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I finally looked up what my old boss paid me vs. what he billed clients | Dreams We Left Behind - Thought Shares

I finally looked up what my old boss paid me vs. what he billed clients

Last week I was going through old tax documents and decided to run the numbers. I found out my boss was charging clients $150 an hour for my work while paying me $18. That was back in 2018 when I was doing web design for a small agency in Portland. I knew there was a gap but seeing it as a straight number surprised me. It made me wonder how that dream of freelancing on my own might have worked out if I had started earlier. Has anyone else gone back and checked what they were actually worth in a past job?

3 comments

3 Comments

jamie9403mo ago

Oh, "$150 an hour for my work while paying me $18" really hits home. I did something similar a few years back with a consulting gig where I was billing clients $200 an hour but taking home $22. Seeing that number on paper made me feel like I was the one being billed for the privilege of working there. It's a good reminder that if you're doing the work, you're probably worth more than you're getting paid, even if the boss is taking a cut for overhead.

milam483mo ago

Oh man, "$150 an hour for my work while paying me $18" - that number is brutal. It reminds me of when I worked at a coffee shop and found out the owner was charging $6 for a latte I made that cost like 50 cents in ingredients. I spent the whole shift doing math in my head about how many lattes equaled my paycheck. But the weird thing was, I also saw the power bill for the shop and realized that markup kept the lights on and the espresso machine fixed. Still stings though, especially when you're the one making the product and someone else is pocketing the difference.

sage3083mo ago

Portland in 2018, huh? I've got some thoughts on this, @jamie940. That $150 an hour your boss charged - did that include software licenses, hosting fees, project management time, sales costs, and the risk of clients who didn't pay? I can tell you from running numbers on my own side projects that overhead eats up way more than people think. That $18 an hour was for your labor only. The boss had to cover rent for an office, payroll taxes, health insurance, and probably spent a lot of unpaid hours finding those clients in the first place. Sometimes the gap between what a client pays and what an employee gets is just basic business math. Not saying bosses are saints, but that markup keeps the whole thing from falling apart.