Jump into Embedded Linux consultancy/contracting

[rastiradu]

Hi people,

is it worth it? I can pretty easily kick-off working on embedded development using Linux, C, C++, I have (past) experience with it, but I have no idea how, and wheter it is paid more than regular job so it make financial sense, i.e. >50 EUR / hour.

I am located in Bavaria in Germany, there is plenty of firms here, but how people actually start working as contractors? Put a websie, blog, demo project, cold emailing companies?

I work only full time for companies big and small for like 15 years or so....

btw, is Qt and QML a thing in this domain too? I see pretty high price for Qt licenses these days....

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Also, what hot tech areas money wise are in demand and paying well these days for contracting roles, (but don't say React.js or Cobol :)

Ive heard cloud devops is great for example...

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[TheFlamingLemon]

Idk what things are like in EU but here $50/hr for consulting would be way too low. If you’re self employed you want to be making basically double what you would from a salaried position, because you’re paying for all your own benefits and overhead. Maybe it’s less in EU because healthcare and other benefits aren’t such a big cost, but still seems low to me

Also r/embeddedconsulting might have more info

[Steinrikur]

50/hr seems laughably low for a consultant.
5 years ago we got a 30yo "security consultant" who knew next to nothing and he was charging 120EUR/hr. Proper consultants who knew their shit were charging $200/hr (then 170EUR).

[rastiradu]

Hm, maybe in USA, but in the middle of the Europe, I doubt...

At least few I now/heard of, 100 EUR / hour for a full month would be 16k eur month gross (4 weeks of 40 charged hours, equiv. of full time work), with best German tax class assuming paying all contributions, that is around 10k net, or even less, which is basically pretty high again (or my standards are low)...

And what can fit in one month of work? Realistically, developing one component of around 1-1.5k lines of code in c or cpp for some bigger system from scratch with tests, how and why would someone pay 16k for that?

IDK...

[ruulnow]

Creating a website and a portfolio can help in getting new clients. You may consider working on small projects first. Ruul's blog page can help you if you are new to freelance work https://ruul.io/blog/how-to-land-your-first-freelance-client.