How much could be the cost of a Freelancer from Romania?

You have to understand that most of the IT developers are based in Cluj & Bucuresti and those margins are calculated based on these cities, where salaries are a little bit bigger than the rest of the country.
If you live in another city, yes, probably you don’t fit in those margins.

Anyway… @RedGuard has been saying on many posts that we underestimate our hourly rate. If we keep on doing this, then we’ll never be between those margins.
The post owner has been posting jobs on this forum in the past. Now he probably wants to find out if he can offer lower rates than what he’s been charged.
So yeah, STOP UNDERESTIMATING YOUR HOURLY RATES or don’t complain that the “margins are bullshit”.

5 Likes

I live in Bucharest :slight_smile: Those margins are bullshit and there is no way you can come up with any evidence that they are true. Just go ask the testers at Ubisoft, for example, if they start at 1120 euro net per month and see what they say. Also, what about the large number of small web development businesses, do you think they start at 1344 euro net for a „normal” developer?

Project manager (software development) starting at 2800 euro net? Nope, ain’t gonna happen, even at large companies.

I would rather believe the numbers here than a „survey” made by BIZ. :))

2 Likes

Well, Laravel is 7 years old. And Laravel 4 - the complete rewrite of the framework is 5 years old. So does it really matter?
Also I said those net wages are for employees, that means full pension tax and 0% income tax and also 21 free days + Romanian bank days. Keep in mind that a company based in Romania pays another ~50% taxes for the dev employee with 0% income tax, so for a 2000 EUR / month, a company pays 3000 EUR / month.

A developer in western Europe probably earns 2-3x more. That’s what I would want, right?
Well, next time I’m gonna use the “survey” made by BIZ since it would benefit me more than any other website.
“Sorry mate, this survey says that a dev’s salary starts at 1344. You try to come up with 1000. Not happening.”
This way maybe we’ll get to those salaries…since we do the same job as they are, right?

Do you earn like they say in that survey?

I don’t live in Bucharest / Cluj / Iasi / Timisoara. Probably doesn’t make sense, although I’m trying to get there, yes.
Same brain, same work even if you live in Bucharest or in Vaslui, right?

1 Like

Thanks a lot @saramon

1 Like

So you don’t earn like they say there and you also don’t live in Bucharest/Cluj, but you are sure the numbers are right. OK, seems legit.

Do you earn at least 75% of those margins? And what position are we talking about?

Nope, you can t.
You can have a junior expert or a lazy senior.
To my understanding junior/senior is a matter of years but you are right on highlighting the expertise, which is another point of rate analysis
However, how do you extimate the expertise level ? based on what facts
So to make it simple, I ll assume that expertise follow years of experiences for now until I got a rule to include expertise separatly from year’s of experience
What do you think ?

which metrics do you suggest then ?

This is a rate calculation based on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_average_wage

It is not perfect as a base but it is the only source I had at the very beginning to do my rate expectations

So just because I don’t live in Bucharest/ Cluj means I can’t have enough info to know what happens there? “OK, seems legit”.
Anyway…we’re going away from the main topic. we can create another topic for this discussion :slight_smile: this way, everyone can learn something maybe? (that will help us in future salary negotiations maybe)

1 Like

My company is listed here and I earn more than the amount. Also from the survey made by BIZ, I’m in the interval, just close to the lower margin.
Probably the survey made by BIZ should be considered like: one unlucky fellow that earns the lowest wage and one very lucky who negotiated the highest wage, while the rest for some areas may be near the lowest margin.

1 Like

Does everybody agree with @Bogdan_Ciubotariu or the numbers seems correct to you all ?

That’s my issue. When you give an interval people assume that the lower margin is just at the start and, normally, most of the employees would be at the middle of the interval (normal Gaussian distribution), which is not the case with these numbers.

3 Likes

@Andrei_Luca, do not assume what I want as you are wrong.
My main purpose here and elsewhere is to have a fair/fair rate where you get what you should get based on the location where you live and I get the correct rate not something which is overrated.

The beginning of this topic is based on a discussion with a developer from that same platform who is probably reading all of this (please participate if you want).
This developer is a good developer and since we start work together he raised his rate by 37.5% which is a big increase for a couple of months relationship.
But he keeps saying my rate are low regarding my experience and what you can get in romania for same profile. So as I don t want to be ripped off by overpriced rate but in the same time I don t want to ripped him off for what he does for me, I’m looking for the proper information.

And what is the best way to get proper informations, ask you guys to help me out to define a rate table which is fair for me but fair for you too.

So yes, you will not get very big margins with me but if I can develop my company as I want, my plan is to provide constant work with flexible calendar to freelancers on long terms relationship

Today I work with 2 developers from that community, this guys are the best and I think it is time for me to reevaluate the rate table I have to make sure that these guys and I work in a fair/fair situation.

My business is build on trust, you can say whatever you want on that, this is the case. but trust is build upon fatcs.

And to finish, if I were looking for price I would have been working with India or philippines but I want to make my business EU based so we all pay our taxes in EU and provide more cash for our institution bettre than giving that cash to foreigners like US or India or whatever country.

5 Likes

Why do you not trust Biz survey ?

I believe the market is auto regulated by offer and demand.
An employee will search for what is best for him, if a better offer presents itself, he will accept it and move on.
A company may or may not afford to lose employees as it can lead to losing clients and contracts so it may have a counter offer/ renegotiation…
An employee may ask for more than the company is willing to pay and will chose someone else for the position…

About cashit.ro is it euro based ? yearly based ?

Net wage in RON per month on cashit.ro

1 Like