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Downside of this approach: Often you are quoting a super high price because you don't want the work and maybe it isn't really what you love to do or your exper

Downside of this approach: Often you are quoting a super high price because you don't want the work and maybe it isn't really what you love to do or your expertise. But the buyer assumes you have a super high price because you're the best and can charge what you're worth. End result: The buyer is unhappy with your work, because you priced as if you were a world leading expert and actually you are learning on the job and don't want to be there anyway.

MourYother 3y ago
Still a win in my book
- bumby 3y ago
  Unhappy customers coupled with high cost to the customer is probably a Pyrrhic win.
bluedino 3y ago
Isn't that how the big name consultants work? Price it out like you're getting experts from a famous firm and then send in a green team to do the work?
- FormerBandmate 3y ago
  It's also how Saul Goodman works
  - NullPrefix 3y ago
    Saul Goodman didn't outsource his lawyering. Having a paralegal secretary isn't the same as sending a green team
- ilyt 3y ago
  Or subcontract, which created one of most dystopian term in corporate, "body lending"
waisbrot 3y ago
Maybe. In my experience, a more common case is that the buyer has no way to evaluate value other than quoted price and so they're actually _much happier_ with a huge price than they would be with a smaller price for the same work.
- Aurornis 3y ago
  You think they’re happier to pay more than to pay less? I’m having a hard time believing that hypothetical. Regardless, companies that don’t know how to evaluate the value of quoted work will eventually figure out the value later. A client that that is initially happy with a price will likely become retroactively disappointed when they deal with another contractor in the future who has more realistic pricing. In my experience contracting, I’ve encountered a lot of “You paid how much for this!?” situations when dealing with work from prior contractors. Once they realize how bad and/or overpriced the work of a prior contractor was, that person’s reputation is done. Ironically, the contractor will often try to use them as references for other clients because they were initially happy.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    > You think they’re happier to pay more than to pay less? People are not rational consumers. See the Palessi story from a few years ago: https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/payless-sold-discount-shoes-at-luxury-prices-and-it-worked/ https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/payless-sold-discount-shoes... Tl;dr: Payless Shoes, a discount shoe retailer, opened a fake high-end store under the Palessi name and got fashion influencers to gush about how great the shoes were. People who actually bought such Palessi shoes probably were happier with them than if they’d bought them at Payless.
    - tough 3y ago
      1000$ wine always tastes better than 100$ one
    - ilyt 3y ago
      And https://www.odditycentral.com/news/2-70-supermarket-wine-wins-gold-medal-at-international-wine-contest.html https://www.odditycentral.com/news/2-70-supermarket-wine-win...
Aurornis 3y ago
When I look for contractors I ask around my network first. In recent years I’ve been getting more recommendations for who to avoid than who to hire. There are a lot of contractors and small agencies out there who have gotten good at selling the contract but not so good at delivering satisfactory work. Often the negative recommendations are from a situation like you described where they pitched a high price or otherwise played games to charge more and more, then delivered a bare-bones result that barely worked or struggled to deliver anything at all. The gap between the expectations of a high-priced contractor and the reality of a disappointing work product leaves a bad taste. I think a lot of these contractors operate with the mindset that customers will always be available and none of them will talk to each other or seek reference checks, but this approach suffers as the person’s reputation permeates their local industry. There are a few contractors in one niche I worked in where nearly everyone knows to avoid them, or at least to put strict oversight and micromanaging in place on their work and billing. At this point their primary audience is new startups where they can milk them for overpriced work until they catch on.
- ilyt 3y ago
  > I think a lot of these contractors operate with the mindset that customers will always be available and none of them will talk to each other or seek reference checks, but this approach suffers as the person’s reputation permeates their local industry. There are a few contractors in one niche I worked in where nearly everyone knows to avoid them, or at least to put strict oversight and micromanaging in place on their work and billing. At this point their primary audience is new startups where they can milk them for overpriced work until they catch on. Well, did they get out of business ? No? Then by captialism the approach is great working strategy...
  - creer 3y ago
    Are you arguing that there is some (other) system that solves the issue of over-selling and under-delivering? More constructively, I don't think anyone argues that there isn't (rudely speaking) a broad supply of fools waiting to be parted from their money. For the purpose of this forum the question is what can the clients (quite possible technically weak which is why they need to hire out) do to improve their odds.
jt2190 3y ago
> ... maybe it isn't really what you love to do or your expertise... And that means that you would follow the author's advice and say "no" because you know in advance that it's not your area of expertise and not what you want to do, and most importantly you haven't stated any long-term benefits of making this short-term sacrifice. Edit: emphasis
ww520 3y ago
Yes. This is a very likely problem. When I evaluate quotes on the other side, I usually weed out the highest and the lowest ones. The highest one is usually some middleman re-contracting out the work adding on his profit. Or someone like you said, just trying to price out the job instead of refusing the job honestly.
ilyt 3y ago
You can just tell them that. "That is not the type of jobs we usually do, and if we did we'd have to use a lot of time to build competency in the problem and that would've costed you a lot. You'd be better off trying X or Y contractor, that's closer to their wheelhouse" And as a bonus you'd still be considered for future work that's not that rather than being filed under "those are those super expensive guys we can't afford"
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  A friend of mine who is a plumber said he tells people this all the time, basically "this is a pretty small job and not what we normally do. If I did it, I'd have to take one of my plumbers off of this big job we're in the middle of and charge you what that is costing me, here's the number of a handyman I know who can take care of that for you"
  - p3rls 3y ago
    The plumbing company I work for charges $240 per truck for the first hour in labor and $160 after that. For those prices it's definitely worth trying to google it first.
    - fsckboy 3y ago
      >$240 per truck for the first hour in labor and $160 after that. That's a bargain! I needed a kitchen faucet replaced (the kit kind you can buy at Home Depot) in Los Angeles and was quoted "$225 per plumber and two would be required, one hour minimum" and this was not from a large plumbing contractor, but the one recommended by the condo front desk. And I got to thinking, "unless they show up with everything they need, which they haven't even asked me anything about (it's cosmetic, it needs to match the kitchen) there's no chance this is done in an hour" did it myself.
      - p3rls 3y ago
        There's no reason a non-disabled stem person should call a plumber for a faucet install unless they want to check out some plumber ass :)
gumby 3y ago
Commit to doing a good job, or at least a job that meets what you promise to the customer. Back when I did support and custom dev, our minimum price was $100K/year (back when $100K was a lot of money). Most of those contracts were fabulously profitable. But once in a while a bug would be reported that took five or even ten person-months to fix, scrambling all our other plans in the process. So what: we didn’t charge extra and didn’t complain to the customer. Led to crazy levels of customer loyalty.
- creer 3y ago
  Exactly. A high price does not necessarily promise that you have the technical solution ready to go. There is such a thing as building an understanding with the client (even if the contract text itself is more conservative). That leads to a "relationship" with some level of solid grounds for it. As opposed to a common practive of throwing a one-off contract over the wall and merely praying that this will go well.
  - ozim 3y ago
    Unfortunately this has to be 2 way street, you might want to do it properly but a lot of customers don't want to invest time. They want to have stuff done and move on so drop the money and you have to figure out how to do what they want.
    - gumby 3y ago
      Those aren’t the customers you want.
      - ozim 3y ago
        Thing is that is 90% of customers. I don't want to discuss with plumber how he is going to fit the pipes I want him done and gone from my house as soon as possible. The same with people using my software, they want to tend to their customers not spend time making my software better. Most of people don't even care about filling in bugs unless it is something that breaks their work. Lots of entrepreneur porn is about "how we get nice meetings with the customers while sipping pumpkin spice latte" ... sorry but no that is not the way world works. If you want to earn money make yourself useful and do your job in efficient way.
Brian_K_White 3y ago
No one said to LIE. It's the opposite. You quote high to inform them honestly what it would take, rather than deciding for yourself what is really their choice not yours. Your choice is to not take a job if you just don't want to or can't of course, but is not to tell anyone else what they want or what it's worth to them to get it. So as long as you don't mind doing the job fundamentally, but it's just a matter of resources or time or efficiency etc, (you're not being asked to do something you morally object to, or totally unrelated to the kind of work you want to do, or requires something like living on an oil rig for a year etc...) then you have no excuse to do anything but make your best guess at the honest estimate whatever that is however outlandish you think it is, including whatever no-promises cya terms you think should apply, and just tell them that. "It will be $200k, 4 months minimum, and you might get nothing in the end." And part of that is also giving your best honest advice about what they should actually do, and your reasoning. Some other approach that you think is better, or recommendation how to find some other supplier who could do the approach they wanted "that will require rust and high availability, so you want to look for shops that specialize in rust and high availability...", whatever. The end result is that they are the ones who decide not to do it rather than you. And if they go for it, well, considering you weren't bullshitting them but giving your honest best info, recommendation, and reasoning, you take it and do the job. If that means spending 2 months just learning a new system or language and throwing away a bunch of experiments just to get started, or hiring someone else to do some part you can't do, so be it. You put all that into the quote, and they said do it, so enjoy your big safe gig for the next while.

MourYother 3y ago

Still a win in my book

bumby 3y ago
Unhappy customers coupled with high cost to the customer is probably a Pyrrhic win.

bluedino 3y ago

Isn't that how the big name consultants work? Price it out like you're getting experts from a famous firm and then send in a green team to do the work?

FormerBandmate 3y ago
It's also how Saul Goodman works
- NullPrefix 3y ago
  Saul Goodman didn't outsource his lawyering. Having a paralegal secretary isn't the same as sending a green team
ilyt 3y ago
Or subcontract, which created one of most dystopian term in corporate, "body lending"

waisbrot 3y ago

Maybe. In my experience, a more common case is that the buyer has no way to evaluate value other than quoted price and so they're actually _much happier_ with a huge price than they would be with a smaller price for the same work.

Aurornis 3y ago
You think they’re happier to pay more than to pay less? I’m having a hard time believing that hypothetical. Regardless, companies that don’t know how to evaluate the value of quoted work will eventually figure out the value later. A client that that is initially happy with a price will likely become retroactively disappointed when they deal with another contractor in the future who has more realistic pricing. In my experience contracting, I’ve encountered a lot of “You paid how much for this!?” situations when dealing with work from prior contractors. Once they realize how bad and/or overpriced the work of a prior contractor was, that person’s reputation is done. Ironically, the contractor will often try to use them as references for other clients because they were initially happy.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  > You think they’re happier to pay more than to pay less? People are not rational consumers. See the Palessi story from a few years ago: https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/payless-sold-discount-shoes-at-luxury-prices-and-it-worked/ https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/payless-sold-discount-shoes... Tl;dr: Payless Shoes, a discount shoe retailer, opened a fake high-end store under the Palessi name and got fashion influencers to gush about how great the shoes were. People who actually bought such Palessi shoes probably were happier with them than if they’d bought them at Payless.
  - tough 3y ago
    1000$ wine always tastes better than 100$ one
  - ilyt 3y ago
    And https://www.odditycentral.com/news/2-70-supermarket-wine-wins-gold-medal-at-international-wine-contest.html https://www.odditycentral.com/news/2-70-supermarket-wine-win...

Aurornis 3y ago

When I look for contractors I ask around my network first. In recent years I’ve been getting more recommendations for who to avoid than who to hire. There are a lot of contractors and small agencies out there who have gotten good at selling the contract but not so good at delivering satisfactory work. Often the negative recommendations are from a situation like you described where they pitched a high price or otherwise played games to charge more and more, then delivered a bare-bones result that barely worked or struggled to deliver anything at all. The gap between the expectations of a high-priced contractor and the reality of a disappointing work product leaves a bad taste. I think a lot of these contractors operate with the mindset that customers will always be available and none of them will talk to each other or seek reference checks, but this approach suffers as the person’s reputation permeates their local industry. There are a few contractors in one niche I worked in where nearly everyone knows to avoid them, or at least to put strict oversight and micromanaging in place on their work and billing. At this point their primary audience is new startups where they can milk them for overpriced work until they catch on.

ilyt 3y ago
> I think a lot of these contractors operate with the mindset that customers will always be available and none of them will talk to each other or seek reference checks, but this approach suffers as the person’s reputation permeates their local industry. There are a few contractors in one niche I worked in where nearly everyone knows to avoid them, or at least to put strict oversight and micromanaging in place on their work and billing. At this point their primary audience is new startups where they can milk them for overpriced work until they catch on. Well, did they get out of business ? No? Then by captialism the approach is great working strategy...
- creer 3y ago
  Are you arguing that there is some (other) system that solves the issue of over-selling and under-delivering? More constructively, I don't think anyone argues that there isn't (rudely speaking) a broad supply of fools waiting to be parted from their money. For the purpose of this forum the question is what can the clients (quite possible technically weak which is why they need to hire out) do to improve their odds.

jt2190 3y ago

> ... maybe it isn't really what you love to do or your expertise... And that means that you would follow the author's advice and say "no" because you know in advance that it's not your area of expertise and not what you want to do, and most importantly you haven't stated any long-term benefits of making this short-term sacrifice. Edit: emphasis

ww520 3y ago

Yes. This is a very likely problem. When I evaluate quotes on the other side, I usually weed out the highest and the lowest ones. The highest one is usually some middleman re-contracting out the work adding on his profit. Or someone like you said, just trying to price out the job instead of refusing the job honestly.

ilyt 3y ago

You can just tell them that. "That is not the type of jobs we usually do, and if we did we'd have to use a lot of time to build competency in the problem and that would've costed you a lot. You'd be better off trying X or Y contractor, that's closer to their wheelhouse" And as a bonus you'd still be considered for future work that's not that rather than being filed under "those are those super expensive guys we can't afford"

SoftTalker 3y ago
A friend of mine who is a plumber said he tells people this all the time, basically "this is a pretty small job and not what we normally do. If I did it, I'd have to take one of my plumbers off of this big job we're in the middle of and charge you what that is costing me, here's the number of a handyman I know who can take care of that for you"
- p3rls 3y ago
  The plumbing company I work for charges $240 per truck for the first hour in labor and $160 after that. For those prices it's definitely worth trying to google it first.
  - fsckboy 3y ago
    >$240 per truck for the first hour in labor and $160 after that. That's a bargain! I needed a kitchen faucet replaced (the kit kind you can buy at Home Depot) in Los Angeles and was quoted "$225 per plumber and two would be required, one hour minimum" and this was not from a large plumbing contractor, but the one recommended by the condo front desk. And I got to thinking, "unless they show up with everything they need, which they haven't even asked me anything about (it's cosmetic, it needs to match the kitchen) there's no chance this is done in an hour" did it myself.
    - p3rls 3y ago
      There's no reason a non-disabled stem person should call a plumber for a faucet install unless they want to check out some plumber ass :)

gumby 3y ago

Commit to doing a good job, or at least a job that meets what you promise to the customer. Back when I did support and custom dev, our minimum price was $100K/year (back when $100K was a lot of money). Most of those contracts were fabulously profitable. But once in a while a bug would be reported that took five or even ten person-months to fix, scrambling all our other plans in the process. So what: we didn’t charge extra and didn’t complain to the customer. Led to crazy levels of customer loyalty.

creer 3y ago
Exactly. A high price does not necessarily promise that you have the technical solution ready to go. There is such a thing as building an understanding with the client (even if the contract text itself is more conservative). That leads to a "relationship" with some level of solid grounds for it. As opposed to a common practive of throwing a one-off contract over the wall and merely praying that this will go well.
- ozim 3y ago
  Unfortunately this has to be 2 way street, you might want to do it properly but a lot of customers don't want to invest time. They want to have stuff done and move on so drop the money and you have to figure out how to do what they want.
  - gumby 3y ago
    Those aren’t the customers you want.
    - ozim 3y ago
      Thing is that is 90% of customers. I don't want to discuss with plumber how he is going to fit the pipes I want him done and gone from my house as soon as possible. The same with people using my software, they want to tend to their customers not spend time making my software better. Most of people don't even care about filling in bugs unless it is something that breaks their work. Lots of entrepreneur porn is about "how we get nice meetings with the customers while sipping pumpkin spice latte" ... sorry but no that is not the way world works. If you want to earn money make yourself useful and do your job in efficient way.

Brian_K_White 3y ago

No one said to LIE. It's the opposite. You quote high to inform them honestly what it would take, rather than deciding for yourself what is really their choice not yours. Your choice is to not take a job if you just don't want to or can't of course, but is not to tell anyone else what they want or what it's worth to them to get it. So as long as you don't mind doing the job fundamentally, but it's just a matter of resources or time or efficiency etc, (you're not being asked to do something you morally object to, or totally unrelated to the kind of work you want to do, or requires something like living on an oil rig for a year etc...) then you have no excuse to do anything but make your best guess at the honest estimate whatever that is however outlandish you think it is, including whatever no-promises cya terms you think should apply, and just tell them that. "It will be $200k, 4 months minimum, and you might get nothing in the end." And part of that is also giving your best honest advice about what they should actually do, and your reasoning. Some other approach that you think is better, or recommendation how to find some other supplier who could do the approach they wanted "that will require rust and high availability, so you want to look for shops that specialize in rust and high availability...", whatever. The end result is that they are the ones who decide not to do it rather than you. And if they go for it, well, considering you weren't bullshitting them but giving your honest best info, recommendation, and reasoning, you take it and do the job. If that means spending 2 months just learning a new system or language and throwing away a bunch of experiments just to get started, or hiring someone else to do some part you can't do, so be it. You put all that into the quote, and they said do it, so enjoy your big safe gig for the next while.