The $20k profit number was already multiplied by 12, it's not the monthly number.

A developer working as a contractor and charging his clients a fairly reasonable rate of $120/hr could make that.

If you have ever contracted at any length you would know that $120/hr is hard earned and usually has not insignificant time on the back end in so far as negotiating the deal, keeping it going, etc.

Here on HN I've occasionally seen people talk about $150/hr as a "low" contracting rate.

And others talk about how they could not achieve that in their wildest dreams, and consider $80/hr "good".

I was recently contacted about a contract proposal, in the USA, and they were offering $50/hr for some quite advanced cryptography work for a BigCorp end customer. I turned it down but it's good to get an idea of the market rate.

Rate expectation seems to vary a great deal depending on which geography and network-bubble people are in.

> ...fairly reasonable rate of $120/hr

Hahaha, I wish I could tell my clients that's a fairly reasonable rate! The only situation where that's fairly reasonable is when you're contracting with MegaCorp Inc...