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While I don't think you are wrong, and that is a very common viewpoint - in my own experience I always preferred fixed price jobs - but you do need to be carefu
by ejb999 5y ago
While I don't think you are wrong, and that is a very common viewpoint - in my own experience I always preferred fixed price jobs - but you do need to be careful about the projects you choose.
I love the freedom of just building what the client asked for, without tracking my hours and billing for them. Some projects I might spend more time on them - beyond what I had estimated - just because it was a fun project, was learning something knew - or knew it was something I would be able to leverage up with for the next project.
On the other hand, sometimes projects would turn out easier than I thought, and be done in less time - and would end up making more money that I thought.
It does help if you are good at estimating - I always thought it was one of my strongest skills; rarely was I off much - but my general rule of thumb was estimate how long it would take to do, and then add 25-50% as profit margin (or buffer if I was off). Can't remember it ever turning out bad for me in a financial sense, though not all clients are nice to work with.
Always worked out OK for me, for small to medium size clients and projects - I wouldn't take on a 7 figure project on fixed price, but once you get into this sized projects - getting the project 'done' usually has many, many layers of different stakeholders who might choose to jerk you around and who are very removed from the actual delivery of the project - i.e. legal, marketing, some guy in purchasing that enjoys squeezing vendors for no reason etc; but smaller companies often you deal with 1-2 stakeholders that are easier to communicate and can make final decisions and who are happy to have the predictability of a set price.
- tonyedgecombe 5y agoI've done a couple of fixed price jobs but they were very small (a couple of weeks work) and with a client I trusted. In general I won't and I've found the more the client demands it the more I should be worried.