Education & Work IT Contracting Solution Architect pay rates

Discussion in 'Living Room' started by Orion, 17th Jul, 2018.

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  1. Orion

    Orion Well-Known Member

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    Been working in IT my whole career (20 ys), including much of that contracting.

    Quite regularly I have some people flatly asking very personal questions such as how much I am on. These are usually from people who are new to the industry and country.

    In the past, I had avoided answering these questions, or played it down a little.

    Then I got thinking, wouldn't it be better for me if I told them the truth, or if anything, said I was paid even more?

    I say this because my current employer tells me how hard it is to find people, and how some very average candidates are demanding higher and higher salaries, refusing perm jobs in lieu of contracting jobs - wouldn't it benefit the entire industry the more everyone starts asking for higher and high rates by raising rates across the board?

    Might even see my first rate rise in 10 years? @Graeme
     
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  2. hash_investor

    hash_investor Well-Known Member

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    Excellent post.

    So how much do you get paid?
     
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  3. Dan Donoghue

    Dan Donoghue Well-Known Member

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    I have seen a shift in peoples view on financial privacy these days, people seem much more open to discussing salary and benefits.

    I was raised to believe that this information is never to be given out but to be honest, Why does it matter?

    I am not really one who values privacy as a particularly important thing to me anyway so it doesn't really mean much to me :).

    but back on topic, I agree, if everyone was to be more open about it and even over exaggerate, it may well push salaries up :).
     
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  4. inertia

    inertia Well-Known Member

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    Keeping salaries secret only benefits the employer. You should never be ashamed of your salary (if you are, maybe you're not worth it!), and equally you should not be jealous of someone else's salary (although that appears to often happen - similar to how people react to information about one's investments I guess).

    I do think it is ridiculous in most cases that you have to quit and go elsewhere (or at least have that as a real threat) before an employer will entertain a pay rise. I had 10 years of that working for a telco vendor.

    Cheers,
    Inertia
     
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  5. TMNT

    TMNT Well-Known Member

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    Is solutions architecht another fancy name for a relatively simple job?

    The only architect i know is someone who designs houses.

    But im also dumb as dog ****
     
  6. Scott No Mates

    Scott No Mates Well-Known Member

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    I thought we only worked for love & respect.
     
  7. Graeme

    Graeme Well-Known Member

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    @Orion still struggling at my end. My niche (native Android development) is pretty dead in Melbourne, and I haven't been able to move because my girlfriend is studying here.

    Then you get job descriptions that require me to have commercial experience in a language that I know, but haven't used professionally.

    In fact, I think that a lot of the skills shortage is down to HR departments being inflexible. Or maybe it's just an excuse to import cheap developers and offshore work.

    @JDP1 are you a developer or manager?

    Developers tend to think that others are worse at than they might actually be, largely because reading and understanding someone else's code is hard, and therefore the trade-offs will be missed.

    In fact, I've had a few examples when a more talented programmer is described as being useless because his peers didn't grok what he's up to.
     
  8. Graeme

    Graeme Well-Known Member

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    @Orion I've been looking at getting into the architecture side. If you're asking about contract day rates, the sorts of bands I've been seeing advertised are:
    • Senior Developer: $800 to $1000
    • Team Leader: $900 to $1100
    • Solutions Architect: $1000 to $1200
    • Enterprise Architect: $1200 to $1400
    I've not had much anything to do with architects, as mobile development rarely scales to the sort of team size that would need it, or we're already plugged into a plan by the time I get on site.

    However, a friend who's a very, very good coder reckons they're useless. They come up with high-level schemes for a system, but it doesn't map onto the problem, and has to be redesigned to actually work. :)
     
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  9. Orion

    Orion Well-Known Member

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    @Graeme I agree with your rates and think they're about right (possibly about $100-150 too high on average but certainly those rates are possible - or maybe I'm out of touch :)).

    In regards to Solution Architect's being useless or not, it's a tricky one - they certainly can be, although usually (in my experience, working in big corporates on 20-200 person projects) they end up being the key person holding the project together - bridging business and IT. Similar to a project manager - can be a key person on a project or a useless passenger (with the SA's taking on the PM role).

