OT: hourly contracting rate for a software engineer in GTA

[Ted]

Also as a contractor , O&E/Pro is 2k$/yr for 1M/1M coverage on normal 
programming work (i know as this is what i pay).
You get paid for lunch as salary, not usually as contract.
You don't get stat holidays, sick days, personal days.
You don't get a bonus.
You have to pay for your own computer, as well as time to do updates, 
installs, recoveries, etc,etc,etc.
You have to pay for you phone, cell, pager, etc, etc.

Salary / hr (as below) say 40$/hr, contract should be at least 55$, but 
60-80 are more the norm (i.e. 50%-100% more then $/hr salary).
Fortunately you don't have to worry about this formula, as its a free 
market, you'll get the best that you can competitively shop around for :)
In California, out of school B.Sc grads with 0 exp. are getting equiv. 
160k$/yr salary. So as a contractor (in Toronto) with degree and exp.
shot for 1/5M  - 1/3M a year. (semi serious/semi joking .... its 
definitely possible if you can get non-stop hours).

-tl

On 08/16/2011 11:31 AM, Christopher Browne wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 14, 2011 at 1:17 PM, David van Geest
> <david.vangeest-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>  wrote:
>> Hi all,
>> A little off-topic, but thought this group could provide some good insight.
>> My wife and I are planning to move to Toronto in the next couple months
>> (back to the motherland!).  I'm a software engineer, and the plan is for me
>> to keep working on a contract basis for my current employer, who is based in
>> Michigan.
>> I can figure out an hourly wage based on current salary and some expense
>> estimates, but I'm curious as to what the going rate is for contract
>> software work in the GTA.  Obviously the type of work and the contractor's
>> level of experience play a large role, so if you have a number, it would be
>> good to see some context.  As for me, I do a wide variety of stuff, anything
>> from C on embedded QNX platforms to Rails in the cloud.  I'm 3 years out of
>> my Bachelor of Science in Engineering.
>> Any insight into this would be appreciated.  Thanks!
> You can likely work backwards from a seemingly-analogous salary to
> work out what the rate ought to be.
>
> Supposing a salary of $80000 is what is being paid for salaried staff
> with similar qualifications, then consider...
>
> *] (/ 80000 (* 50 40))
> 40
>
> An hourly rate of $40/hr is thus equivalent to $80K.  However, there
> are several disanalogies that point to charging rather more than
> $40/hr:
>
> 1.  Salaried staff commonly have additional benefits that should be
> accounted for.
>
> 1.1 Vacation pay of at least 4%
> 1.2 Medical benefits are often non-zero; likely add 5-10%
> 1.3 You'll be paying "employer's share" of CPP on your wages yourself;
> you'll want to check rates, but I think that's not distant from 4%
>
> So, if you are anticipating that the contract will be full-time
> equivalent for the year, then it's likely that $50 might be plausible,
> although probably it should be somewhat higher than that to account
> for the fact that the contractee is free to let you go at almost a
> moment's notice.
>
> 2.  If it's pretty regular but part-time, then you should be bouncing
> it up by some moderate increment (I'd WAG at 20%) to account for the
> fact that you need to be doing extra logistical work to deal with a
> multiplicity of clients.
>
> 3.  If they call today, wanting to pull you in for 4 hours on Thursday
> morning, you ought to bounce up the multiple to at least 2x or 3x to
> account for the need for *sudden* scheduling, as you may need to
> cancel work elsewhere to satisfy their requirement.
>
> None of this should be too surprising, and the only *major* variance
> I'd expect between here and Michigan would be that down there, health
> benefit fees are likely to be radically higher than is the case here.

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