That was my thought too. General rule of thumb for independent contracting is that you should take the annual salary you would normally make and chop off the zeroes to get the hourly rate. So 150K/yr becomes $150/hr. That’s about double the yearly salary and pays for your increased costs (payroll tax, healthcare, retirement, vacation) as well as your bench time between jobs.

Additionally, the going rate for an interim CTO was about $50K/month last time I checked, which doesn’t get you 40 hrs / week, so is north of $600/hr.