At 23:17 29/04/01 +0100, Peter Crawford wrote:

>I support of Lou's view. >I remember an old statistic, that an employee costs a company twice his >salary. (Consider the cost of benefits and employers taxes). >This provides a simple (naive ?) basis for comparing rates. >As an independent consultant, you become your own employer, so allow for >50% overheads. consultant hourly rate needs to be twice an employees hourly rate

I support Lou's view, too - but, as I wrote recently, if one is talking about what I call 'true consultancy' (roughly like I do), rather than a series of long term 'consultancy' contracts, then I think one has to go one step further and recognise that someone undertaking 'true consultancy' is lucky to achieve much more than 1000 billable hours per year (c.f. about 2000 hours in full-time employment). Hence, when comparing 'apparent hourly rates' (over a whole year), the multiplication factor for 'true consultancy' is likely to be between 3 and 4, rather than 2.

Kind Regards

John

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