Getting into contract programming

I saw an ad locally where a shop was looking for contract labor to do a couple programs. This got me to thinkin, what does it take to set yourself up doing contract work like that?

Obviously, need valid access to legitimate software.
Solidworks and Gibbs/Mastercam/pick your flavor.

The stuff I dont know much about..

Where do you start on hourly rate? Job pays based on quote, not on actual hours invested.

depends on the machine and the job, some of it can be handcoded about as easily. Depends on the part.

I haven't responded to the ad yet, so I dont know many of the particulars. All that was indicated was that the part was going into a full 4 axis Haas mill, but no indication of whether or not the part would involve any 4 axis work or not. I would presume it is, at the very least 3+1 stuff on the part, else why mention the full 4 axis machine.

For the moment the question was more academic than 'what do I quote for this job I have not seen the print for'. Thank you for your response !

'I saw an ad locally where a shop was looking for contract labor to do a couple programs. This got me to thinkin, what does it take to set yourself up doing contract work like that?'

Probably a lot more than just a couple of jobs to make it worthwhile. Spend money on a CAM program and you'd have to be making a $1000 a week for four months just to pay for it. Now you want to be legimate so you have to get general liability insurance and if someone is going to let you play with their 100K+ machine maybe some kind of additional coverage or bond might be prudent. Now you also have to pay self-employment tax and with a 'consulting' type job you'll have next to nothing in deductions...assuming you ever make enough money to pay tax.

I hear this topic come up every so often and it grabs the attention of people who like the idea of 'business' or working for themselves, but have little or no money to invest.

With contract programming, you need a cutomer with a long term contract, which then basically amounts to temporary employment. Small customers that are looking for someone to program just one part are hardly worth the effort as you need to find 3-4 customers like that a week. Is that realistic? I don't know, but I have my doubts. A guy like that may just be better off loking for someone to moonlight a couple jobs for some extra cash.

A programmer around here will make in the range of $25/hr every day with no investment required, less tax to pay, and a hell of a lot less variability in income. Weigh that out.

For a product I have devloped, I hired a moonlighting C# developer to write a software interface between the electronics and PC and also have some data processing capability. This guy is GOOD. He charged me $60/hr, but with all the work he put into it I know it probably wasn't more than $25 or so.

'Starting a business' is the easy part. Making it into a viable activity that supports you and others is the challenge.

Thanks, I hadnt considered some of those angles. And no, I was not going to run out and quit my job to pursue something like this.

This has been brought up many a time here, your competition will be the guy using pirated software or the guy doing it with purchased software at work on his employer's dime.

I started doing something close to what you are asking about a good 25 years ago.
It involves doing your own recordkeeping for taxes, pre-paying taxes, knowing what expenses to take, constantly keeping a lookout for job opportunities, etc, etc.
I do very little contract programming, I am totally self employed teaching shops to do CNC programming all by themselves.
Its tough, you have to be really good at your job to find customers, almost all of my jobs came from CNC dealers that knew me, usually from the recommendation of another dealer.
And as most of you know, before a dealer parts with his hard earned money, he has to be desperate, or believe that your service will help him to get repeat sales.
Once you have a job, you need to teach all parts of CNC turning and milling.
Fixturing, figuring speeds and feeds and depth of cuts, math to figure partshapes, simple programming, the canned Cycles, subprograms and on and on.
Once you are working, you still need to find the next job, if you can not do all this, get a regular job and I have thought about that many, many times.
We put 3 kids through college, so it worked out for me.
Its a really toug job, but it has been really exciting and a lot of fun.
In case any of you want to learn more, I have all my skills on my CNC DVDs and also as examples on my website: doccnc.com
Heinz Putz

Heinz, Thank you for keeping the faith.