I recently tweeted about how I was upping my hourly rate after three years as a contract developer. Several people then asked me what I charged or how I had decided on what to charge. To be honest, mine is a bit of a finger in the air estimate of what I should be charging but I know a few developers who share their rates with me so I know I'm in vaguely the right area, albeit at the lower end.
I'd like to do a very informal survey to find out what other developers charge so that we can get a feel of what current rates are around the world.
If you'd like to help out then I'd be most grateful if you could answer the following questions for me:
- Are you a sole developer or are you part of a larger company?
- What is your current hourly rate? If you need to expand on that because you charge different rates for different things please do.
- Where are you based?
- Do you work on-site for your clients?
- Do you mainly do iOS work, OS X work or a mix of both?
- How are you finding the current contract market for Cocoa developers?
- Anything else you want to add?
You can email replies to me via simon at ottersoftware dot com.
All answers will be treated in confidence and if you'd rather get a third party to pass on the information so that you remain anonymous then that's fine too.
I realise that this is a very sensitive area and that people don't generally like discussing their income but I think it would be interesting to see the range of rates charged.
I'll publish some completely anonymous information about the results in a few days once I've (hopefully) had a few replies.
I’m @sgaw on Twitter, @sw on App.net and you can also email me at simon at this domain.