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Show HN: A Levels.fyi for Contracting/Freelancing (hourly.fyi)

22 points by mylons ↗ HN
I've been working on this the last few days after seeing a post on reddit calling for this exact website to exist. I'm hoping the email-less/account-less and open data might be appealing.

I'd love any feedback you might have, and of course if you were to volunteer some data ;)

I'm aware it looks bad on mobile atm.

11 comments

[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 26.8 ms ] thread
1xdevloper
Thanks for not email-gating the site. Added mine from my previous job. I created RemoteFriendly [0] to showcase companies sharing salary info on their job posts and see a trend in this direction. Hope the new laws coming up in some states push the companies more and save people from wasting some of their time.

[0] https://remotefriendly.com/

mylons
love the style! and thanks for the data. i love sites like these. the more data in the hands of working people the better!
1xdevloper
Thanks! Just read that NYC made it mandatory to list salary ranges from Nov 1. Hope the rest of the states follow.
givemeethekeys
It'd be good to have a way to enter a info for engagements that ended a while back.
mylons
do you think a full date is required or is just a year good enough? what about a contract end date?
givemeethekeys
Length of contract and year it ended would give enough information to most people, I think.

For example: "6 month contract ended in 2021, and paid $125/hr"

You'd also be able to show how income has trended over time and possibly overlay it with macro economic events to try to put odd data into context.

ushercakes
It's interesting, it looks like a clone of my site, which I posted to Show HN a few days ago. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33359126

I had somebody spamming my rates with profanity. The same person, 2 separate days, for over 5 hours in total, attempting to personally sabotage my launch by having expletives publicly render in my table to the public.

To the point where I was forced to gate the data behind emails.

I notice your selling point is that you don't require email.

Are you having the same issues? Or perhaps, was it you?

I can’t say it was you. Although if it continues maybe I’ll start digging into my logs a bit more. It just looks mighty suspicious.

Good luck on your launch.

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Ethan_Mick
I want to like this a lot, but it's not quite there for me.

A datum says it is "Project Billing" and has a rate of $300. Is that $300 per hour? Is that $300 total? What does that mean?

I need to be able to filter by location. For me, comparable large US cities. My cost of living is vastly different than someone living in India.

For this to be most useful, I need to be able to put in my rough skillset and then find how much similar people charge. Just browsing rates around the world isn't that useful.

And that brings me to the last issue. Hourly billing is stupid [1]. As much as possible, you should avoid charging hourly. It incentives you to work slower, more poorly, and have a worse experience with the client. But it's too hard to say, "I charged USD 100k for my project," because you need to have a complete and intimate understanding of the project.

For example, my latest consulting gig was fixing some Google Analytics and Facebook conversions for a small business. They were broken, and I fixed them. It took me ~15 minutes, and they paid me $1000. They got incredible value (their ads started working properly again), and I got paid for minimal effort. What do I put down on a site like this, $4000/hr?

1: https://jonathanstark.com/

mylons
awesome feedback. thanks a lot. I don't disagree about project vs hourly billing either, but it's such a routine debate and sadly very common that clients _want_ hourly. In the last few contracts I've had, I've only been lucky to have 1 go project based.