In the US at least, as a contractor, you have to make a lot more in gross pay to come out equivalent to what you'd earn at a lower salary somewhere else. You have to cover:

* Health Insurance

* No paid time off: Want 4 weeks off a year? That's a 7.6% reduction in pay.

* You have to pay both the employee & employer side of payroll taxes

* You're not eligible for unemployment, so you need to save more money to cover that possibility

* No retirement fund so you don't get any matching funds and have to really be on top of what your long term needs are and take that off the top of your income.

As an example, I have a normal salary full-time job, but I also have a hobby business on the side. The money I make from that given the tax bracket I'm in, federal, state, payroll taxes, means my "take home" pay from is taxed around 43%. And that's without needing to take anything extra out of it for paid time off, health insurance, or retirement, all of which are well covered by my salaried position.

Any advice on how to get there? I'm a contractor after having worked full time for a few years. Working with a very few long term clients, just me.

Is your daily rate very high, are you delegating work to other people, or what is it?

I'm working in Belgium as well and really wondering what space you were working now because 100K-200K net is way above developer wages here.

Did you have to specialize in some kind of technology or sector? Or is it simply because self-employment means paying less taxes?

In the UK you could make good money but the trick is to be a consultant and bill your employer through your Limited company.

At one place where I worked with a permanent contract, the consultants were billing at 800-1200 gbp per day depending on seniority. There was agency cut of course but overall they made real well. this is when working at the same office at the same hours right next to me, just like an employee.

I haven’t been in the UK since a while so I hear that now things changed so you can no longer pretend to run a company when being essentially an employee.

It depends on the industry.

I'm graduating this year, and many of my friends (and myself) are going to work for FANG+ and finance companies and hitting that figure.

London salaries:

L5 (senior engineer) Facebook [1] Google [2]

Facebook L6 (lead engineer) [3]

[1] https://www.levels.fyi/company/Facebook/salaries/Software-En...

[2] https://www.levels.fyi/company/Google/salaries/Software-Engi...

[3] https://www.levels.fyi/company/Facebook/salaries/Software-En...

As a freelancer in Paris, I've been invoicing 625€ daily in 2018 and 2019, and 700€ in 2020, doing Big Data / Scala development with a sprinkle of devops, for the same customer. I think I could get 800-900€ if I find a customer that pays better and focus on the Big Data / GCP sectors. Just need to find a contract through word of mouth, and not through a recruiter that takes a 100-150€ margin...

You get less as a salaried employee in France though...

>Fuck the EU.

Yeah? Well that's just, like, your opinion, man.