Re:Analysis of dev agencies with hourly rates, team size and...
by tootie on Friday May 08, 2020 @12:45PM
(#23116720)
Are these freelancer rates or bill rates to clients? Usually there's at least a 20% margin added to bill rates by agencies.
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Re:Analysis of dev agencies with hourly rates, team size and...
by yourapostasy on Friday May 08, 2020 @01:33PM
(#23117294)
In this kind of discussion context, typically the OP's rates are the bill rates to clients (the OP's company). I normally see the smaller agencies clear 40-50% margin, and the big names are clearing 50-80%, so I wouldn't be surprised if those agencies in Ukraine and India were paying their teams in the $60-75 per hour USD range at most, which is considered really good in those parts of the world.
Re:Analysis of dev agencies with hourly rates, team size and...
by rakamotog on Friday May 08, 2020 @02:28PM
(#23117882)
Margins are much higher. Large scale IT Services pay around 40$-60$/day for skilled specialists.
I briefly worked in a specialised consulting role where the charge to company was $2000 per day and my cost to the company was $55/day.
Re:Analysis of dev agencies with hourly rates, team size and...
by ska on Friday May 08, 2020 @02:34PM
(#23117938)
This is why it's not hard to bill $1000-1500/day as a freelancer with the right skills. One of those skills has to be sales, though.
Re:Analysis of dev agencies with hourly rates, team size and...
by tootie on Friday May 08, 2020 @04:48PM
(#23119282)
I used to do margin calculations at a mid-size US agency that staffed a lot of roles. In terms of actual project margin, we rarely got past 30% and was usually more like 15-20. The trick is that there is a lot of cost in operating an agency beyond just salary. The cost to the agency of employing a developer (or a designer or a tester or whatever) is more than just what they're paid.
We had a rate card that included both the cost to the agency per hour for a particular role and the agreed rate we had settled with the client. We had a fixed rate for each role/locale even though we paid people different amounts. I knew my own salary and handful for my direct reports and the "cost" side of the rate card was a lot more than I was getting paid. And that cost was the base on which padded to get profit from the client.
And that profit itself wasn't pure profit for the company because a lot of paid for our fixed costs (office space, hardware) and non-billable roles (HR, receptionists). And of course a lot of it ends up in the hands of our holding company and their stock holders.