3 ms·
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 pe
by 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 agoThat'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 agoIt 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 agoThe 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?