    In the web/mobile dev space they would be considered useless more often than not (the role is probably not required). Their value comes from managing the complexity that comes with a larger problem space (e.g. multiple backends talking to web/mobile apps (full stack) with a variety of business groups).

    A good Solution Architect is equally technical as they are a BA and stakeholder manager (the BS politics one has to deal with at a big firm) and need to have broad knowledge across many technical skillsets to be good (dev / OS / DB / cloud / networking / security / integration). Sometimes I'm coding, sometimes I'm writing business cases, sometimes I'm presenting to large groups - it's a very generically used role title.

    Good to see others agree - it seems it is good to share salary info to raise all of our rates.
     
  10. Mcube

    Mcube Well-Known Member

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    Hi, are those rates including Super?
     
  11. TheSackedWiggle

    TheSackedWiggle Well-Known Member

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    Here in Canberra mid/Senior devs (contractor) are paid hourly ranging from 100-250/hr depending on scarcity, talent, experience, clearance.
    hourly rate is better for those who often have to do overtimes during the week or weekends,
    contract here is usually for 2000 hrs/year, but one ends up exceeding it.
    contractor has to pay for super (min 9.5% and up to max 25k/yr) and income tax from his rate.

    Contractor has no paid/sick leave,
    one has to be on top of constantly evolving technical landscape to be in demand.
    high pressure and many weekends on work.
     
    Last edited: 18th Jul, 2018
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  12. hash_investor

    hash_investor Well-Known Member

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    What do you think is the right rate for a Senior Developer with no security clearance?
     
  13. TheSackedWiggle

    TheSackedWiggle Well-Known Member

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    Canberra its difficult to get in without clearance, at least one needs to be eligible to get it or come thru agencies like fujitsu dws f1 etc but get paid peanuts.
     
  14. TheSackedWiggle

    TheSackedWiggle Well-Known Member

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    Niche skills gets you high rate here but are very limited and mostly held by same contractors for years.

    Top clearance easily adds 30-40/hr on top of your rate.
     
  15. hash_investor

    hash_investor Well-Known Member

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    I second that. Solution architect is a political role in large organisations taken up by opportunists because developers have to spend time in front of the computers
     
  16. hash_investor

    hash_investor Well-Known Member

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    Is $100 p/h good enough for a senior dev?
     
  17. TheSackedWiggle

    TheSackedWiggle Well-Known Member

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    there is no rule per se,
    just how one bargains and how bad dept wants that resource.
    Try getting a clarity of what's agents take in it, sometime they are the one gouging in between, only few agencies are low fees based upfront types pity they are not in all panels.
     
  18. hash_investor

    hash_investor Well-Known Member

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    Let me rephrase the question.
    If I have managed to negotiate $100 p/h for a senior dev role did I do well or I could have done better?
     
  19. TheSackedWiggle

    TheSackedWiggle Well-Known Member

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    assuming no clearance its ok
     
  20. jyeung80

    jyeung80 Well-Known Member

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    I'm currently an SA and haven't been a Senior Dev for many years but 850 a day was about the going rate at the time and wages haven't really moved much since so I think you've done OK.

    I totally agree SAs are probably not as important in a mobile dev environment but in big corporations with 1000s of moving parts, systems, execs, politics, vendors, offshore, red tape, opinions, teams, processes, etc. the role is pretty tough. I've had to scope a $14M project, break it up into releases, present to some execs to justify the expenditure, then get on a call with an offshore development team and write out the pseudocode for them all in 1 day. I'm not sure which I enjoyed less :/

    In terms of rates, the average going rate for an SA in Melbourne seems to be about 1000 a day, give or take a bit. Contracting to a professional services firm will get you much more. In my experience, 1400-1600 a day is realistic.

    I've found EA's to be among the most overrated resources in an organisation - up there with management consultants. They've spent too long in their ivory towers and rarely deliver anything tangible or achievable but are great at Powerpoint packs. Having said that, given they're paid so well maybe I should investigate a minor career change...