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Well, I found this article insightful, even if I've no plans of going freelancer (though of course... "life, uh, finds a way", so who knows). I think my most i

by the_af 3y ago

Well, I found this article insightful, even if I've no plans of going freelancer (though of course... "life, uh, finds a way", so who knows). I think my most immediate objection is one that is raised in the comments from TFA: customers don't know what they want. For a flat rate to apply, you have to work to an initial set of requirements set in stone, and we know these requirements are almost always wrong (except for very specific cases), so either your customers will try to do feature creep or they'll accept the initial specs and be disappointed, and probably blame this on you.

atoav 3y ago
As a freelancer I always told my customers how many hours I plan to work for them, including a rough overview of how much time we use at which phase of the project and what is expected of them. And I do that before I agree to work for them.
- the_af 3y ago
  Interesting. Wouldn't that require a firm understanding of the project scope and a steady hand at rejecting any attempts at feature creep or redefining the scope (with the politeness required for not losing them as customers)? In other words, wouldn't this scoping and pre-planning go against the latest findings of lowercase agile?
  - atoav 3y ago
    That depends entirely on the type of projects you are known for (read: are willing to take). Some software projects agreeably will be next to impossible to estimate, others not so much. That being said I always bill per day of work, rarely ever a fixed sum (in fact only for good friends that are poor artists). So if the scope changes and there are more days, they know my rate and it will be their decision if they want to pay for that. Also they will have the insecurity of me not having time because I work on other things — risks that I clearly communicate before they agree to have me. I expect a certain amount of changes and feiction that is included in my original estimate, so this "extension" period is rarely ever needed and when I am faster the customer has to pay less than they expected which typically makes them happy. It doesn't always work that flawlessly, but it was never catastrophic and my customers value the up-front clarity.
calvinmorrison 3y ago
Then you finally do all the research and they reject your quote. The most valuable part of my job is typically the engineering or architecting not writing the code. Depending on the client we do T&M or quotes but we never do free research. Well do a short proposal to quote you a big proposal
- ghaff 3y ago
  >Well do a short proposal to quote you a big proposal Did that for a pretty large client project once. Basically brainstormed/did some research to pick out some technology areas they might be interested in and why. Then did a bigger project to dive deeper into areas, conduct interviews, etc. that resonated with them.
  - calvinmorrison 3y ago
    It works well. And if they don't want to use us as the programmers, no problem, we deliver a document at the end of the first with recommend designs etc they can tak else where. T
sudhirj 3y ago
If someone's a pro, they'd charge a flat rate to tell the customers what they need, or for a given outcome. Like a flat rate to spec out an MVP. Or to get to $X in revenue.
- travisjungroth 3y ago
  A flat rate to hit a revenue target? That seems incredibly unrealistic.
Aurornis 3y ago
> customers don't know what they want. It's not always like this. I've used contractors to take on extra work that we were familiar with, but didn't have time for. We knew exactly what we want because we'd done it multiple times before and had already written a clear spec. The eye-opening thing was that this actually scared a lot of fixed-bid contractors away. As soon as they realized that we knew the task and had the option of doing it internally (on a longer timeframe) they became less interested in working with us. When I started playing dumb and pretending like we didn't have the experience in-house, I got some wiiild bids for how long it would take. Some of the contract shops who had clearly done this before tried to pretend that we were doing something new and novel that would require a lot of R&D. It was a very disappointing experience. Once of the worst contract shops was even the recommended support partner from one of our vendors.
- swader999 3y ago
  Yeah fixed bid for most sw projects just seems dishonest and not a satisfying way to work with people. And yes, I could easily make a business out of overcharging for cookie cutter type work. Speaking in generalities, there's always exceptions.

by the_af 3y ago

atoav 3y ago

As a freelancer I always told my customers how many hours I plan to work for them, including a rough overview of how much time we use at which phase of the project and what is expected of them. And I do that before I agree to work for them.

the_af 3y ago
Interesting. Wouldn't that require a firm understanding of the project scope and a steady hand at rejecting any attempts at feature creep or redefining the scope (with the politeness required for not losing them as customers)? In other words, wouldn't this scoping and pre-planning go against the latest findings of lowercase agile?
- atoav 3y ago
  That depends entirely on the type of projects you are known for (read: are willing to take). Some software projects agreeably will be next to impossible to estimate, others not so much. That being said I always bill per day of work, rarely ever a fixed sum (in fact only for good friends that are poor artists). So if the scope changes and there are more days, they know my rate and it will be their decision if they want to pay for that. Also they will have the insecurity of me not having time because I work on other things — risks that I clearly communicate before they agree to have me. I expect a certain amount of changes and feiction that is included in my original estimate, so this "extension" period is rarely ever needed and when I am faster the customer has to pay less than they expected which typically makes them happy. It doesn't always work that flawlessly, but it was never catastrophic and my customers value the up-front clarity.

calvinmorrison 3y ago

Then you finally do all the research and they reject your quote. The most valuable part of my job is typically the engineering or architecting not writing the code. Depending on the client we do T&M or quotes but we never do free research. Well do a short proposal to quote you a big proposal

ghaff 3y ago
>Well do a short proposal to quote you a big proposal Did that for a pretty large client project once. Basically brainstormed/did some research to pick out some technology areas they might be interested in and why. Then did a bigger project to dive deeper into areas, conduct interviews, etc. that resonated with them.
- calvinmorrison 3y ago
  It works well. And if they don't want to use us as the programmers, no problem, we deliver a document at the end of the first with recommend designs etc they can tak else where. T

sudhirj 3y ago

If someone's a pro, they'd charge a flat rate to tell the customers what they need, or for a given outcome. Like a flat rate to spec out an MVP. Or to get to $X in revenue.

travisjungroth 3y ago
A flat rate to hit a revenue target? That seems incredibly unrealistic.

Aurornis 3y ago

> customers don't know what they want. It's not always like this. I've used contractors to take on extra work that we were familiar with, but didn't have time for. We knew exactly what we want because we'd done it multiple times before and had already written a clear spec. The eye-opening thing was that this actually scared a lot of fixed-bid contractors away. As soon as they realized that we knew the task and had the option of doing it internally (on a longer timeframe) they became less interested in working with us. When I started playing dumb and pretending like we didn't have the experience in-house, I got some wiiild bids for how long it would take. Some of the contract shops who had clearly done this before tried to pretend that we were doing something new and novel that would require a lot of R&D. It was a very disappointing experience. Once of the worst contract shops was even the recommended support partner from one of our vendors.

swader999 3y ago
Yeah fixed bid for most sw projects just seems dishonest and not a satisfying way to work with people. And yes, I could easily make a business out of overcharging for cookie cutter type work. Speaking in generalities, there's always exceptions.