Resources for Computer Consultants

Welcome to Realrates.com, home of the Real Rate Survey and the Computer Consultant's BBS. Janet Ruhl, host of this page, is the author of several books including Answers for Computer Contractors, The Computer Consultant's Guide, Second Edition., and The Computer Consultant's Workbook. She started collecting data for the Real Rate Survey in February of 1995 and has been webmaster and host of this site since November, 1995.

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WHAT'S NEW AS OF January 31, 2000

1,705Rates (129 from 2000) on the Real Rate Survey
1,343 Salaries (116 from 2000) on the Real Salary Survey

It's Nothing Personal

If you've been wondering where all the contracts have gone, you're not alone. Corporate America, still reeling from having spent $9 Billion on Y2K, is trying very hard to keep its New Years Resolution to hire only Full Time Employees--preferably those who would rather be paid in status and Stock Option dreams than cash--or citizens of Third World nations who are thrilled to be paid at all.

Here on Realrates.com we have seen our traffic almost double in the past few months, suggesting that there are lots of you out there looking for contract work, while the number of weekly rate contributions have dropped by 25% and the number of weekly contributions has increased by about the same percentage.

How long can this go on? Opinions differ. Contracting has long been a cyclical pursuit, and we have just completed several boom years. So it may take a while. But eventually the market bounces back. Meanwhile, those with rare skill sets will still find top dollar contracts, and the rest of the population of experienced long term contractors will do whatever they have to do to stay working, which sometimes means taking shorter jobs or lower rates than they might prefer,

Discuss this and other contracting and consulting trends on our BBS

The Realcontracts Database is Reborn!

In response to your requests, we've moved the Realcontracts job Database to this site. Post descriptions of your open contracts and jobs here. Posting is free, but if you fill the job using this service, we ask for a $50 shareware fee.

Details can be found at http://www.realrates.com/realcontracts.htm.

JANUARY 2000 Real Rate Survey Report and JANUARY 2000 Real Salary Survey Report
Now Available!

These brand new reports analyze the rate and salary data we collected here on the Real Rate Survey and Real Salary Survey between July 1, 1999 and December 31, 1999. These report includes our first ever look at how rate correlates with immigration status. For more details visit our Rate Analysis Page and our Salary Analysis Page.

Changes to Our 2000 Surveys

We've made some minor changes to our surveys for the new year.

• The "Length" field in the Salary Survey now collects information about length of time at employer, NOT length of time at salary level as was the case in the 1999 survey.
• We've split out the E-Commerce and Web Site Design industries into two separate industries.
• We've added "Operations" to the Salary Survey and Rate Survey Jobs/Tasks field and "Recruiter" to the Salary Survey Job description field. So many people included "operations" or "operator" in their skills description that we were able to break out operations as a separate job class on our January 2000 Real Rate Survey.

Survey Downloads are now Shareware

As always, you can search a full year's worth of data online from both our surveys for free. But we have now converted the complete Real Rate Survey and Real Salary Survey database downloads into shareware products. You'll find more information about these downloads at the Download Page. If you have questions, please email us at rates@realrates.com

Is the Contract Market Finally Picking Up?

Drop by our Computer Consultants BBS to discuss the demand for your current technical skills, the best ways to improve your skills, and your skirmishes with recruiters. Is the job market picking up now that Y2K has finally arrived? Discuss clients, contracts, and just about anything else you can think of pertaining to contracting and consulting on this busy board.

Find A Consultant in our Consultants Directory!

Looking for computer talent to help in your business? Trying to track down high quality specialized consultants who don't list themselves in consulting firm-oriented databases? You've come to the right place. Our new Computer Consultants Directory features detailed profiles of high caliber, highly experienced consultants. Best of all, clients can search this database for free!

You'll find many time-saving features: you can search by date of availability, location, technical specialties and by the tax status under which the consultants prefers to work as well as by credentials and industry. Narrow down your search and find the consultants you need now!

Our Consultants Directory Builds a Permanent Web Page for Consultants

Consultants, here's a sophisticated, high-quality alternative to "casts of thousands" broker listing boards that result in a torrent of broker spam. Our Consultants Directory gives you the opportunity to build a permanent, search-engine friendly web page that provides potential clients with your resume, your availability, and pertinent facts such as the rate you are looking for, your preferred tax status and whether or not you will work with brokers and consulting firms.

You create your web page by filling in a simple form. You can easily include your photo or a logo, as well as a link to another web page. You can then update your page as often as you like so that the information will remain timely and useful.

Potential clients can find you using our sophisticated database search. You know the quality of the people who populate our site and our very busy BBS. Now you can give them the kind of detailed information about your abilities that should get the phone ringing.

For more details visit our Computer Consultants Directory Information Page.

Introduce Yourself on our BBS

We've added a new section to our BBS where you can introduce yourself and describe your own career. The postings so far reveal that our BBS regulars are a highly experienced group with lots of intriguing past business experience. Whether they were programming in BAL in 1964 or serving as executives of multimillion dollar companies these consultants have been around. Check out our new section and then visit the rest of the BBS to explore the wealth of consulting dilemmas and advice posted there.

Computerworld Reviews Answers for Computer Contractors

You can read the entire June 21 review at Computerworld's Career Books Page We are very pleased!

How Our Surveys Work

We are getting an increasing amount of email asking us to "please add rates for [your specialty goes here] to your survey." However, the way our survey works, the only rates that get added to it are the rates that working contractors contribute using our Survey Form. If people in certain specialties do not send us rates, there is no way we can get rate information about that specialty for our survey.

By the same token, if you can't find the rate information you are looking for using our Survey Search emailing us will not help. All our rates are viewable using the search.

Because are rates are not solicited from managers or extracted with bribes of free hardware (like those of competing surveys) they are likely to be more accurate than those found on competing surveys. But because they come only from unprompted contractor contributions it is important that those of you who appreciate the Real Rate Survey remember to contribute your rates and that you tell other contractors about the survey so that they will contribute too!

Insecure Link added for Ordering

We've added an insecure order page for those of you who can't use secure servers because of firewalls, etc.. You'll find a link to the insecure page on our regular ORDER page. The insecure page also includes a link to let you pay for your Consultants Directory listing insecurely.

Our Main URL is http://www.realrates.com Please Check Your Bookmarks!

If you found this site using the URL http://www.javanet.com/~technion/ please note that this URL is a mirror site that links into our main site at http://www.realrates.com. Both URLS work now, however, we would like to phase out the mirror site. So please update your bookmarks!

If you are a W-2 contractor, please contribute your rates to our Rate Survey not the Salary Survey! The Salary Survey is only for reporting jobs that pay an annual salary, not for W-2 work that pays by the hour. Report all W-2 hourly rates to the Rate Survey. We have been having to throw out a couple of hourly rates each week because they were sent to the Salary survey. We can't just move these contributions to the Rate survey because the Salary Survey collects a different set of data.

How useful is our data?

Here's a sample of some of the feedback we've been getting of late: "Your web site, really opened my eyes to the contract/consulting business, going rates, opinions of other consultants, etc. I am confident, it helped me set my "real" rate, negotiate with my recruiters effectively, and land a great position and salary!"

We're also getting a steadily growing number of orders for our Real Rate Survey Report from HR departments and consulting firms, which suggests that they are being influenced by our findings too! So keep on sending us data!

Tips on Working Outside of the US

We've added some thoughts about working outside of the US on our Tips and Gotchas page. If you have more to add on this very interesting subject, contribute your ideas via the bulletin board.

Send email to Janet Ruhl or TECHNION Books.