J., senior Rails developer (US East Coast)
Currently charges $165/hour · Took 8 years to get there
Twelve years of writing code professionally. The first eight, I billed $50–80 per hour as a generalist. The last four, I narrowed to Rails-for-fintech and tripled my rate.
The positioning shift was uncomfortable. I had built a portfolio across Rails, Django, Next.js, React Native — five stacks, four industries. Saying 'I only do Rails for fintech' meant turning down work for the first six months. But the clients I picked up after that turned to me first when something complex broke in production, because there was no question about whether I'd seen the same problem before.
The other thing that changed: I stopped competing on hourly rate. My proposals now lead with case studies — three specific times I shipped something that moved the needle for a fintech company. Hourly rate is on page three. Most clients don't haggle on it because they're already sold on the case studies.
AI hasn't lowered my rate. It's made me faster, so I take fewer concurrent engagements and charge more per engagement.
What they pitch
“I'm a Rails specialist for fintech companies. Twelve years of production code, six fintech-specific case studies. If you're a fintech with a Rails monolith you need to scale or migrate, I've done that exact thing.”
What they say no to
“Non-fintech engagements, even if the pay is good. Greenfield startups under $500K ARR — not enough mature problems to need me.”
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