Ask HN: What do developers earn on toptal.com?

I approached them as a data scientist. 18 years professional experience, working on military and finance projects. Spoke with a salesman on the phone for a few minutes. I explained I was taking on data science projects, but they thought there might still be a fit there.

They asked me to do a fizz-buzz/filter test in a cut down web based IDE. I did the questions in a language appropriate to my trade - Mathematica.

Their entire filtering process is automatically scored. I got back a nice form letter saying I'd failed.

Executive summary: Words don't match actions. Nice website, but you're still a piece of meat.

They set your hourly rate, many other clauses you need to ask about like the $30k referral fine, being spied on, agreeing to refund all your fees ect. http://yuriybabenko.com/blog/my-experience-joining-toptal

They made me do a "coding challenge" that took 90 minutes, plus the time it would take to prepare to take a test that has nothing to do with anything I have ever done as a developer.

So I didn't do it. I can get other offers where I will not be made to dance like an unpaid monkey.

Coming at this from the other perspective, we currently work with a US based designer and 3 Russian python programmers that we found on TopTal, and they have been great. I'm not aware of the financials (I don't deal with that), but there's certainly some talented people on TopTal.

They can say that they only hire the "top 3%" because their application funnels only allow 3% of the people that apply to work for them. This has a two important implications, 1)They are the "top" by their standards and 2) They are the "top 3%" of the freelancers that apply to the site. I am sure that the real top 3% are busy dealing with job offers and referrals.

   -  General mental ability (Are they smart)

   - Work sample test (of actual work they might do, NOT HAZING/Quizes).

   - Integrity. (Varipus tests available for this)

   - Reference checks (r 0.26) 

   - experience (years) (r 0.18)

   - Years of education (r .10)

I've learned to avoid such services and outright hire somebody to help with project administration. Its easier and less costly. This person would help with sales, marketing, proposals, etc. Mind you, "freelancing" is a business. it has to be treated as one. When you offload it to someone else you are going to get short changed. Programmers seem to have an issue with getting projects. Which is understandable given how most of us don't care about sales or marketing.

Having patents and lots of experience makes closing a project a bit easier. But it doesn't really help when talking to the decision makers. There is an episode[1] of .NET Rocks podcast where they discuss marketing for programmers. Its full of good stuff and you will definitely get great insights from it. Go listen to it and go from there.

[1]https://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showNum=1181

Having met the CEO I would say avoid like the plague.... Interestingly nobody is posting what they are earning on it...I'll be you they are trying to keep that under wraps with onerous legal documents.

I've been working with Toptal for two years, and it's a fair marketplace. As a developer, you get a completely different service from Toptal than from other freelancing sites: as developers are vetted, so clients are selected to make sure you don't end up working on unsubstantial projects or clients that cannot pay. You don't have to pitch yourself to clients to get a job: when you have the qualifications for a gig, a dedicated recruiter will introduce you to the client, and follow through the interview process. Once you get a job, Toptal guarantees your payments against non-paying clients, on a NET20 term, and takes off of you all the hassle of the extra work you have to face as a freelancer, like contracts, NDAs, invoicing, getting paid.

There is a very well documented screening process, that requires surely a bit of your time to go through, just as any other application to any company you'd like to work with. In my career I've interviewed with several European and U.S. companies, and the more the company is cool, the more they will test you, Toptal does just the same. Three steps out of four of the process are live interviews. I took my testing in August 2013, it took less than a couple of weeks and in total I spent a couple of days' worth of my time. It's definitely been worth it.

The algorithms I got tested on were of the same difficulty of the ones detailed in many books that prepare you for coding interviews, the same ones you'd go through if you were applying for Facebook or Google or other similar companies, nothing out of the ordinary in the tech world.

You can ultimately set your rate as you like, but recruiters will give you advice so that you can be in line with the market: I have about 20 years of professional experience and I live in Italy, my rate takes both those factors in consideration, and I am more than happy about it. If you have very niche skills, and as such ask for a high rate, Toptal will allow it, but then it will be harder for you to get hired. But you're not doing the price war with unqualified developers that ask for $5/hour, that's not how it works! Simply, if you have several patents and say your rate is $100/hour, and you want to apply for a 1 week Wordpress theme gig, it will not work out, but that's just common sense.

After several months of working as a developer, I joined the recruiter team, and I can witness that Toptal developers are all qualified and smart: for as experienced as I may be, I am surely not the one with the most years. I have spoken with Toptalers that worked at Apple and then NEXT in the 80's, researchers that work at CERN, creators of famous frameworks, that's who you are competing with, especially if your rate is above the market average. It's your call in the end.

