3 ms·

1 datapoint: I was doing 15-20hr/wk consulting the past few years and making as much as my FT CTO/COO position now and the stress of constant sourcing definitel

1 datapoint: I was doing 15-20hr/wk consulting the past few years and making as much as my FT CTO/COO position now and the stress of constant sourcing definitely was stressful (but the extra hours and lifestyle of commandeering your schedule/location was a third dimension to optimize).

elliotec 11y ago
How did you make that much? How often did you have to source contacts and how many did you take at a time, and for how long? I'm trying to do similar and am absorbing any input I can about this.
- askafriend 11y ago
  If I had to guess, he probably billed by the hour at a certain rate and estimated timeframe but got the work done orders of magnitude faster so his effective per hour rate is orders of magnitude higher. E.g I tell you I am $50 an hour and the task will reasonably take 10 hours. However what you don't know is that I am extremely skilled at the task and have done it many times before so I can get it done faster than anyone else. I have frameworks already set up, and a lot of boiler plate infra from previous projects. So I get it done in 1hr. I am now effectively making $500 an hour.
  - nathan_f77 11y ago
    That's pretty dishonest. I would never charge like that. I would rather be completely upfront with a client and charge them $500 per hour for 1 hour, if I know that I can get it done that fast, and it's really providing that much value.
    - wutbrodo 11y ago
      It seems like the gap between your two ways of thinking mostly stems from how silly "hours worked" is as a measure of work done. You're of course right to be skeptical of being dishonest about the number of hours worked, but he has a point as well: it makes no sense to get paid less for a job simply because you're more productive (and make no mistake, most clients would lower the total price of the same task based on your ability to complete it in fewer hours).
    - binarysolo 11y ago
      The way people typically do it is charge by value of project -- "this component is worth X dollars". Businesses want to solve problems costing D-dollars in T-time for themselves. They couldn't care less if you spent 1 vs 10 hours on it if they can't do it themselves, so why bother oversharing your time expenditure?
- binarysolo 11y ago
  I'm a machine learning specialist tackling interesting/complex problems of a certain worth. There is definitely an "applying the ML hammer to every single nail/problem" thing going as well. Example: say a company with 1B in revenue and 500M in costs: being able to give them 10% efficiency or 5% increase in revenue through optimization is a 50M value prop to them. So to spend 5M to achieve those extra $s is entirely worth it. Of course doing things that result in that optimization are nontrivial as well, but that's what people pay me for. :) The 15-20hrs a week thing is often a client constraint, because I'd ask for data and what not and would have to wait for them to provide me with what I ask for, or that their data has issues and I need to understand how to sanitize it.

elliotec 11y ago

How did you make that much? How often did you have to source contacts and how many did you take at a time, and for how long? I'm trying to do similar and am absorbing any input I can about this.

askafriend 11y ago
If I had to guess, he probably billed by the hour at a certain rate and estimated timeframe but got the work done orders of magnitude faster so his effective per hour rate is orders of magnitude higher. E.g I tell you I am $50 an hour and the task will reasonably take 10 hours. However what you don't know is that I am extremely skilled at the task and have done it many times before so I can get it done faster than anyone else. I have frameworks already set up, and a lot of boiler plate infra from previous projects. So I get it done in 1hr. I am now effectively making $500 an hour.
- nathan_f77 11y ago
  That's pretty dishonest. I would never charge like that. I would rather be completely upfront with a client and charge them $500 per hour for 1 hour, if I know that I can get it done that fast, and it's really providing that much value.
  - wutbrodo 11y ago
    It seems like the gap between your two ways of thinking mostly stems from how silly "hours worked" is as a measure of work done. You're of course right to be skeptical of being dishonest about the number of hours worked, but he has a point as well: it makes no sense to get paid less for a job simply because you're more productive (and make no mistake, most clients would lower the total price of the same task based on your ability to complete it in fewer hours).
  - binarysolo 11y ago
    The way people typically do it is charge by value of project -- "this component is worth X dollars". Businesses want to solve problems costing D-dollars in T-time for themselves. They couldn't care less if you spent 1 vs 10 hours on it if they can't do it themselves, so why bother oversharing your time expenditure?
binarysolo 11y ago
I'm a machine learning specialist tackling interesting/complex problems of a certain worth. There is definitely an "applying the ML hammer to every single nail/problem" thing going as well. Example: say a company with 1B in revenue and 500M in costs: being able to give them 10% efficiency or 5% increase in revenue through optimization is a 50M value prop to them. So to spend 5M to achieve those extra $s is entirely worth it. Of course doing things that result in that optimization are nontrivial as well, but that's what people pay me for. :) The 15-20hrs a week thing is often a client constraint, because I'd ask for data and what not and would have to wait for them to provide me with what I ask for, or that their data has issues and I need to understand how to sanitize it.