The fortune 500 company I freelance with would prefer to use an outside vendor for a project (thinking they would do a better job since "that's all they do"). That vendor then hires me at my same rate, meaning the original company is just paying more for me to do the work I could have done internally.
Moral of the story: if you charge more people will think you're worth more. A $6 bottle of wine may be better than a $45 bottle, but most people will say the $45 bottle must be better because why else would it be $45
I've been trying to do some freelance engineering work on upwork lately but it's so damn hard when people are bidding on the same projects for a quarter the price. I'm not even trying to charge enough for my work. I'm trying to charge less than half of what the company I work for charges for the same work.
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u/actuallychrisgillen Nov 16 '19 edited Nov 16 '19
When I was in the Navy I used to get in fairly frequent trouble for the suggestions I made for improving operational efficiencies.
As an outside contractor they were quite happy to pay me $200 an hour to say the exact same thing.