Re:Ask HN: Corp-2-Corp vs W2 Work in San Francisco / Bay Area
by nunez on Saturday September 30, 2017 @11:06AM
(#15373159)
I don't know why W2 is so common over there, but you should be hitting up LinkedIn and reaching out to recruiters that way. There are plenty of 1099 opportunities to be found. Ensure that you get contracts with fixed time periods so that you can plan your cash flow a little easier. (It's not a hard and fast guarantee, but a six-month contract is much easier to plan around than some flexible contract scenario where the client can fire you at literally a moment's notice.)
Also, $100/hr for 1099 is really low for your experience. You'll get work easily, but will need to work literally all of the time to make ends meet. You should aim for at least $240/hour.
Think about it like this. Your experience would probably net you a $175-200k/year salary in the Bay Area. That's the money you take home (before taxes). This does not include offset compensation (equity, bonuses, VACATION) and benefits (401(k) with match, health insurance (medical, dental, sometimes vision, HSA, FSA, etc.), commuting discounts, etc.). I don't know the exact numbers, but after factoring all of this in, I would wager that the company is actually paying $500k/year for your services in the W2 scenario. That's ~$240/hour assuming a 52-week business year at 40 hours/week.
Additionally, your experience makes you a premium product depending on how you sell yourself. If the talent pool for one of the languages that you know (say, Delphi) is dying but is still used for critical business functions that make companies serious amounts of money, you can increase the margin on your rate even more. 20 years of experience is a lot.
Lastly, for the businesses that you're probably trying to go after (big institutions with beefy IT budgets), trying to sell yourself short will actually make you appear to be less experienced than you really are. These businesses are used to paying top-dollar for quality and/or insurance, so you should play the game in kind.
TL;DR: Pay for LinkedIn; use competing salaries PLUS BENEFITS to calculate your rate; add some margin to the top; get the fuck out of the rat race.
Also, $100/hr for 1099 is really low for your experience. You'll get work easily, but will need to work literally all of the time to make ends meet. You should aim for at least $240/hour.
Think about it like this. Your experience would probably net you a $175-200k/year salary in the Bay Area. That's the money you take home (before taxes). This does not include offset compensation (equity, bonuses, VACATION) and benefits (401(k) with match, health insurance (medical, dental, sometimes vision, HSA, FSA, etc.), commuting discounts, etc.). I don't know the exact numbers, but after factoring all of this in, I would wager that the company is actually paying $500k/year for your services in the W2 scenario. That's ~$240/hour assuming a 52-week business year at 40 hours/week.
Additionally, your experience makes you a premium product depending on how you sell yourself. If the talent pool for one of the languages that you know (say, Delphi) is dying but is still used for critical business functions that make companies serious amounts of money, you can increase the margin on your rate even more. 20 years of experience is a lot.
Lastly, for the businesses that you're probably trying to go after (big institutions with beefy IT budgets), trying to sell yourself short will actually make you appear to be less experienced than you really are. These businesses are used to paying top-dollar for quality and/or insurance, so you should play the game in kind.
TL;DR: Pay for LinkedIn; use competing salaries PLUS BENEFITS to calculate your rate; add some margin to the top; get the fuck out of the rat race.