What's the highest rate you have ever seen?

[tomtomagain]

I'm a bit bored at work so I'm checking jobserve for contracts with ridicolous rates.

I'm new to contracting so I know money is better, but I wasn't expecting some of the numbers I am seeing. So far the highest I've come across is for a PM contract in London at £1400 a day.

What's the highest rate you have seen on job boards?

Once found the rates database on a shared drive at a FTSE 100. The highest paid consultants in the IT department were billing about 3k - 4k per day.

They all worked for the same little consultancy that the CIO had come from.

[Old Greg]

Wife worked with someone whos new boyfriend was a contractor. She used to come in to work and boast that he was doing something different soon and it was £1000/day and they were going to move here, buy this house etc.

Really crass I thought that she used to tell everyone the rates and show off. In reality though, he worked for public sector doing desktop PC support which I imagine paid nowhere near £1000.

In the end, it became obvious that he was seeing these gigs on jobserve, telling his mrs who was then telling everyone what he'd be earning soon. Bit sad really.

Did he end up on the rock and roll?

[Old Greg]

NHS 'gravy train' pays £570k a year for managers - Telegraph

But since February, Rotherham Foundation trust has paid at least £47,000 a month – an annual rate of £570,000 - for the services of Michael Morgan as its interim chief executive. The sum would pay the salary of 26 nurses.

I think the real money is in 'interims'.

[d000hg]

It's not that high but when I was lead dev for a tiny company, I was always being told my rate of $65/hr (about £40/hr at the time) was too expensive. Then they hired some Phd whiz-kid to develop a bespoke physics engine and didn't bat an eye when he wanted €120/hr (£100/hr ish).

[Bunk]

BBC News - Whitehall consultants on £1,000-£2,000 per day

Westminster is the gravy train you really want to get on to.

Edit: There's someone mentioned in the article on £3000 a day.

[NickNick]

Worked with a Test Manager on £1K p/d back in the late 90's but she was absolutely worth every penny. Also worked with some PMs & Analysts on a gvt project on that mark about 5 years ago who were absolutely not worth it.

Got offered £1K/pd myself in 2005 but it was in Afghanistan so I declined. They were having trouble finding people apparently.

I myself have been charged out at over a grand a day, by a consultancy whilst being on around 400. Not that I'm complaining - I was happy with the rate and fair play to them for it.

[NotAllThere]

The GBP/CHF exchange rate tank during the credit crunch meant my day rate quite quickly increased by over half as much again, when quoted in GBP. Not quite so good now, but still way above the average for the UK.

Standard contract rates were ~1000CHF = £450 per day in 2005. By 2010, that was £710. There's been downward pressure on rates from all this cheap labour from the UK.

The most I've managed is around £1200 per day (on a single contract). When working concurrently for three clients, it was rather more than that

[vwdan]

s

I myself have been charged out at over a grand a day, by a consultancy whilst being on around 400. Not that I'm complaining - I was happy with the rate and fair play to them for it.

I don't even want to know what my current end client is paying for me, given that there are 3 layers of cream on top! Gotta be touching £1200+. But, I wouldn't be anywhere near it without the layers so I'd rather have a smaller percentage of a big number than 100% of nothing!

[Mich the Tester]

Worked with a Test Manager on £1K p/d back in the late 90's but she was absolutely worth every penny. Also worked with some PMs & Analysts on a gvt project on that mark about 5 years ago who were absolutely not worth it.

Got offered £1K/pd myself in 2005 but it was in Afghanistan so I declined. They were having trouble finding people apparently.

I myself have been charged out at over a grand a day, by a consultancy whilst being on around 400. Not that I'm complaining - I was happy with the rate and fair play to them for it.

This. Although I was a permie on a pretty average Dutch salary at the time; my boss charged a big consultancy 800 euros a day and the big consultancy whose name sounds like a car crash charged the end client 1600 euros a day and instructed me to carry business cards stating that I was a 'Senior Strategic Quality Executive' or some such BS. I had about 3 years experience at the time.

[NickNick]

s

I don't even want to know what my current end client is paying for me, given that there are 3 layers of cream on top! Gotta be touching £1200+. But, I wouldn't be anywhere near it without the layers so I'd rather have a smaller percentage of a big number than 100% of nothing!

Whilst working on inventive tax solutions for a telecoms company in Berkshire I was working for a German Consultancy who were contracted by the Hungarian arm of the telecoms firm who in turn were contracted by the (UK based) Global arm of the same company.

The rate was low (for the role) but not too bad but the final cost to the end client must have been insane.