Wage in SF for Contract Design Work

[Anonymous]

Anyone have a suggestion on what wage I should request as a landscape designer for contract in San Francisco (with 5-6 years experience)?

[nca]

what was your billable rate at your last full time position?

[Douglas M. Rooney]

Take your former salary and reduce it to an hourly rate. Take hourly rate X 1.35 = contract hourly rate( then round up to the nearest $5. Example, if contract hourly billing rate comes to $27.75, round up to $30 per hour). Thirty-five percent is a fair approximation of the value of benefits plus self employment tax. I would not use your former billing rate because it has the firm’s overhead and profit baked into it and will likley be rejected by the firm as “too high”. The firm will likely still be billing you out at that higher rate so as to make a profit off of your work.

Good Luck!

 

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your input.  I would love to be paid that amount.  The amount we negotiated today ended up 72% of what your formula yielded, probably because of the recession.  On the brighter side, even this amount beats being unemployed in this economy.  Anyway, thanks again!

[Author]

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