this post was submitted on 04 May 2026
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Maybe that's the monthly pay
If do contract work that's not even that much
True, then insurance and no time off or other benefits would suck.
It's only "no time off" if that's what you want. It's time off whenever you want (and sometimes when you don't want).
Accurate. Source: 20 years solo.
Contract work is rarely direct deposit, though?
US banking is weird. How would it be paid instead?
I've never hired a software consultant, but most of the time when I hire a company or person to do contract work like roofing, gardening or similar they prefer to be paid by check. Sometimes they accept credit cards, but usually not when the bill is over a certain amount, due to the cut going to the card company.
Furthermore, "Direct Deposit" is basically a special term used for people getting their wages or salary paid to their bank account, as opposed to receiving it by check or cash. Other types of bank-to-bank transfers have different names, like "wire transfer" or "ACH transfer".
Americans love overcomplicating things in general, and particularly love using overly specific and technical names for stuff. There's acronyms everywhere, and things are named after weird technicalities. Like nobody says "retirement account", they call it "401(k)", named after the paragraph in the law which defines it.
You find stuff like that everywhere if you look. Some of their coins don't even have a value printed on them, you just have to memorize how much they're worth.
In Europe (maybe also elsewhere outside the US?) nearly all transactions are simply direct bank transactions. Occasionally facilitated through some app, but usually it's just your own bank's app. Nobody has used checks for decades, and the only reason we're using credit cards is because the US keeps forcing them on us.
Plus they are not even logically ordered by size or anything.
As a plus, I can greatly confuse and terrify an Irish person by telling them about the thousands I send "to the old IRA" every year. 😂
Depends on how you do ur billing but yeah it varies
A month!? I know it's regional but that's low for a monthly deposit for a contractor!
You're not accounting for taxes and insurance. You lose way more to both as a self employed individual (at least here in the states)
If you're a self employed contractor, you're taking taxes and insurance out yourself, not from what you'd be paid.
Exactly. When I was self employed, my monthly invoice was almost always in the 5 figures. From that you pay your VAT every quarter, save up for income taxes, pay all sorts of insurances, and what you've got left is a lot less, but the initial transfer looks very good.
I'm not really sure what your point is. If I bill my guy 8k for the hours I did last month he sends me 8k. I then personally have to buy my own insurance and do my quarterly taxes
Right, which would happen after the direct deposit, so your entire tangent about taxes and insurance seems irrelevant to the meme and conversation involving the amount in the meme.
Reread the thread mate. If you already know that contractos charge more then you shouldn't be this confused
You're the one that needs to reread. For real.
It's crazy how missing a single word can spiral out like this. My b y'all
Nah, that’s a normal paycheck for a medium level engineer in any American big city.
Nay, daily.
Yeah that’s a very big monthly pay
$150,000/yr (yes big, less than median for software engineers in the US) is $2k/week, $8k/month
Edit: $2k/week after taxes because direct deposit is the context of this discussion
8k/month is 96k/year. Just multiply by 12
How dare you question his math?! He gets paid 96k /150k for that!
this is about a deposit so it’s take home
401k etc makes this fuzzy
Direct deposit is after taxes. Bi-weekly or weekly deposit is the most common.
They said the US. Ao mathing is hard.
Take home vs before taxes are very different numbers
What
I’m moving there the second the orange guy gets thrown out of the White House
$2k/month is considered a very good salary in my country
Btw how does 8k/ month make 150k/year? Do you get bonuses or shares or whatever? I heard that they give shares to employees in the US
As far as I know, $150K isn't less than the median for software engineers in the entire US . It is less than the median for Senior/Lead Software Engineers though, so maybe that still works for you. In a HCOL city, you likely get far more than this amount, but it wouldn't go nearly as far obviously.
If it's direct deposit, the $6k is probably for a two week pay period. That's the standard for most corporations in the US. Withholdings, including taxes and retirement accounts and health insurance, is going to take roughly 1/3, so this guy is making $9k x 26 = ~$235k (probably more like $250k/yr).
That's not less than median in the US. That's in the upper half, probably upper third of software salaries. Silicon valley shit really warps perspectives.
no it's not. at least where i live, it's considered poor.