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Re:Ask HN: What do developers earn on toptal.com? by MichaelGG on Monday August 24, 2015 @12:54AM (#10107976)
For hourly work (don't do that; charge by value or at least daily or weekly), I can say $88/hr is low. High end developers are easily double that or significantly more. Also, as a consultant, there's overhead in promoting yourself, finding clients, etc., so the billable time is less (another reason to not do hourly).

If you're a "top" developer charging under $150/hr, you're charging too little.

Re:Ask HN: What do developers earn on toptal.com? by JamesBarney on Monday August 24, 2015 @10:12AM (#10109824)
Sorry I probably wasn't clear but I meant 88/hour for a salaried gig or a contracting gig that you would apply to on a jobs website and would last 6+ months. Not working smaller gigs where you need be both developer, marketers and sales person. In that case I definitely agree that you need to be charging more to make up for reduced billable hours. I thought this was a fairer comparison because it seems to me that working for toptal you don't need to market or sell and you get to spend the majority of your time on billable tasks.