise as the primary determinant of success.. In that sense, allthethings' ability to pull such outrageous daily rates is agnostic of him being in the IT industry. If you're a great salesman you will make mad $$$ irrespective of industry, so it's not really useful to say "look, I'm in IT and I make $1000 a day you can too." He's basically analogous to a superstar lawyer: some famous litigators make millions a year but you are far more likely to end up working $20/hr temp jobs going into law than becoming a millionaire.

To answer your question, I work for a consulting company that's a major partner in this particular engagement. Working in the PMO, I was able to see all the bill rates of contractor resources. The highest bill rate I saw was around $250 per hour and that was for the lead architect of the entire effort. That's how much my company is billing for him, not his take home pay, not by a long shot. This guy was a "senior manager" on the corporate hierarchy tree of our company and as such pulled well under $200k a year. The people on the client side make even less. If you extrapolate $1000 a day over a year, you're talking over $300k.

Being in the upper echelons of one's profession is a key factor, as you point out. I mostly hear the term 'A-Player' used in IT, superstar not so much. However, there is some truth to making bank 'in IT'. The key differentiation is that it's mostly in enterprise software and tech startups, not hardware, not networking. So if the work involves acronyms like ERP, CRM, SAP, SOA, EAI, ETL - there's a good chance the pay is good. So too if you have certifications from SAP, Oracle, Salesforce, JD Edwards, Biztalk, Sharepoint...

An example is Healthcare.gov (obabacare). It's an enterprise project that came up to over $1 billion total cost to build. From what I read, the company that won the project was not chosen because they were superstars or the best in the industry, but from crony connections of Michele Obama. They ultimately needed the real experts to help them out of the hole they dug themselves into.

Also as the saying goes 'a rising tide lifts all boats' - so if everyone is charging $150-300 per hour, one can charge a lower rate to be more competitive to close the deal. However, there are some requirements to be able to do deals at the enterprise level, such as being CMM certified, having insurance, 24/7 support, legal, billing, etc.

The downside is the work is mostly onsite unless you can work out a remote working situation. Target small to medium businesses that make at least several million a year in revenues, meet & network in person, close the deal with an onsite meeting, but arrange a remote work setup where you come onsite once in a while.

An easy calculation I do to get the annual from an hourly rate is to simply double it: $100 per hour is $200k per year. I simply go by an 8 hour workday, a 5 day workweek and a 50 workweek year (8x5x50=2000 > 100x2000=200,000.

So if that guy making $1000 per day was working 8 hours per day, that's $125 per hour or $250k per year.

Post: #182

Obamacare is a feast for coders - soooo much work to be done on that turd; to think they tried to get the site up and running with as many dependencies as they had in less than six months - I don't care who they hired, that time line was just flat out impossible (and they knew it when he pitched the plan - a political calculation to lie about it up front then explain later).

The unfortunate part is yes, most of that Obamacare work will, in all likelihood, need to be done on-site in some shitty government office someplace.

Post: #183

A couple of people asked a few different things, so I’ll just ramble out a response…

To be successful as a consultant you’ve got to have technical and sales ability. Sales ability to land an interview and technical ability to successfully complete the project and better your reputation. I’m able to charge these rates because I’ve focused on infrastructure engineering (systems administration + programming) for small to mid size tech companies for a number of years. There’s more demand than supply and that helps push up rates. Consultants make more than Full Time Employees but have no job security, have to pay for their own benefits, and have to relentlessly sell themselves to find the next job. For some projects, the company needs to bring in an outside consultant who has specific expertise. I’ve specialized in AWS for the past few years and that’s a skill set that’s hard to come by. Hence the rationalization of paying high bill rates.

Some consultants don’t like sales, but I rather enjoy it. I’m an introverted and analytical nerd at heart. Sales, like game, forces me to grow. When I’m in sales mode I’m more extroverted and talkative. I’m focused on the client and not myself. When I’m in sales mode, I generally get laid more easily too.

I bill daily ($hourly rate * 8 hours / day). In an average year I’ll pull around $130k (+- 30k) gross and I generally work 4-6 months out of the year. With the rest of my free time I travel and fuck around in SF and Berkeley. I absolutely LOVE Fucking around in Berkeley…if you get my drift.

If you’re trying to network and find new clients without going through agencies so you can keep 100% of the revenue, perhaps you could consider finding the right people on LinkedIn to reach out to. If you know you want to email the VP of Engineering & the CTO at a company, look them up on LinkedIn and then send an email by guessing their email address: [email protected] generally works well for early stage tech companies. Also try [email protected] Sending a message through LinkedIn itself doesn’t always work.

bad guy:
Where did you generally meet C level execs & VP’s?

