this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2025
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Corporations: "Employees are too expensive!"
Also, corporations: "$100k/yr for a bot? Sure."
There's a lot of other expenses with an employee (like payroll taxes, benefits, retirement plans, health plan if they're in the USA, etc), but you could find a self-employed freelancer for example.
Or just get an employee anyways because you'll still likely have a positive ROI. A good developer will take your abstract list of vague requirements and produce something useful and maintainable.
the employee also gets to eat and have a place to live
which is nice
Most of those expenses are mitigated by the fact that companies buy them in bulk on huge plans. As a freelance contractor myself, I pay a lot more for insurance than I did when I worked for a company. And a retirement plan? Benefits? Lol.
There's no bulk rate on payroll taxes or retirement benefits (pensions or employer 401k match). There can be some discounts on health insurance, but is not very much and those are at orders of magnitude. So company with 500 employees will pay the same rates as 900. You get partial discounts if you have something like 10,000 employees.
If you're earning $100k gross as an employee, your employer is spending $125k to $140k for their total costs (your $100k gross pay is included in that number).
Large companies also make massive profits because of the scale they work on. Matching 401(k) contributions? It doesn’t need to be an order of magnitude larger for it to make a huge difference. Simply doubling my 401(k) is a big deal.
And of course they get a “ball rate“ on payroll taxes, especially for companies who have over 1000 employees or over 5000 over 10,000. They experienced this by having a lower tax rate for larger businesses.
Not to mention that they often pay more and pay a steady wage due to the fact they can afford it. Freelance contractors make less, and work isn’t guaranteed to be steady.
Businesses, particularly word businesses, operate on much larger profit margins than most of any freelance contractor.
These comparisons assume equal capability, which I find troubling.
Like, a person who doesn't understand singing nor are able to learn it can not perform adequately in a musical. It doesn't matter if they are cheaper.
They could hire on a contractor and eschew all those costs.
I’ve done contract work before, this seems a good fit (defined problem plus budget, unknown timeline, clear requirements)
That's what I meant by hiring a self-employed freelancer. I don't know a lot about contracting so maybe I used the wrong phrase.
It looked more like a one time development expense, instead of an ongoing salary.
Bots don't need healthcare