Setting Consulting Rates

Last updated 1 year ago

It’s always a difficult task to decide how much to value your own time. What are you worth?

An interesting thought experiment is to start high and go lower and lower, would you consult for $200/hour? 150? 100? 75? 50? 40? once you get to a “maybe” or uncertain answer, stop and take the last “yes” as your minimum bar. Then, do the equivalent exercise in the other direction: except the question would be “at what rate would be too high to refuse?” even if you don’t really believe in the company or its values: $100? $150? $200?

Doing this experiment myself I’d consider my lower/upper ranges to be around $100 and $250 respectively. Of course, potentially much higher if I find the work strongly conflicting with my own moral or ethical values.