Salaries and surveys

[Laurel Gilbert <Laurel -at- NICHE-ASSOCIATES -dot- COM>]

Let me throw this out:

The survey in question, I believe, is considering an hourly contract
rate for consultants and contract employees.  *Not* the "hourly rate" of
someone who is employed FT by a company as a tech writer.  (At least,
that was my read on it...)

Contractors - and I've been one myself - do *not* generally bill a full
40 hour week, 50 weeks a year to their clients. They might very well be
making between $40 and $60 -ish an hour, but that is not directly
translating to $80,000 to $100,000 yearly. There are a *great* many
hours I spent as a contract worker finding work, setting up computers,
managing my own business paperwork, etc. ... hours I would not charge to
a client.

Now I'm making quite a bit less than the "contract hourly rate"
specified in the survey. But I'm also at a *company* that rents my
office space, provides my computer, pays my phone calls (business
related, of course), provides me with electricity and heat and - perhaps
most importantly - clients. I also (eventually will) get insurance, and
I'm eligible for workman's comp should I get injured (paper cut or
something, heh heh...). When all that is figured out, I'm guessing that
the "contract hourly rate" minus time spent doing things like setting up
computers, paying electric bills and finding clients, minus the other
benefits I get for having a steady job, *probably* is in the same
neighborhood as my entry-level tech writing position.

As a contract Web designer a few years ago, I charged between $20 and
$30 an hour to do work. But I *never* worked 40 hours in a week, and I
*never* had a contract last longer than a few months. It's quite
possible that contact hourly wages *are* as "high" as the survey says
they are, and once you figure in the overheads of being a contract
worker, it comes a bit close to what we're seeing, personally.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled listserv.

Laurel