4 ms·

I hear what your saying but there's a whole host of other fields that seem to pull it off. Other than the fact that software is not bound by physical constraint

I hear what your saying but there's a whole host of other fields that seem to pull it off. Other than the fact that software is not bound by physical constraints, I really don't see the major differences. I think we're just fighting the "always done this way" mindset.

nickjj 8y ago
A lot of developer contract work doesn't fit into a fixed bid model. What if someone hires you as an ongoing general problem solver? I've had many contracts like this for 4-5 months where they just threw problems at me and expected me to think of a solution and then implement it. This could be anything from little scripts to make development better, ops / deployment improvements, better docs, being a 2nd set of eyes for pair programming, etc.. Something like that isn't really possible to plan out, so paying by the hour makes sense. On the other hand, I do fixed bid pricing on a lot of things when it makes sense. I sometimes even do a hybrid approach where it starts as a fixed bid and ongoing maintenance becomes hourly.
- nucleardog 8y ago
  Something I'm forced up against frequently at a company that provides fixed bids for projects and refuses to bill anything hourly: How do you determine a fixed bid for fixing or modifying an existing product you're unfamiliar with? If a client comes in and says "one out of every 50 times you load a page in this web app, it renders a blank page, how much is it going to cost to fix?" what do you say? Every hour you spend investigating or familiarizing yourself with the problem is basically just spec work with all the risk that entails. In many cases when you're "fixing" something, the project could be entirely spec work as you spend 8-16 hours determining that the problem is simply a misconfigured setting that will take 5 minutes to flip. Clients very rarely (in my experience, never) specify problems to a degree sufficient to create a concrete scope of work, and they're not going to pay you hourly to do so. If I take my car to a mechanic and say "it makes a funny rattle sound, how much will that cost to fix?" he's not going to give me a fixed bid.
  - nickjj 8y ago
    The more unfamiliar it is, the more inclined I would be to use hourly billing. In your blank page example I would bill by the hour.

nickjj 8y ago

A lot of developer contract work doesn't fit into a fixed bid model. What if someone hires you as an ongoing general problem solver? I've had many contracts like this for 4-5 months where they just threw problems at me and expected me to think of a solution and then implement it. This could be anything from little scripts to make development better, ops / deployment improvements, better docs, being a 2nd set of eyes for pair programming, etc.. Something like that isn't really possible to plan out, so paying by the hour makes sense. On the other hand, I do fixed bid pricing on a lot of things when it makes sense. I sometimes even do a hybrid approach where it starts as a fixed bid and ongoing maintenance becomes hourly.

nucleardog 8y ago
Something I'm forced up against frequently at a company that provides fixed bids for projects and refuses to bill anything hourly: How do you determine a fixed bid for fixing or modifying an existing product you're unfamiliar with? If a client comes in and says "one out of every 50 times you load a page in this web app, it renders a blank page, how much is it going to cost to fix?" what do you say? Every hour you spend investigating or familiarizing yourself with the problem is basically just spec work with all the risk that entails. In many cases when you're "fixing" something, the project could be entirely spec work as you spend 8-16 hours determining that the problem is simply a misconfigured setting that will take 5 minutes to flip. Clients very rarely (in my experience, never) specify problems to a degree sufficient to create a concrete scope of work, and they're not going to pay you hourly to do so. If I take my car to a mechanic and say "it makes a funny rattle sound, how much will that cost to fix?" he's not going to give me a fixed bid.
- nickjj 8y ago
  The more unfamiliar it is, the more inclined I would be to use hourly billing. In your blank page example I would bill by the hour.