All in all the experience is very personal, very human, the projects are great and, as long as you work well, are reasonable with your rate and have skills that are in demand, you will hardly be without work.

So I'm a "member" there. I'm on the Devops side and my hourly price is half what I charge clients normally (I live in the SF Bay area)

I generally apply for jobs there when I have some spare time but the devops jobs are few and far between. Most of the time my rate is too high.

From the slack channels I'm in, there's mostly non-US members that can undercut my price.

I've always been paid on time for the few jobs I did for them . The one thing I like about them is they deal with getting the money and from what I know if the client doesn't pay them, they still pay the worker.

I don't do it full time so I have a different view on things.

I’ll share my experience. I was basically looking for customers and projects. I had my CV on Linkedin, Freelancer, Elance, and was checking out Odesk. Someone recommended me Toptal, so I sent an email and received the invitation to do the automated test. I was sceptical, is this worth it? Or will I loose my time.. my friend insisted, as the rate is very good and you will not get clients like that on another freelancing site. So, I invested the time, after some hours learning about the codility tests, I did the test. Followed by another interview with with an engineer while coding and sharing screen. In less than 15 days I started a part time job (earning more than I was earning before with a full time job for another US customer), then other projects came, and have been there for 3 years and never stopped.

About the rate, I shall not share my rate here, but I can tell that I'm in Argentina and I earn more than most of the developers from the US, actually many people I know and are with Toptal from my region got offers to go to work to San Francisco and rejected them, because they prefer freelancing and the freedom which it brings.

You’re milage may vary, but I am happy to be working with Toptal.

I was hired to rebuild a project that was DOA. I've seen worse but not that frequently. After failing to find the initial developer's GitHub profile I found his toptal.com "CV". That was the first I had heard of it.

Since I do contract work at the moment I wanted to see if (this developer notwithstanding) toptal was worth having a relationship with. I contacted support since there were a number of questions I needed answered before I would consider going through their interview process.

The support guy I was put in contact with, who had zero programming experience (I asked), told me my questions would be answered on day three (or maybe it was part three) of the interview process. I politely said that was a deal breaker for me and his response, in so many words, was that it didn't matter since I wouldn't make the cut anyway. His lack of ability to determine that aside, he had zero information about me at this point.

My advice: Avoid like the plague.

Some extra data in case anyone was wondering what other the top developers earn.

According to the BLS(Bureau of Labor Statistics) the top 10% of developers makes $148,000 a year in salary alone(does not include insurance, FICA etc...).[0]

FICA -> $159,000(7.5% employer tax for Social Security and Medicare)

Insurance -> $169,000(health and disability, sometimes life)

I'll assume 2 weeks of holidays and 2 weeks of vacation which is standard in the U.S.

That puts the top 10% of developers at around $88/hour(1099 rate, 81$/hour w-2 rate) at a corporate or salaried consulting gig. That is a pretty high rate but similar to my experience for top end developers make.

http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/s...

P.S. I probably mishandled some of those numbers but it's getting late and I'm pretty sleepy :P.

Seems like half the comments in this thread are poor attempts at astroturfing.

I interviewed for Toptal few weeks back. Getting a response from their support/scheduling staff wasn't easy. For every interaction I had to send a reminder. I did the coding challenge and was shortlisted for an interview.

During the interview, I was got stuck. The interviewer instead of helping me identify the issue told me, "I don't think you will ever be able to solve this!" He wasn't interested in how I solved the problem but if I solved the test case. I'm a senior engineer with 10+ years of experience and this was just rude.

I've interviewed candidates for top companies & been interviewed by them and this is _not_ how you conduct an interview.

This might have been an isolated incident but I have doubts about the company which cannot even get their onboarding process right and prides itself to be in the hiring business.

I never got a straight answer on whether I'll get my standard rate of $120/hour.

P.S. - The mistake, I was making during the interview, was I didn't call the method which I had written [a terrible oversight :P] as I don't write methods which output to console everyday.

I recently joined Toptal and was shocked to have my rate set at $30/hour. I got them to raise it to $40/hour, but that's still nowhere near what I was earning working as an independent contractor or even what I can get on Elance.

I like to hire their talent. What I really like is inflated egos and lack of skill.

1. one of their interviewers missed appointment (I lost 15 minutes by waiting ) and on the next day I got email "you missed the appointment so I'm closing your account and it will lesson to you how to manage your time".

