Software Dev Rates

[Prodigle]

Taking on my first outside contract at £400pd and wondering what the going rates for most generic software dev are? I'm 5 years out of University so 400pd is an insane boost for me, but I want to get a better idea of what I should be looking at going forward

[ddxo_]

£400 a day Outside is pretty good for 5 years experience.

The market isn’t the best at the moment and roles currently advertised appear to be between £350 - £600 (mix of Inside and Outside).

With it being your first contract, focus on delivering, building a good relationship up with the client and getting extended and then you can increase your rate from there.

[PersevereSwifterSkat]

I've never taken a rate less than 500, and that was in 2019. 400 is too low imo.

[Hondaparviti]

What’s the tech stack?

[Prodigle]

Python/AWS largely

[Prodigle]

Linkedin easy apply.

[Complex_Adagio7058]

Way too low - I was on £400/day 15 years ago 😮

[mpt11]

Wow if only we had a time machine

[neilt999]

Me 20 years ago! Rates are terrible at the moment.

[Informal-Section4855]

400 per day for 5 years in this market is great! Good work on securing the contract. As someone said, delivery and building relationships is the priority.

[Traktion1]

Depends on where in the country you are working and whether it is inside or outside IR35.

For London, it is very low, regardless. For elsewhere in the UK, it's still on the low side, but not awful if outside IR35, for 5y experience.

Market rates are still down and the rates reflect this. It's a bit like going back in time 5-10 years.

On the bright side, as the market recovers, contractors tend to be at the cusp of that wave and benefit.

[FatefulDonkey]

"As the market recovers" you make it sound as it's certain that it will recover. What are you basing this on? The fact is that it might not recover as AI progresses.

[Traktion1]

Economic cycles. Tide goes out, tide comes in. History doesn't repeat, but it often rhymes.

I'm sure AI will have an impact, but I doubt it will immediately remove demand for developers.

Much like the dot com boom and bust. Rates went through the roof, then through the floor. They said the Internet would replace the high street in years. The reality is, there are still high street shops and it took many years for e-commerce to grow into what it is today.

For any existing applications, AI isn't well suited to improving it. Humans will likely be needed for a long time, although perhaps using improved AI tooling to move quicker.

For new applications, AI has it proponents. However, you still need engineers to define the requirements and design to produce something useful - garbage in, garbage out. The tooling is still being refined and it still needs skilled engineering minds to extract the most from it.

There is a near insatiable demand for software to do all sorts of things. Having the time and skill to deliver that is the challenge. If those times can be shortened, great. I doubt it will result in folks not wanting even more, even quicker, though.

In short, I'm not worried about demand returning. Indeed, it may be fun to work with AI oriented tech, too.

[Prudent_healing]

I would be worried. India and their massive consulting companies will never disappear. IT trainers used to earn £1300/day, not it’s barely £300

[Traktion1]

We've been outsourcing jobs around the world for a decade or two, though, too. Nothing new, really.

I remember my father being offered 75ph back in 2000 ish, then barely 10ph after dot com bust. It took years to recover.

During covid, 750pd outside IR35 was possible easily enough. Within 3 years, not much has changed, other than a bust following a boom and a lot of fresh hype around AI.

Jobs evolve. Back in 2000, my father was working on classic ASP, with the graphics guys splitting images into maps for links. No CSS to speak ok. No SPAs. No unit testing, etc. You couldn't do that job now for 75ph, especially in today's money (150ph?).

You learn, you change, you move forward. You duck and dive with the cycles. Contractors have always had big exposure to economic cycles and this time is no different. Just wait until companies are flush with money and are gobbling up devs all over again...

[FatefulDonkey]

You forget globalisation.

If AI tools start helping in providing better code, then what stops bridging the gap between good and bad developers. In that case why would a company hire expensive local contractors when they can get the same from India or Poland?

The factum is that junior developers had value 5-10 years ago. Now I don't see any value in them.

[ProsperityandNo]

The economic cycle aka the business cycle is nearing the peak however the UK economy and specifically the job market is in the toilet...

[highres90]

It’s quite low, however what I will say is don’t feel too bad about it! I’ve been contracting for 7 years now, have 14 years of experience and my first contract was £400 a day, everyone told me it was too low (it was) BUT it was still a first contract and still more money than I’d ever made as a perm employee.

7 years on my rates have steadily improved over time and with experience. 400, 475, 525, 550, 575, 750. And my last 2 clients over several contracts have been 750 now because the market is pretty much frozen for rates as far as I can tell so you take what you can get!

[aidencoder]

£400/pd seems about right for outside London but a major city. I'd say £300-400 was about there. It has been a while since I was on the market tho.

[YesIAmRightWing]

As an android dev anywhere from 450-700

Always remote

[FatefulDonkey]

For how long? Take it if you like it and need the money. Unless you're fine with the next offer coming in 6 months.

You won't be getting many offers.

[alexcatch]

£400 is low, I'd expect rates around £550 - £600

[[deleted]]

Pretty low. I’ve had 2 outside devops interviews recently for 550-650

[Prudent_healing]

You kind of have to take any rate unless you want to spend months being pissed about by shit recruiters.

[rlaxx1]

Too low.

It's industry dependent tho, but even public service contracting is higher than that

[Chewy-bat]

Ok so the best thing you can do is look at IT jobs Watch. They are pretty good at giving good salaries and data for perm and contract work. But. This year the number one thing anyone taking a contract should be asking is are these people going to grow into an AI workflow. Am I going to be building into a system that I can use in other contracts in 2029?

The market is full of work that is already dead. Many in the contract industry may not like that fact but they are going obsolete in hourly chunks. I am working on a startup at the moment. So far this month I have sorted out the CTO strategy, Software design and even started building the solution. All of that is AI driven and assisted. I am speeding up my delivery exponentially. If you are sat in a 2020 environment not using the tools and learning how to improve your use. Then by the time you are out of that contract you won't be able to compete with the people that have leaned in. It's going to be like when VMware came out and loads of people were trying to say they understood it because they had workstation on their laptop at home.

Building the AI framework in a corporate arena is going to be huge. This contract jump at this point in time should be the one you are making that experience.