4 ms·

I'm genuinely curious: what is the difference between hourly and daily/weekly rates?

by the_af 3y ago

Keyframe 3y ago
Discount
MassiveBonk51 3y ago
Less granular time tracking for both parties.
ozim 3y ago
Mostly that you don’t have to haggle over hours or 30mins here or there. If you do daily or weekly you don’t register time in 15mins increments to later argue with the client.
- the_af 3y ago
  So it's basically to avoid time micromanagement? A solid advantage, I'll admit, but I don't think that's the main thing TFA takes issue with.
tptacek 3y ago
In one case, you bill for each hour you work; in another, you bill for any day in which you did work.
- the_af 3y ago
  Yes, I understand that. What I mean is, how does it address the problems highlighted in the article? It seems to me there's no fundamental difference for the context of this article; it's still flat rate vs unit-of-time based work, isn't it?
  - tptacek 3y ago
    The longer the unit of time, the less pressure there is for either side to micromanage the work, or to avoid time-saving optimizations, or to invoice random conversations that could lead to new business, or to cram multiple clients into a single day when that's not what you want to be doing. I've written a lot about this on Hacker News over the years; like, a lot a lot. Here's a starting point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6105004 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6105004 I don't think anybody in our field should ever be billing hourly. Day/week/month/quarter vs. flat rate? We can go back and forth on. Just don't do hourly. This comment is I think too subtle to lead off with, but it's the essence of where I'm coming from on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4103207 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4103207 (I have had some moderate success with this approach, which makes this a rare case in which my confidence in arguing something here has at least some colorable basis in reality.)
    - swader999 3y ago
      This makes sense but I've never been taken to task for hours and many of my clients charge me out to their end clients for hours I submit. The other advantage is that hourly tracking gives me data to predict better what new features of similar complexity will cost. Certainly not an amateur capability.
      - tptacek 3y ago
        You're free to do your own internal projections about the number of hours your features will take. Simply round them up to the nearest whole number of days, and present that to your customer.
        swader999 3y ago
        Hourly estimating takes too much time and it never gives useful numbers even with various padding schemes when estimating innovative sw development. Cookie cutter web sites or repetitive work that you've done for multiple clients is easy to fix bid but I don't do that sort of work. I just say this has a complexity of 1,3,5,8 or 'too big to say'. Each feature is a 1-15 minute conversation to get this number. Then they ask well how much time is that? I then answer "We have three months of velocity data, x points per developer per week accepted into production over the last ten weeks so those five new points for that feature will take one developer 4.1 days to complete with a variance of plus or minus 1.8 days. If you need better precision, we can take a day or two to really break down the work and get the uncertainty to at best a ten percent variance.
TuringNYC 3y ago
>> I'm genuinely curious: what is the difference between hourly and daily/weekly rates? Clients start haggling on a hour by hour basis sometimes. Some want to review tasks and how long each took and whether the hours add up. Sometimes, it takes so long to figure out the conclusion of the haggling, that you've already lost 2 or 3 hours of non-billable time on the haggling itself. With weekly billing, the haggling is reduced.

I'm genuinely curious: what is the difference between hourly and daily/weekly rates?

by the_af 3y ago

I'm genuinely curious: what is the difference between hourly and daily/weekly rates?

Keyframe 3y ago

Discount

MassiveBonk51 3y ago

Less granular time tracking for both parties.

ozim 3y ago

Mostly that you don’t have to haggle over hours or 30mins here or there. If you do daily or weekly you don’t register time in 15mins increments to later argue with the client.

the_af 3y ago
So it's basically to avoid time micromanagement? A solid advantage, I'll admit, but I don't think that's the main thing TFA takes issue with.

tptacek 3y ago

In one case, you bill for each hour you work; in another, you bill for any day in which you did work.

the_af 3y ago
Yes, I understand that. What I mean is, how does it address the problems highlighted in the article? It seems to me there's no fundamental difference for the context of this article; it's still flat rate vs unit-of-time based work, isn't it?
- tptacek 3y ago
  The longer the unit of time, the less pressure there is for either side to micromanage the work, or to avoid time-saving optimizations, or to invoice random conversations that could lead to new business, or to cram multiple clients into a single day when that's not what you want to be doing. I've written a lot about this on Hacker News over the years; like, a lot a lot. Here's a starting point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6105004 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6105004 I don't think anybody in our field should ever be billing hourly. Day/week/month/quarter vs. flat rate? We can go back and forth on. Just don't do hourly. This comment is I think too subtle to lead off with, but it's the essence of where I'm coming from on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4103207 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4103207 (I have had some moderate success with this approach, which makes this a rare case in which my confidence in arguing something here has at least some colorable basis in reality.)
  - swader999 3y ago
    This makes sense but I've never been taken to task for hours and many of my clients charge me out to their end clients for hours I submit. The other advantage is that hourly tracking gives me data to predict better what new features of similar complexity will cost. Certainly not an amateur capability.
    - tptacek 3y ago
      You're free to do your own internal projections about the number of hours your features will take. Simply round them up to the nearest whole number of days, and present that to your customer.
      - swader999 3y ago
        Hourly estimating takes too much time and it never gives useful numbers even with various padding schemes when estimating innovative sw development. Cookie cutter web sites or repetitive work that you've done for multiple clients is easy to fix bid but I don't do that sort of work. I just say this has a complexity of 1,3,5,8 or 'too big to say'. Each feature is a 1-15 minute conversation to get this number. Then they ask well how much time is that? I then answer "We have three months of velocity data, x points per developer per week accepted into production over the last ten weeks so those five new points for that feature will take one developer 4.1 days to complete with a variance of plus or minus 1.8 days. If you need better precision, we can take a day or two to really break down the work and get the uncertainty to at best a ten percent variance.

TuringNYC 3y ago

>> I'm genuinely curious: what is the difference between hourly and daily/weekly rates? Clients start haggling on a hour by hour basis sometimes. Some want to review tasks and how long each took and whether the hours add up. Sometimes, it takes so long to figure out the conclusion of the haggling, that you've already lost 2 or 3 hours of non-billable time on the haggling itself. With weekly billing, the haggling is reduced.