When I started looking for another job in my local area about three months ago, I wanted to contract thinking I could make more money. I'm covered for benefits under my wife so I didn't factor that in.
My "minimum salary" was $135K a year. As a W2 contractor (meaning the employment agency pays the employers half of Medicare and Social Security), and considering a 1760 hour work year:
2080 hours a year
-80 hours federal holidays
- 120 hours paid time off
- 120 hours between gigs
1760 hours would be about $77 hour as W2 or around $84 hour Corp to Corp.
Yes companies are paying at least $90-$100 an hour to recruiting firms but once they take their cut, it's hard to net the amount I wanted. If I don't go through a recruiting firm, I'm left hustling for gigs, competing with people who will work for a lot cheaper and I would have a lot more down time.
On the other hand, going through the same recruiters, it was relatively easy to get a full time job with benefits and the hiring company paid the recruiter 20%.
Besides, most companies aren't going to hire someone as a contractor who doesn't check all of the boxes. A company will allow an FTE to learn on the job if they don't meet 109^ of the requirements.
I'll see what things look like in a two or three years and stick my toes back in the water.
I wrote this article after spending a lot of time trying to figure out how I should charge for my services as a freelancer and was unable to find anything else that fit my needs.
I recently made some corrections to my math thanks to a suggestion from a Hackaday user (It's a good thing I'm not a freelance mathematician :P).
If you see any other issues, don't hesitate to let me know :).
Side note: On the off chance you have an IPv6 only address with no IPv4 gateway, my website is not currently IPv6 compatible (Thanks to Hackernews reader Raul for reporting this).
I've raised a request with my host and this will hopefully be fixed by the end of the year.
