I agree with most of your points here. I added unnecessary complexity to the problem of tracking time and getting paid. I decided to bill for every documented m

I agree with most of your points here. I added unnecessary complexity to the problem of tracking time and getting paid. I decided to bill for every documented minute. There was no requirement from the clients. Totally my decision. Looking back, if I had to do it again I would bill a day rate and/or set a monthly minimum billable rate to compensate for the constant availability. The job did introduce lots of stress at times and interfered with a normal life. The only saving thing here is that I set my own rate, controlled my own hours to a large extent, and tried to capture payment for every bit of time spent working with them. I also had the opportunity to work with the latest generation hardware, debug the latest software to run it, and troubleshoot problems in real time when it was deployed and time critical to understand failure modes and quantify success. The job had its benefits outside of the money.