Reply to: What's the highest rate you have ever seen?

[NotAllThere]

Some of the high rates you see on jobserve and the like are caused by the rate being quoted in pounds but really being in euro, or, more often, a daily rate being specified as hourly.

[kal]

Just saw a role advertised for £0 - £1000, and likely to last more than 2 years. Great, £0/d and no business mileage. FTS!

Just been sent a role for an initial 306 (25.5 years!) month contract with extensions likely :-) (I mean c'mon how lazy a pimp do you need to be to not even proof read your advert...)

[PurpleGorilla]

For the pimp deniers, just look at the half way to lying roles with a ridiculous rate range - 350 to 800 a day is one that I seem to recall the other day. It's almost as bad as "market" as you know the rate will be 350 when you ring up.

Just saw a role advertised for £0 - £1000, and likely to last more than 2 years. Great, £0/d and no business mileage. FTS!

[original PM]

I know this bloke right <cough>
he did a fixed price contract with a large pharma that was expected to last a few months.
BUT the agency insisted on an hourly rate, so it could be processed through their systems.

So the crafty contractor quoted an impossibly high rate and promised to complete the work in an impossibly low number of hours.

The work was done, in a lot more hours, but the contractor could only claim the number of hours agreed.

So the work was done, everyone was happy.

BUT...then the extensions kicked in. and the bastid contractor continued to get the impossibly high rate for over a year, until someone at the pharma twigged

<cough>

Top work sir you are quite clearly cut out to be a contractor ;-)

[EternalOptimist]

I know this bloke right <cough>
he did a fixed price contract with a large pharma that was expected to last a few months.
BUT the agency insisted on an hourly rate, so it could be processed through their systems.

So the crafty contractor quoted an impossibly high rate and promised to complete the work in an impossibly low number of hours.

The work was done, in a lot more hours, but the contractor could only claim the number of hours agreed.

So the work was done, everyone was happy.

BUT...then the extensions kicked in. and the bastid contractor continued to get the impossibly high rate for over a year, until someone at the pharma twigged

<cough>

[darmstadt]

Mine, as I've never seen anyone else's...

[EternalOptimist]

worked with a PM about 10 years ago who was on 1k a day.

one of 'Bobble eye Browns' migrations

[Talos]

My best rate

This is going back a while since in recent years things have dropped, my best rate was back in 2002 and was 155 an hour

[MyUserName]

At a bank in London they were offering £1200 a day for experienced C++ programmers with a PhD in Quantitative finance and various other bells and whistles.

[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.

[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.

[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!

[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

[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.

[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.