Post: #184

Hi

I'm almost done with my training book regarding Python and now I want to practice. I'm just struggeling with what could I programm? I know it sounds a little fishy but everything I could need there exists already a solution. For example.. a FTP program. Yesterday I wrote my one script that downloads my files from the server for backup reasons. Just wanted to ask what you guys (especially frenchcorporation) programmed at the beginning? Thanks!

Edit: Or should I directly stick over to Django and start learning the basics of that?

Post: #185

If you look hard enough you'll be able to find something to program that's of value to you. For example, I use wave accounting to aggregate my financial accounts and categorize expenses. Every time I login, if I want to get the latest data I have to click on 'update account' to 5 or 6 different accounts. I recently wrote a python program that automates that and I've set it up on a server to run once a day. That way, when I login, all of my accounts are already up to date.

That's just an example...but for practice try to think of small things in your life you can automate with code.

Post: #186

I just got started with the "Learn Python the Hardway" by Zed S. I recommend it since was easy to follow. I tried the other tutorials but I couldn't even figure out how to get python up and running. I think their is a pdf on the piratebay.

Post: #187

I highly recommend Udemy.com if you have absolutely no experience. https://www.udemy.com/courses/search/?q=python.

You can probably get a 75% coupon or better if you search for it or sign up for Udemy and wait a couple days. Having something explained to you in a video that you can fast pause and rewind is priceless. For stuff you really don't understand, search or post on StackOverflow.com.

Post: #188

I just want to add this:

If you just want to take a brief look at this language and don't want to install something at you computer (e.g. IDE + Python) than you will find many resources on the internet which allow you to code directly in the browser.

Try it out: http://www.codecademy.com/tracks/python

just my 2 cents here.

Post: #189

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Any experienced hackers here based in Asia?

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Post: #190

3 days into the new job, and its going well. combined with this job and the remote work im doing, since I started the new job I've made £855. not bad at all

Post: #191

Awesome French! good news for you and this thread is a hot topic thanks to you, you really inspired people here.

Post: #192

Soon front end developer here, stay grindin.

Post: #193

Man I love you guys, this site is like a fuckin gold mine

Post: #194

Good times. I was offered a web developer position this morning. 40k € / year + possible bonuses(few grand). Although i have few years of experience, i am just now graduating with BS.

Post: #195

Good day gents,

Been looking through Elance & Freelancer to see what python jobs I can get part time since I'm still in uni, and most jobs require more than python to do them? Now I'm confused about what I should spend time learning?

Also which version on python do you gents suggest I learn, or does it not matter?

Post: #196

Just to add, is it worth it starting of with Django 1.5, or should I just jump to Django 1.7?

Post: #197

(12-10-2014 02:30 AM)Kaebs Wrote:  Good day gents,

Been looking through Elance & Freelancer to see what python jobs I can get part time since I'm still in uni, and most jobs require more than python to do them? Now I'm confused about what I should spend time learning?

Also which version on python do you gents suggest I learn, or does it not matter?

(12-10-2014 08:11 AM)Kaebs Wrote:  Just to add, is it worth it starting of with Django 1.5, or should I just jump to Django 1.7?

You'll need to learn a python framework, the framework you pick will depend on the work you want to do

pick python 2.7, or python 3.whatever, it doesmt matter much, there are only a couple of differences that you will encounter as you're starting out

and pick django 1.7, the major difference between 1.7 and previous versions is how database migrations are handled, other than that its pretty much the same

Post: #198

You just lost me when you mentioned that is need to learn a python framework?

Post: #199

https://wiki.python.org/moin/WebFrameworks

Django is very popular atleast. If you are heading into web development, I'd suggest that your learn HTML, CSS and Javascript. In addition to those, Twitter Bootstrap for responsive websites and/or possibly one css preprocessor, like SASS.

Post: #200

Another +1 for Team Treehouse.

I've been using it for about 10 days: I'm about halfway through the front-end web development track and I've done a bunch of other courses too. Not every course is amazing, and some of them are pretty dry when they're covering the basics--especially since I have some light programming experience in C++ and Perl so a lot of this stuff isn't new to me--but overall it's the most engaging method I've ever tried for learning about programming and web design.

I haven't paid anything yet since I'm in the 14 day free trial but I'm on the $25/mo plan, and in my opinion that's an absolute steal.

FYI, Team Treehouse has much more ruby/rails content than python or PHP.