Take a look at this Tibco/C# Consultant Solicitation

This evening, I received the following message from a recruiter who must have me in his database:

Hi Marc,

C# Tibco contract, 40-60/hr, 12 months in NYC. Would you be interested in this?

Thanks and have a nice evening,

Mr. XXX YYYY
Managing Partner
(Contracting Company)



Even though I am not in the market, I paused to consider this solicitation, and I found this rate to be somewhat insulting and way below what the market would bear. As a hiring manager, I would be highly suspicious of any Tibco consultant who would be getting this rate.

One nice thing that my former employer did was to make sure that the rate that an approved vendor (ie: body shop) pays to a consultant is no less that a certain percentage of the billing rate. For example, if a body shop was billing me $1000 a day for a consultant on a 1099, then we insured that the consultant would get no less than 85% of that billing rate (usually higher).

This would be more than enough profit for the vendor, and we would know that our consultant was not getting taken to the cleaners. A happy consultant is a productive consultant.

By the way, I would consider $100 an hour to be a fair rate for a really good Tibco/C# consultant. Why the low rate for the job that this recruiter is offering? It's not the days of 2002-2004, where great developers were getting $35/hr. The consulting market is very strong right now, and the big companies (ie: the users of things like Tibco) are holding their consulting rates steady.


Update - The recruiter contacted me and mentioned that this position was for a JUNIOR Tibco/C# consultant, hence the lower rate. I feel that Tibco is tricky enough (especially for lower latency apps) where I would only be comfortable with a senior-level Tibco consultant. However, as always, this is my opinion. Your mileage may vary.


©2009 Marc Adler - All Rights Reserved.
All opinions here are personal, and have no relation to my employer.