Passion vs. Money

GLOBALTRAVELER
Fri, 06 Aug 2010 16:01:27 +0000

GlobalTraveler, billable rates aren’t that informative unless you have a good grasp of the business organization of these engineers. How many hours do they have to spend arranging business? Do they have people working for them that are salaried? What’s their overhead? Can they realistically work and charge 40 hours a week? Do they need to carry insurance in order to operate?(like doctors, lawyers, CPA’s, etc)?



They can conduct themselves as a S-Corp and/or LLC and be a business on one employee. Of course, they have to have a stellar past work history and willing to take the risk of having their contract ended at anytime. They are independent contractors acting as subcontractors. They are basically cutting out the “middle man” which would be working for the defense corporations like Boeing, Northrop Grumman, CSC, Lockheed, etc.

The insurance part would be that their is company incorporated as an LLC. They can definitely charge 40 hours a week. If they choose, they can hire others to work for them but usually a new employee working for a company that small would ask for more money because the benefits are not as good as the Boeings, Lockheeds, etc. I know myself, I have a different asking price between small start-ups and big corporations.

Now for myself, I will admit that I am not too risky and hid under a big corporation when the economy went down.

I guess the MAIN thing I should have said is that you need a top-secret security clearance with a polygraph to do business with the INTEL agencies.