2. They have "regional rates" and for my region rate is 3 times lower than my current rate.

Considering both these facts, I'm glad they missed my appointment.

Background: I also work as a Toptal engineer. I had similar questions like you have, and I did have years of experience before joining Toptal. I was a Head of Development in an amazing software development company and I loved it. I became a freelancer because of personal and health issues, and it was the best decision I ever made.

Joining Toptal does not cost anything but few hours of your time. I think that you will probably spend a lot of time reading these comments and thinking about them anyway. My suggestion to you, just try it. It will give you an answer better that anyone here can.

As for your questions:

1. You saw it already, but 3% is just a matter of statistics that show facts about applied vs accepted. Screening process is structured to make sure that only developers that are on top of their game can go through it. And yes, I'm one of those that support the thought that even front-end developers should understand basic algorithms and data structures, which is the first technical step in Toptal screening process.

2. Toptal is far more than just a sweatshop. To me, it as a standard software development shop that is just distributed. No different than any other company I worked with. It has a great culture, and I actually became friends with many people I met that work through Toptal. There is a whole team of people that is actually spending Toptals money organizing events and gathering developers so that they can meet for real, and not just know each other by their nicknames. There is always someone from the company that can help with any issue that might arise while you work with a client.

3. As for the rate, you set your own rate in Toptal! However, it is your job to make it competitive. Toptal people can just help you with a suggestion that will get you more work. Eventually, it is your choice to take their advice or not.

I have to admit it was a pain to get into TopTal. It took a lot of time and effort. But it was well worth it. I've worked with TopTal for a month now. I'm an iOS dev living in Eastern Europe. I make twice more what I would make working for a local company. I love the money and love the company culture. People here are extremely friendly to each other. There's a lot of work here, way more jobs than devs.

I know it can be frustraiting if you waste a lot of time to get into a company but in the end you don't. Someone here mentioned having to solve three codility challenges in 90 minutes. Well, if you have a degree in CS you will know the basics such as the pros and cons of arrays and hash tables, what computational complexity is, or how to implement a sorting algorithm. If that is nothing similar to what you do working as a web developer that's fine, but you need to know the basics to get any programming job done well. No wonder most interviews begin with white-board questions.

I would never slam a potentional employer on the basis that you didn't get a job there.

Also when it comes to rates, if your rate is $100/hour but you're only able to work 50% of your time, because you spend the rest of it finding new clients, then I guess you should be more then happy doing the actual work for $50/hour full time.

I see a lot of responses, and those on the top are mostly bashing Toptal.

### First Let me tell you something about the interview process, because I see the most hate comes from that. It is consisted of 4 parts: 1. Initial interview (basic communication) - this is where they see do you know English language enough to do this. 2. Codillity challenge - 90 min to solve 3 problems. This is hard. Yes, many will say that this is nothing like they use in every day developing, but every developer should be able to do at least 1 problem. 3. Skype challenge - 2x20 min to solve 2 problems. This is way easier then Codillity. 4. Project - you get a small project to develop using desired technologies. And then you present it in a 10 min Skype presentation.

Basically the Codillity challenge is the hardest. But it is not something that you can't do or learn. Famous 3% is just a marketing trick. They don't say 3% of all developers in the world, but 3% of all developers that applied to Toptal. Yes, it is a marketing trick and everyone use those.

### Second You don't know how much Toptal is charging for your services. You only know how much you get from TT and client knows how much he is paying TT. And in this gap the TT is getting money.

### Third Honestly, I do not understand people who live in USA or any other developed country and would work for TT. I live in a country, where the average net pay is $400 per month. Yes, and I am not kidding. As a developer I would maybe get twice as that. And on TT I earn that in a week. If I had the luck to be born in a better country I would never considered TT. There is a small chance that you would get from TT what you charge on your own. Even if you get $120 per hour, you can know that TT is charging the client at least $180.

### Fourth From my perspective TT is working very well. I have an opportunity to earn decent money, I can travel, organize my time better, etc. There are downsides, like any other freelancing job, but I don't have to mention those.

Thanks for the answer so far. Let me give an example. I've been told that iOS developers these days, who are experienced (eg: over 4 years experience) should make $150/hour as contractors.

I've seen people trying to hire iOS devs ("agencies" that doe client work type places) for $80-$100 an hour.

Is toptal-- the "top %3" paying closer to $150? Or closer to $80?

I have a part time TT gig, and live in the U.S. They've been excellent to work with: extremely professional and reliable. I earn 70% of my market rate which I find fair due to the added value of their system and their payment processing.

AMA.