Yeah but the details don't matter when you say "full time equivilant". Just health insurance alone will be far far far more than you are allowing. Then there's all the tax implications. Like, if you said 2500x I might consider beleiving you. 3000x I'd probably believe you.

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prisenco 3 days ago | parent [-]

Every contractor already knows all this. And those who don't learn quick.

I'm not clear what you're arguing here.

When I evaluate an hourly rate, I multiply by 2100 and ask myself if this is a reasonable salary & benefits total package.

So if my rate is $125 an hour, that comes to $263k, which is a base salary of around $200k plus healthcare, self-employment taxes and sick/vacation time, etc. Now my healthcare costs might be lower than others and I don't factor in retirement because I work primarily for startups, but again this is why each contractor calculates differently.

I wouldn't multiply it by more hours if it was insufficient, I would just raise my rate.

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foolswisdom 2 days ago | parent [-]

When I read

> My rule of thumb as a contractor is to take the hourly rate x2100 to get an equivalent full-time salary plus benefits, 401k, vacation, etc.

I thought you meant to include everything on top of salary. Reading it again after this thread, maybe you meant to this is the calculation for hourly from full time salary, and then you need to also do ("plus") a calculation for everything else.

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prisenco 2 days ago | parent [-]

x2100 is base salary plus benefits, aka "total compensation."

So if this doesn't cover everything then charge a higher hourly rate for more money, don't change the multiplier.

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foolswisdom 2 days ago | parent [-]

Why? It's not obvious that an employee works 2080 hours, for example, because they take vacation (or work extra), so charging a 2100th of salary doesn't cover vacation benefit. Also, the employer will pay part of health insurance, and that isn't included in the salary number, so why would it be covered by a calculation from the salary.

	▲	prisenco 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Once again, this relates to total comp not base salary alone. Total comp includes salary and benefits which can include vacation time. So it's not 1/2100th of a base salary, it's the hourly rate x2100 to get the total comp. Do you know what your preferred total comp is? Take the hourly rate being offered, multiply by x2100, if it meets that then it's a decent offer. It's a useful rule of thumb but it's just a rule of thumb. It's not meant to be perfect but I find it easy to understand and calculate so it's served me well in my ~20 years of contracting.