Leads I know at several major London companies are in the 70-90k range.
Pre-brexit exchange rates put that salary not too far off SF, plus lower living costs than the bay ($3000 for a one bed? No thanks).
Hell, I don't know many contractors on less than 100k (once you do the math).
Interesting but a contractor on 100k is only equivalent to circa 45k as a FTE using the 3x rule I would expect a contractor rate for a FTE of 80k to be in the 200k range.
Also do they offer the same value in share options /rsu's etc. that SV companies do
Startups in London will offer shares for senior positions in much the same way as San Fran, normally with a vestment period, but it's not as common.
I'm not 100% on what the 3x rule is.
What I do know is that most of my contractor friends are on around £500 per day, which assuming a 260-workday year is 130k. There's a couple of oracle DBA's on around 800pd, which is 208k.
But then you have to administer a database & there's only so much I'd be prepared to do for money.
As a contractor, normal tax rules don't apply (and are normally much more beneficial). So a contractor earning 90k & a FTE earning 90k still results in the contractor coming out miles ahead in terms of raw income.
Obviously there's offsets to this. No sick pay, no paid leave, no free pension contributions etc.
Though you have to watch for IR35 a lot of contractors would fail ir35 and be stuck with a huge tax bill
My experience is that your price is set by how much work you want. When I first started I had a really low rate, and I complained to a much more seasoned freelancer that I had to much work.. and he responded with something that seems so obvious now, but at the time I didn't even think this way. He told me, "If you have to much work, you aren't charging enough." So over the next 3 or so months I kept raising my rates until I found a happy medium between the # of clients I have and how much I'm bringing in.
My work has benefited from it because I'm not having to work 50hr weeks to make the same amount of money. The hours my clients are getting are much higher quality, and my work life balance is sane.
Also, the dividend tax has closed the gap a bit, along with the flat rate scheme being effectively killed.
I'm on pace to do the same this year working mostly 20-30hr weeks. The rest of the time I'm spending working on my own projects and hopefully generating some recurring revenue.
Not looking to be the next big thing. I'm completely ok with a "lifestyle" business as people call it in SV.
I did this from my remote bunker nestled in the mountains of Vermont and am completely satisfied with that.