It is amazing how devs think that dollar value should equal effort. It does not. I think most consultants and contractors reach a point where this clicks. At

It is amazing how devs think that dollar value should equal effort. It does not. I think most consultants and contractors reach a point where this clicks. At first they think, well this will take me X hours, so it's worth Y dollars. Later they think, this is apparently worth X dollars to the client, so I'll bill Y dollars, where Y is way closer to X than any how-long-it-takes calculation. It's the difference between "hard work should be rewarded" and "value should be rewarded."