There is no “official” way to calculate rates, so most of the numbers come from the Romanian fiscal code, personal experience and common sense.
If you really want an “official” number, there is the average gross wage across the whole IT sector, reported by the National Statistics Institute: 6566 lei or 1400€ before tax which is 800€ after tax (net salary). However, developers and managers are usually the most well-paid in the IT sector and salaries are bigger in the largest cities, so the industry average can be considered the starting developer salary.
Following @cristi_contiu’s formula (using cross-multiplication to simplify):
If for 800€ net monthly pay it was 12€ - 16€ / hour (not including VAT), for 1700€ you have 25€ - 34€ / hour (not including VAT).
LE: Assuming that they have an office in Romania and hire full time, they don’t provide those details.
I would be a little wary of freelancers not dedicated full-time to their business. Moonlighting as a developer may not produce the best results, but this of course depends on the complexity & scope of the project and the expected level of quality.
A freelancer also needs to own his own gear, considering that a macbook pro/a business class dell costs 3000-4000EUR (without taking into account a decent chair) with a 10 EUR/hr rate at 8hrs/day, 40/week, 160/month and a 1600 EUR gross income which becomes 700/800 in hand the income/revenue ratio is extremely low.
A room in Cluj-Napoca costs 3-400 EUR/month with air conditioning and utilities, food is also expensive, about 10 eur/day.
With a 10 EUR rate, a freelancer in Cluj-Napoca would have about 400EUR in hand, which is ridiculously low for software development. (unless one chooses to avoid tax and risk fraud)
He also doesn’t have the possibility for cheap loans like in Western countries.
One can be easily hired as a driver/cashier/assistant/tech support in some field for much more than that and people are desperate to find workers. Also the risks are much lower.
Therefore, if someone wants to have a good worker, don’t even consider lower than 15EUR. But 20 would be about good. (on par with other jobs, not that it’s great for someone)
Do you think you could eat with 10 eur / day 3 meals that would allow you to be productive, and which are not just McDonalds?
Soon, you’ll expect developers to eat on food stamps.
Why is it so difficult to accept that you must pay a decent rate if you want good, performant engineers?
And by the way, 10 - 12 eur / hour is not decent pay, even for juniors. A freelancer should make more than a full time employed engineer. By at least 50%. Thus, 20 eur / hour would be about right.
Based on these numbers, the average rate in IT sector is 12.23 euro per hour, but @cristi_contiu assume this is a fair rate for junior, we need to define what are the metrics for seniors and freelancers vs employees.
However these numbers still correlate my own calculation
I think you’ve already received enough replies which give a ballpark estimate of what the Romanian freelancers averagely charge per hour and no link in the world is going to help you justify negotiating lower rates than what they choose to charge.
I will warn you that the average can be very misleading. Very, very misleading. Recently I’ve seen a ‘report’ about the average ‘fortune’ of romanians which ‘showed’ that the country does not fare so badly.
Well, when I see such statistics taken directly from ‘How to Lie with Statistics’ (a real book, look it up), I check the source and in such a case I look for the median, if available. Guess what? The median was almost four times lower than the average (that has an ugly meaning which I won’t detail).
In which country someone working in web development/programming/design gets paid the same as a store clerk/cashier in a mall? This guy wants numbers and can’t get them because they are not written somewhere officially or what. Go ask a few developers or programmers, most of them are paid between €1,000 - €2,000 NET (after taxes) for 2-3 years of experience.
@Ionut_Staicu It doesn’t matter how much this discussion progresses, this guy doesn’t want to know the truth or reality, he is clearly on the lookout for the smallest bit of information with low numbers so he can cling on it and lowpay people. At this point I would close the thread and ban him for arrogance or trolling.
Hi Everybody,
I d like to wish you all my best wishes for 2020!
1 year after our long conversation, I d like to thank you for all your comments and advises.
From my original data and 12 more months of experience on Romanian freelancers market, I m glad to have you to advise me.
The hourly rate I now identify are the one you told me.
I run my business on data, experience and trust, and based on these elements, I see a lots of trustworthy people here. If I had listen to you in the first place it would have save me a couple of months of HR.
Once more, thank you all!
