Comment by gyomu 11 days ago
> However, I wouldn't be surprised if he tried to hire other devs to outsource some of his workload while he remained the interaction point with the company.
What a silly waste of his time and reputation (in addition to other people's).
If he's that competent, he could hire/mentor juniors and just use his skills to run a contracting business and keep making big bucks while not having to lie all the time?
I think this is a US specific thing.
I work as a contractors with all my clients (who know of each others) and they all pay significantly more per hour compared to an employee. As an employee I could expect to make 1/4 of what I actually make.
The only exception in this arrangement was when I worked with an US company, they wanted to hire me as an employee and paid 1k per month to some company in my country just to hire me. An insane waste of money, not to mention taxes on my side.
Yes: US salary costs include having to pay healthcare fees (it’s not universal here), so work contracted prices are generally discounted by that amount relative to salaries.
In the US it's not uncommon to have a $200k base. Not even taking into account stock compensation and benefits, you'd need to command about $400/hr contracting to fit your 4x figure. Does that sound comparable to your setup?
I don't know about the person you're asking, but I have known many people (both programmers and consultants in other areas like marketing, game design, etc.) who billed at more than that hourly rate, here in Europe (where salaries don't commonly go above $200k).
> How do I know? 15 years experience, top candidate in many interviews, great salary / employment. Yet every time I've tried to get a consulting arrangement set up it's been extremely hard and ultimately unprofitable (i.e. pays significantly less than full-time job, on average).
Sounds like a legit negotiation strategy:
- You prefer a consulting arrangement over being hired.
- The company prefers to pay less for the job.
So both involved sides get a part of the pie that is negotiated about, and has to compromise on another aspect.
You say this like you can just talk with the VP and CFO and have a nuts and bolts conversation about big systems things as an pre-hire IC. You can't negotiate with even medium-sized companies at that level. They have a fixed idea of what the 'role' looks like, and almost always it's full-time, long-term. You can negotiate maybe 10-25% salary increase, but that's it. Good luck even getting more PTO (the "standard" amount is always "generous" and if you got more it would complicate "team dynamics").
I wanted to explain from a purely economic perspective why if you want a consulting role instead of a full-time job, you will likely be paid much less.
Contractors like CEOs send clear signals they refuse self exploitation and are willing to exploit others .
> If he's that competent, he could hire/mentor juniors and just use his skills to run a contracting business and keep making big bucks while not having to lie all the time?
I've worked with several small contracting businesses, including some that came highly recommended.
They were all very inefficient relative to having someone in-house. They also came with the problem that institutional knowledge was non-existent because they had a rotating crew of people working for you.
Hiring someone in-house is more efficient and better for building institutional knowledge. The companies he applied for specifically did not want to contract the work out to a body shop.
That's what happens when you hire bad contractors. There are so many bad contractors and selection bar for contractors is much lower compared to employees.
If you keep your standards high when hiring contractors you'll get the same level of quality you have with employees. Contractor agencies are also pretty happy to have long lasting clients (I have been with my current clients respectively for: 4 years, 3 years, 1 years and 1 month).
> Hiring someone in-house is more efficient and better for building institutional knowledge.
Then make it part of the contracting deal that the contractors have to give the in-house people sufficient training about the code/project that they worked on.
Or work at Meta or Microsoft and make $600k-950k and become a sr production engineer or principal engineer quickly.
Being disloyal and breaking trust and reputation for temporary gain is crazy.
>Or work at Meta or Microsoft and make $600k-950k
Getting that kind of pay at Meta at least, is less skill and more politics. If he had the soft skills to get that job he would be probably doing that.
> If he's that competent, he could hire/mentor juniors and just use his skills to run a contracting business and keep making big bucks while not having to lie all the time?
Much much easier said than done.
99% of companies that want to hire employees won't hire a contractor/consultant instead for that job.
How do I know? 15 years experience, top candidate in many interviews, great salary / employment. Yet every time I've tried to get a consulting arrangement set up it's been extremely hard and ultimately unprofitable (i.e. pays significantly less than full-time job, on average).