[SATLUG] job opportunity in NYC

[Brad Knowles]

On 9/26/07, John Pappas wrote:

>>  That's still really low.
>
>  IIRC that is Pay rate, not Bill rate.  Rarely will a
>  contract/consulting company tell you the Bill rate.  Depending on
>  duration and niche of the skillset, the delta from total burden
>  (Pay+FICA+Benefits+Other HR costs) will be always be greater than 40%,
>  and can be over 100% if the skillset is rare or difficult.

The OP said:

|                            the salary is around
| seventies/hr

Which I guess I probably misunderstood, both with regards to the 
nature of the employment and the nature of the employer.  But anyone 
seriously considering this job would obviously want to get 
clarification.

>  Bill rates for senior skillsets are very often 3 digit.  You can
>  assume a burden rate of about 50-60% of that, so a bill of 100/hr will
>  probably pay (W2) about 40-45/hr.  If you choose to take on additional
>  responsibilities (1099) you can probably gross 50-60, but then have to
>  pay for your own bene's, E/O insurance, and any bonding you may need.

I had a base annual salary of about $60k at the time, but then the 
company was working us way overtime -- for several customers, I was 
putting in 18-20 hour days.

Ignoring overtime, if you assume losing 35% due to taxes, working 
twelve months out of the year, four weeks per month, and forty hours 
per week, that works out to about $20.31/hour.  That was my 
after-taxes pay rate.  Before taxes, that would be something like 
$31.25/hour.  If you don't ignore overtime, those rates would be cut 
in half, or more.

Of course, I was only 100% billable for the first three months, when 
I worked at an in-house job (providing on-site systems administration 
support for the combined Collective Technologies/Pencom office in the 
Northern Virginia office).  For the three months following that, I 
was probably less than 50% billable -- but those were the customers 
where, when I was actually working I was frequently working 18-20 
hour days.

>  This side of the industry relies heavily on interpersonal networking
>  and relationships, as a single person's time does not scale beyond 24
>  hours a day, so many either leverage a consulting shop (the former
>  side of the market) or hire other external marketing.

My experience is that most computer-related consulting relies heavily 
on interpersonal networking and relationships.

Pencom was (and still is, I think) a reasonably decent 
contract/consulting shop, at least for the areas they covered 
(primarily programming, but also some sysadmin).  However, they took 
a certain percentage off-the-top of whatever you made (you only got 
paid when you were actually working for a customer), and they had 
people who would do the sales/marketing/job-matching.  This was 
different from their subsidiary Collective Technologies, which 
focussed purely on system administration and where the people 
involved were salaried employees -- we shared the sales team, however.

But there are others that just take a percentage off the top for 
their billing and paperwork handling, and leave the rest to you.  I 
don't know any names of such companies, and I don't know if I'd ever 
choose to use any of them.

>  My side of the market--running consultants--is hard for the same
>  reasons, but with the added difficulty of having to find the proper
>  talent to work the gig.  In my experience, finding the gig is MUCH
>  harder than finding the talent to perform that work.

If I could find such a company in the Austin area, I'd be working for them.


John -- I would like to thank you for all the detailed information 
you've given us, and the confirmation you've been able to give me for 
the research I've done so far regarding setting up my own company.

-- 
Brad Knowles <brad at shub-internet.org>
LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>