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Comment by charsifood | Hacker News Reader

I think the OP is specifically asking freelancers because 100k as a salary is not exactly rare, it's what I've paid some of my juniors.

100k+ as a freelancer is significantly more rare - requiring either very steady work, a niche skill-set, or great marketing skills.

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> 100k+ as a freelancer is significantly more rare

What are we meaning by "freelancer" here?

I'm taking it (as a UKian) to mean "contractor" and every contractor I know is on £100k+ (which is currently ~$129k).

Can you share a story or two? I'm interested in the UK contracting market. The pay for salaried positions in the UK Is shockingly low.

I mostly do Perl stuff and get £400-500 day rate easily even though I'm far from a Perl expert (and, indeed, I loathe and despise the language nowadays.)

There's a few (senior) Go contracts starting to appear in London (at £500+/day) that I'm hoping signify the start of a trend.

Depends who you work for. A solid LinkedIn plus the subscription option, with stints in the big 5 and some solution architect experience gets you some decent money.

Similarly, if you can pick up the (relatively) obscure FinTech stuff (kdb+, Vertica, M/Mumps/Caché, etc.), that's a definite ticket to decent money and job security.

Do you mind me asking what industry you're in, where a junior can make $100k?

Software? An entry level developer position in the bay area can be a fair bit higher than $100k

Silicon Valley is fairly unique, and not remotely comparable to the rest of the world. In most of Europe, a senior dev makes less than that. Freelancers are a bit more likely to make more.

Sure, but that's cost of living. $100k/yr is needed in Silicon Valley just to cover your portion of rent for the above-garage apartment you share with 8 other people.

That seems ludicrous to be honest (*though I do note the satire)

Financial engineering - NYC.

Jeez. I'm a senior front end developer in Western Australia, on 70k. Build Fintech systems... It would be interesting to compare the costs of living etc to see how salaries over there compares to here.

A front end developer in State Gov in Australia can easily be $90-110k, fwiw. Can confirm for east coast anyway.

Any openings currently? :P

As someone from Perth... you are being severely underpaid.

You could probably buy a house on that salary at a reasonable commute distance to Perth CBD.

You can get into some off-the-plan garbage in an extremely far away suburb on this sort of money, but right now I don't think it's the right time for me to get into property. So I rent about five minutes from Mount Lawley :)

Ok well that you can rent in such a good location on a 70k income (assume USD?) means lifestyle in Perth IS much more attainable than on SFO which might require a 150k income.

Rents seem to be 300/W AUD for an appartment there. Nice. Here in Sydney it's double that. 300 gets you a room in a decent location.

Oh no sorry, that's 70k AUD - in USD I think it's about 55? But yeah Perth is quite cheap to rent in. Living costs are kind of high though, but they are really comparable to other states.

Moved from Perth to Melbourne last year with a nice 30% bump but rent is significantly more expensive here and it takes a lot longer to commute to the city.

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