Going rates for system admin/setup part time contract work?

[Tom]

I'm having a hard time finding what would be a reasonable rate to charge for doing system administration (linux mostly), system setup, and "emergency handling"? I'm pretty sure its part time / occasional work.

Anyone have any ideas?

[Mr. Analog]

Well, how much is your time worth to you and how many guaranteed hours will you get? Set a dollar target and work backward.

Let's say you only get 10 days a month at 8 hours a day and your target was 50k a year.

((($50000 / 12 months) / 10 days) / 8 hours) = $52.08 /hour

If you're going for full-on infrastructure work you probably want to ballpark in the $40-60k zone, you're not exactly a junior.

Let's say $40k for full time work (12 months / regular work week / 8 hour days)

(((40000 / 52) / 5) / 8 ) = $19.23 /hour

If you are self employed (i.e. contractor) you're going to need to charge more probably to cover costs and whatnot.

[Tom]

Hmm. Interesting.

The job itself doesn't seem to be anything approaching full time, its more like some initial setup work, then occasional maintenance and emergency handling. Almost certainly all/mostly telecommuting work.

[Mr. Analog]

Well, still, you want to ballpark how much time you'll be working in a given year and then figure out what you want to get out of it. If anything for tax purposes. Don't want to get a nice surprise at the end of a year of a bunch of emergency calls and find out you're in a new Tax bracket.

The most important question is: What is Tom's time worth??

[Thorin]

I've been in the same boat you're in - wondering how much to charge so as not to price myself out of work.  So I'll give you this piece of advice first:

Don't worry about pricing yourself out of work; if they're not willing to pay what you think you ought to be paid, it's probably better not to work for them.

There, now that you're not worrying about maybe not getting the work if you set your price too high, follow Mr. A's calculations.

As for a ballpark figure, I would be surprised to find an experienced Linux sysadmin willing to work for less than $30 an hour, especially if it's part-time/occasional/on-call contracted work.  If it were full-time work, I would expect an experienced Linux sysadmin to want $40k to $75k, depending on how much experience they can show on their resume.

If you're doing contract work, put 20% of any monies you receive in a separate account somewhere to pay taxes the following year.  If your taxes end up being less than that 20%, spend the difference on a new computer, a vacation, a large amount of LEGO, or whatever.

Also, if you're doing contract work from home keep all your home phone bills, cell phone bills, heating bills, internet bills, water bills, a record of mortgage interest paid, a record of property taxes paid, a record of lot rental fees paid, and a record of monies received.  You can write off a portion of those expenses, meaning that you reduce your income by those expenses before calculating how much tax you owe.

[Lazybones]

My problem has always been confidence in earning X, but I think I am over than now.. I think your challenge will be to clearly show experience... I know that you have contributed to some Open Source projects, going for Linux jobs I suspect that will carry some weight especially if your name is listed publicly as a significant contributor.

[Mr. Analog]

If you can show any public work these days it counts, unless you're going for a job at some stuffy old place (in which case, bullet thoroughly dodged).

[Tom]

Heh, the job is with a local web startup, which actually seems to be doing well. Except for the part where their current service provider (aka: web host) has more downtime than Amazon's Cloud, and even less support. So they are looking to transfer over to VMs and Boxes at RackSpace, with load balancing and all that jazz.

I was thinking some of the rates I was seeing online was a bit much (60-120$/hr). I just don't know what it is, but that kind of price makes me cringe. And for some reason $30 seems a bit low.

I think my biggest issue is confidence, and a lack of contract experience. I've only done one linux system admin job, and that was a temporary gig a few years ago. That and I have /no/ idea what kind of hours they are looking for. I have a general ball park description of what they want done, but not any kind of time frame. I'd assume they'd want the initial migration done asap though, given their host's propensity to access their accounts and change stuff. (that scares the crap out of me tbh, but then it is a "fully managed" account they have...)

I'll be calling the guy today to get some more details.

[Melbosa]

If you need an example, my rate for my contract work is $80/h min 1h, and businesses of 2-3 bodies and up don't even bat an eye at that.  Why? Memory Express, Futureshop, BestBuy hourly rates are comparable, but you loose your equipment from 4-14 days.

As have been said here, I've had people accuse me of being way over priced, but I've also had people say I'm cheap for my skills.  Most contractors working for companies like EDS (HP), IBM, etc are billing business at $120+ per hour, and half of those that I've worked with aren't any more knowledgeable on a subject than me.

I also was like Lazy when I started out, figuring I was overpriced.  But even the home person will pay $80/h if you come to their home and fix their problem in 1-2h.  I have many clients whom's home computer I fix for that rate.

So, linux is even more specialized work force than the Windows world, so I would assume you can charge what I do, if your clientele is the same.  If your clientele is other IT people, well that is where it gets tricky.  I beat out Microserve on many occasions based on knowledge and skills, even though they were half the price.

So good luck!

[Mr. Analog]

Yeah, it never hurts to ask if you aren't sure, fire 'em an e-mail or talk to them about it, but figure out what hours they are going to need from you.

If they don't know (which is possible) then it's up to you to figure out based on what you know (or what you can find out) about the job.

$120 /hour sounds big until you see what kind of work it is, I mean if it's random 24/7 on-call and they only need you four hours a week tops then it's not that extraordinary. That's why finding out the details is important.

Heck, even finding out that they don't know what the details are yet is important.

[Thorin]

I know why $60 to $120 an hour makes you cringe - because you can't imagine paying someone else that much to fix your computer.  But that's because you _know_ you could do it yourself.

Finding out actual expected hours of work (both how much a week, and when in the week) will help you figure out a price.  As Mr. A. points out, if it's random any-time-they-call-you work, that inherently costs more because most people wouldn't agree to such a work schedule.  And the less people there are willing to do the work, the more they'll have to pay to get it done.  The less stable the hours, the more per hour.

Melbosa charges $80/hr for (I'm assuming) random hours of work.
I used to charge $43/hr for steady 40 hours a week.
I've been charged out at $120/hr for steady 35 hours a week (but consulting companies usually charge way more than they pay the employee).
I've seen people straight out of school ten years ago charge $25/hr for steady 30 hours a week.

If I were in your shoes, with your background and experience, I'd probably look at $45 an hour if it's steady work, or $60 an hour if it's only a few hours a week but a set time of day, or $80 if its only a few hours and at random times of the day, all days of the week.

Or you could make it a sliding scale:
$60/hr for the first five hours in a week (define the week, for instance, Monday to Sunday)
$45/hr for additional hours
$10/hr surcharge for work on the weekends

This would encourage them to give you work during the week, and to give you more than a couple of hours a week.  Of course, it gets more complicated to do the math.