Re: advice on current market database consulting rates

pheonix1t wrote:

> Daniel Morgan wrote:
>
>> pheonix1t wrote:
>>
>>> hello,
>>> I'm located in houston but also do work in other states when
>>> required. What are the typical consulting rates for doing oracle
>>> work in the southwest area of the country? The figure I've been
>>> quoted was $125 per hour. (at least in the houston area). But I
>>> just want to confirm this with a broader spectrum of people.
>>> Also, what are current for "fair" rates for microsoft access/sql
>>> consulting. I'm assuming access would be less than sql, but ms-sql
>>> would be around the same as oracle? Last summer I got $95 per hour
>>> for an Access project...but that was last summer! Has the market
>>> changed a lot since then? Basically..should I adjust my rates?
>>> My friend in nyc said the consulting firm he works at bills out at
>>> $175 per hour...but that is in NYC.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> Oskar
>>>
>>> ps. Also, on longer projects (400 hours, for example), what are
>>> good rates to go down to? For example, if you got a $20k project,
>>> would going down to $75 per hour be prudent? Of course, it's best
>>> to just stay as high as possible, but today it's hard to get that
>>> anymore.
>>>
>> What are you smoking? $95/hr. for MS Access? Perhaps I should
>> rephrase my question. What were they smoking? And where can I get
>> some for my clients? If you can get half of that in Seattle for MS
>> Access you should laugh all the way to the bank.
>>
>> The other rates you quote are possible but without a clue as to your
>> skills and experience I wouldn't pay you minimum wage. What do you
>> bring to the table?
>
> myself: I'm an NYU graduate, info. systems. 12 years experience,
> operating systems (hpux, solaris, windows (9x, NT, 2k), linux (suse,
> redhat), oracle 7.3, 8/9i, ms-access/sql (7/2k).
> scripting (unix and windows). Heavy mail server experience (unix and
> windows). My "weak spot" is development.
>
> my friend who works with me: princeton graduate (originally law, but
> changed to Comp. Science), 20 years of experience, same skill-set as
> me...but add ibm db2, java, heavy development experience with windows
> and unix (vb, asp, java, .net, cold-fusion). Also cisco IOS. He's
> what I aspire to!
>
> so....I have to lower the rates for access, and probably sql server.
> oracle can also be lowered a bit but still stick around 100? Around
> houston a lot of the "consultant" shops charge 125 for work that
> doesn't include programming (just technical work - cisco, windows,
> etc)! I do it for 75 and we've been pretty busy. (but we are new...5
> years in business, 2 in houston, 5 in nyc) I just want to get a good
> idea for making long term "package" deals/maintenance contracts for
> data centers. We've built up a very good client base for
> references....now I want to go higher up the scale. We want to start
> marketing to companies that have good sized data centers.
> fyi, any web development work is passed off to a friend's consulting
> company that specializes in this stuff....based in nyc, they have a
> team of 6.
> Also, what is good way to get sales lists/leads for companies with
> enterprise class databases? I've been going to chambers of commerce
> and BNI meetings....this has brought in work so far, but it's very
> time consuming to get business from a chamber of commerce membership.
> Just wondering if there is a quicker way....
>
> thank you!!
>
> Oskar
>

In Seattle here's what you'd be looking at:

60% of the people would look at your laundry list of experience, decide you are a generalist that knows a moderate amount about a lot of things, and wouldn't want you. Of those 33% would just think you were a liar because no one knows all that stuff.

40% would think you had a good well-rounded set of skills and could probably learn what you needed to know and would offer you around 60K/yr. And if you didn't take it they'd put your resume in the circular file and go to the next resume in the 3" high stack.

-- 
Daniel Morgan
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/oad/oad_crs.asp
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/aoa/aoa_crs.asp
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
(replace 'x' with a 'u' to reply)