Does anyone work as an IT recruiter in the New York City area who would like to tell me a good hourly rate on a W2 for a web developer with over 20 years total experience in IT and the last 10 years exclusively building web sites? I am knowledgeable in most recent technologies.
Thanks.
Edit: Title should say “I HATE to be cheated”
Since the OP is asking for advice, let’s move this to IMHO.
Fixed.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
NYC? I’m going to say $60/hr at least. I’m non an IT recruiter but I know many web devs that command that much in smaller markets than NYC and less experience to boot.
In the D.C. area for federal work I would say minimum $75 for your experience (although I haven’t interviewed you nor seen your work). I would expect that to be much higher for commercial work in NYC but I don’t know that market. How long is the engagement?
If it’s W-2, why hourly and not salaried? Do you not want a position with employee benefits?
I notice you both hourly and W-2. That is certainly done but seems unusual. If we take on someone hourly it is on a 1099 or C2C.
Payscale says the median for an experienced dev in NYC is 50.87/hr. I’ve never used one of these sites so I can’t speak to how accurate they are. But it does give you a number to start with.
I know nothing about this beyond having hired web developers in the past. If a developer sits down with me and discusses what I am looking for and in the end tells me this should take about 20 hours at $50.00 an hour or 100 hours at $50.00 an hour I would always be good with that even f he cut his actual time in half. Auto mechanic rates work off of a flat rate and the majority of the work is done in 1/2 the time allowed. Is the web developer business like this also? I had hired a couple of guys that took about 5 times what an experienced guy ended up doing it for. I know why they just preferred to be paid by the hour.
I’m not sure the SDMB is necessarily your best source for answers to your question. Wouldn’t it make sense to contact independent web developers in NYC and ask what their rates are?
They guys working for me are about $85 on a 1099. I’d pay them about $60 on a W-2 - Twin Cities. I have full stack guys I pay over $100 to.
Are you asking about the hourly rate for a full-time salaried employee, or the hourly rate for a short-term consultant? Because they’re very different, I assume by a factor of 1.5 or more.
I would assume that the OP’s use of “W-2” means that whatever rate you’re quoting will be after the employer’s payment of payroll taxes, where if it was on a 1099, the stated rate would be before you paid the deductible half of self-employment tax, so the effective rate is around 7.65% less than an identical stated rate for a W-2. At least, that’s what my initial instinct as a CPA is as to why he’s stating that. I don’t know anything about the actual answer to the question though.