On 10/6/06, scott larson wrote: > Hi all, > > I will be graduating college this spring, and I'm interested in > embedded control. Congratulations! > I am curious to know how well PIC consultants and embedded > designers/programmers make out financially. What are some standard > rates and fees per hour? It varies widely. In fact I've known engineers that very their consulting rate depending on the customer and/or project. I work full time for a company, and take on one or two unrelated consulting projects a year. I charge $60/hr for scheduled consulting, and have an "emergency" rate. The emergency rate simply serves to slow down people who simply insist that I take on another project when I've indicated that I don't have time for it for 6 or more months (and if they're willing to pay over double the normal rate for the rush, I'm willing to modify my schedule to suit). Since it's not my bread and butter income, I can afford to be picky about the projects I accept and the customers I work with. > How long does a (small, medium, large) project usually take and what > is the final cost of the project? That depends greatly. On a previous project where we had settled on a design spec and a set consulting fee (rather than time and materials) I spent 50 hours on the initial design and prototype over 6 months. The client determined that changes needed to be made and we subsequantly entered into a time and materials charge basis where I spent another 60 or so hours on two more runs of prototypes. This was over the course of another 3 months. He then sent it to Asia, had it re-factored and improved (cost and accuracy) and it should be on the market in a month or three. Now he's asked me to work on another design for him. In all cases the client also paid for development items directly related to this project - dev kits, PCBs, etc. This does not come out of my labor charge. I believe he spent about $5,000 total on materials for 3 prototype runs, which involved a total of about 60 units. In contract mode I charged 1/2 the labor up front with the remainder delivered at the end. I billed for materials at various milestones. In time and materials mode I billed at various milestones (I didn't require up-front payment or deposits - by that time we had built a good relationship). Yet another project I'm working on now is expected to take about 500 hours over the next 9 months - and that's an optomistic schedule for this rather complex project. In this case it's for a startup and I've accepted a contract which pays a fixed monthly sum, with the remainder of the normal consulting rate paid in full at the delivery of the prototypes. It may not work out, but the experience (and enjoyment) plus the fixed sum is enough if something goes wrong later. I'm not sure what you mean by "What's the final cost of the project." Do you mean the consulting profit (after expenses), or the consulting charges (which you can figure out given my rate and the time spent per project), or the materials (which is seperate)? > How much can one expect to make annually? What "one" can expect annually depends greatly upon the experience, business ability, and simple determination of that "one." I didn't start out a good business person, and I'm sure I still have a lot I could be doing better. I learned a lot of what I know about business and project management at the hands of failure. It's one of the main reasons I'm working at a "regular" job rather than consulting - I simply don't enjoy spending 50% or more of my time managing the business of business. I can't say I dislike it, but it's not as much fun as design work. Suffice to say I now do much better on the business end, and perhaps I'll turn to consulting more fully later, but only after I get my house built (banks don't like to give mortgages to consultants who don't ahve a year or three of proven income performance). One of the major advantages of working in a regular company for awhile first is gaining some experience with how the industry works, and getting contacts you can use for later opportunities. One of the major disadvantages is that you learn how the industry works, and you tend to continue doing things the same way especially when you don't understand the years of experience that led people to do things in a particular way. I know that I wouldn't feel comfortable accepting this recent big project without understanding how the typical manufacturing shop works (what they expect of engineers, and what they supply in terms of information, feedback, and assistance), how to deal with suppliers, distributors, FAEs, and manufacturers (their differences, what they need, what they do, when to involve them), and moving to contract manfacturers and for volume cost reductions how to use off-shore manufacturers, and their particular strengths and weaknesses. You can learn this as you go, but expect to spent a huge portion of time talking to people and finding out how things work. You can do things differently, but it goes faster if you do it the way they expect it to be done. Oh, and project management and planning (scheduling estimates). This you've got to learn. All I can say here is "good luck!" Decide what you need to make, and then find out what it'll take to meet that goal. Keep in mind that you'll need to earn quite a bit more as a consultant than you would ask for as a sallary. You have to cover health, savings, heat, light, electricity, computer equipment, development tools and software, etc yourself. The average annual salary for new computer engineering students from the University of Michigan this last year was just over $60k/year. You'll need to make nearly double that to match their salary and benefits. Many consultants trade off company benefits for the flexibility (and lower overhaed) of consulting. Since half of your time will be spent doing non-billable work (business management, advertising, chasing down leads, writing proposals and estimates, etc) then you'll need to bill twice as high as you might otherwise think. I believe the $60/hr for what I do is very inexpensive - I haven't met a consultant yet that charges less. But I don't have to make a living off it - chances are good you'll have to charge more. Given that you don't have a lot of experience, you'll have to sell yourself very well. > I don't mean to invade anyone's privacy, I know this is a touchy > issue. I don't expect you to give me how much you make, but I would > like a range of values and/or some typical numbers. I don't believe it hurts me to share this information. I doubt it substantially hurts others (perhaps only when you get a "price shopper client" that says, "This guy only charges $60/hr! Why do you charge $180/hr?" and usually one doesn't want that kind of customer anyway...) At worst my advise will send you (and other future consultants) on the wrong path since my situation is different than yours. At best I'll get a few people commenting on my comments and I can improve, or at least more thoroughly examine why I do things a particular way. But I'm not up on my business theory/strategy, and perhaps there's a particular advantage one gains to keeping this secret. Certainly in the US there's huge cultural training that tells people not to share their salary information with others. I hope you find this helpful. -Adam -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist