Mike C. Fletcher said:
*I* didn't realise that, I assumed $45,000/year to $55,000/year annual
rate, which would be a reasonable rate in Canada (in Canadian dollars
even) for a programmer with 1 or 2 years of experience. I'd forgotten
just how well Americans get paid for having fun... but at least our
taxes are higher
.
If you're a contractor, you get no employee benefits like health
insurance, no paid vacation or paid time off if you get sick, and no
expectation of having a steady job (the job is just for 3 months and
then you expect to be looking for work again). Plus you pay more
taxes (there's a FICA tax of about 14% that you and your employer each
pay 50% of if you're an employee, but you pay 100% of it if you're a
contractor), plus you have to file tax returns every 3 months instead
of once a year. Because of all that, it's normal for the hourly rate
for contract programmers to be about 2x the equivalent hourly rate for
staff programmers, i.e. a $50/hour 3-month contract job is equivalent
to about a $50k/year staff job. In the current economy where there's
lots of unemployment, contract work is quite hard to find (contractors
are usually the first to get chopped when a company needs to cut
expenses, since it's much easier to just not renew a contract than to
actually lay off an employee), so the contracting market is worse than
usual, which means that $50/hour is pretty good, especially for an
area like Atlanta, which has lower expenses (and lower wages) than an
area like Silicon Valley.
