6 ms·

Exactly why I charge $999/hour for my software consulting. To the doubters, laugh all you want, but I've been doing this for literal decades, and will absolutel

Exactly why I charge $999/hour for my software consulting. To the doubters, laugh all you want, but I've been doing this for literal decades, and will absolutely slaughter LLM generated code in terms of code reliability and maintainability amortized over 5 years.

Nextgrid 9mo ago
Won't be giving exact figures but that's my business model as well - I charge a premium because my job for clients is to make myself obsolete. If I "deliver" something that needs my constant presence then I haven't actually delivered. Of course, my price is high upfront because I'm budgeting in the fact that I strive to be out of there as soon as feasible instead of trying to stick around. Some clients are ok with it, some don't; this is normal and what a competitive market should look like. I tell clients openly when my premium service is not the right fit for their current requirements or budget, and there are cases where cheaper labor or LLMs are absolutely a better fit (and they should come back once when/if they outgrow the cheaper, lower-quality product).
refulgentis 9mo ago
I'd love to do this and have a quite marketable resume, but it is extremely, extremely, unclear to me how you build a clientele or where you'd even start. Only road I can imagine is highly specialized industry, with money, that often has time-sensitive needs, and smart management that knows how to recognize value or trusts their tech management. And even then I think you'd have to start in the coal-mines version of it, $50K/year flat salary, and building a reputation without management taking credit for your successes, somehow.
- Nextgrid 9mo ago
  The hard part is to get the client on the phone. Once you have them on the phone, you can not only better understand their problem but also demonstrate your skill and credibility in a way no resume or branding could. At that point it's just a sales game - generally you'd avoid hourly rates and sell them a solution (see my other comment) which will maximize your effective hourly rate while being structured in a way that's very good value for the client. Hourly should be a last resort, at which point generally you'd rather have the client bounce, so you quote a high rate.
  - publicdebates 9mo ago
    That last part is exactly why I charge $999/hour. I'll offer a specific solution that takes me a week of full time work (14 hours each day -- I'm focused) for about $10k, which is roughly $150/hour if you want to calculate it that way, or another specific solution that takes me 3 weeks of 10 hour days for $15k which amounts to $100/hour. And like any good consultant, I'll eat the cost if I'm wrong. Other times I'll charge $40k when I know it will take a few months of dedicated work and I have to really lock in. In practice, I never actually charge hourly. So the $999/hour is really Schrodinger's rate.
captain_coffee 9mo ago
How do you get clients on that rate? Genuinely curious
- Nextgrid 9mo ago
  Hourly rates are inherently risky for clients - you're asking them to part with money with no guaranteed outcome, so there's a natural ceiling where the financial risk becomes untenable regardless of your expertise and reputation. Clients don't buy hours though, they buy solutions. They have problems costing them money or preventing revenue and they'll pay a percentage of that value to solve it. When you price based on solution value rather than time, your effective hourly rate merely becomes a function of your efficiency and expertise delivering said solution. They key to achieving such a rate comes down to your sales and business skills: understanding what to sell, how to structure it to maximize your earnings and make it palatable for the client. For example I generally avoid hourly billing except as a filter for time-wasters. Instead, consultancy becomes a loss leader for the real business: deeply understanding client problems and delivering high-value solutions. Clients happily pay premium rates when they see the price as a fraction of the solution's worth to them. I only resort to quoting (quite high) hourly rates where it's clear the client just wants consultancy/advice (basically a glorified IT/business support) as a way to make it worth my time and gently encouraging them to bounce (I openly suggest more cost-effective options and refer them there).
  - captain_coffee 9mo ago
    OK so in this case how do you set the price? Based on the final solution to be delivered? Can you give one (or a few) concrete examples by any chance? I am not sure if I fully understood what you meant exactly with your (detailed) reply.
    - shermantanktop 9mo ago
      I read it as: “This is the price for me to do work I don’t want to do, but will do, if you make it impossible for me to say no.” It’s not about justifying the rate, that’s the wrong way to think of it.
yieldcrv 9mo ago
Have you tried Claude Opus 4.5 within Claude Code? it's only been released for two months but its changed the calculus entirely if its been over two months since you've tried any LLM generated code solution, or are still occasionally copy pasting code requirements into a browser chat session as if its still 2023, then I can't put any weight into the opinion
- input_sh 9mo ago
  I've read this same comment for every model since GPT-3.
  - yieldcrv 9mo ago
    so have I and this time I wrote it, this broken clock only has to be right once, forever its beneficial to check it
  - CamperBob2 9mo ago
    That's because it's been true for every major new model release since GPT-3. HN is full of people who tried the free version of ChatGPT a couple of years ago, got a load of random hallucinated slop, and concluded it was all a bunch of useless hype. They enjoy parroting a lot of obsolete stuff they read once about stochastic parrots, without the slightest sense of irony. When I was growing up, my old man recalled engineers who reacted the same way to transistors, which sucked even more than early-generation LLMs when they first came out. Most of them got over vacuum tubes eventually, though. So will most of the HN'ers, likely including you.
    - senordevnyc 9mo ago
      This is so true, and it's been genuinely painful for me to realize how fucking lazy and close-minded many in our industry actually are when you get down to it.
    - input_sh 9mo ago
      I don't know whose thoughts you're trying to attribute to me, but I've been pretty up-to-date myself (while still keeping myself to a $20/month budget that I switch between providers every few months). Every generation has at best been a 5% improvement, and nothing revolutionary compared to the last generation. Absolutely no significant improvements between me selecting say Claude 3.7 Sonnet, Claude Sonnet 4, or Claude Sonnet 4.5. Still the same somewhat useful tool for specific purposes, still not good enough to be let loose on production, still not better than what I can do myself with 10 or so years of experience. Genuinely useful from time to time? Sure, I agree completely. Anywhere near being revolutionary enough as people here insist on gaslighting themselves to be? Absolutely not. Not even remotely.

Nextgrid 9mo ago

Won't be giving exact figures but that's my business model as well - I charge a premium because my job for clients is to make myself obsolete. If I "deliver" something that needs my constant presence then I haven't actually delivered. Of course, my price is high upfront because I'm budgeting in the fact that I strive to be out of there as soon as feasible instead of trying to stick around. Some clients are ok with it, some don't; this is normal and what a competitive market should look like. I tell clients openly when my premium service is not the right fit for their current requirements or budget, and there are cases where cheaper labor or LLMs are absolutely a better fit (and they should come back once when/if they outgrow the cheaper, lower-quality product).

refulgentis 9mo ago

I'd love to do this and have a quite marketable resume, but it is extremely, extremely, unclear to me how you build a clientele or where you'd even start. Only road I can imagine is highly specialized industry, with money, that often has time-sensitive needs, and smart management that knows how to recognize value or trusts their tech management. And even then I think you'd have to start in the coal-mines version of it, $50K/year flat salary, and building a reputation without management taking credit for your successes, somehow.

Nextgrid 9mo ago
The hard part is to get the client on the phone. Once you have them on the phone, you can not only better understand their problem but also demonstrate your skill and credibility in a way no resume or branding could. At that point it's just a sales game - generally you'd avoid hourly rates and sell them a solution (see my other comment) which will maximize your effective hourly rate while being structured in a way that's very good value for the client. Hourly should be a last resort, at which point generally you'd rather have the client bounce, so you quote a high rate.
- publicdebates 9mo ago
  That last part is exactly why I charge $999/hour. I'll offer a specific solution that takes me a week of full time work (14 hours each day -- I'm focused) for about $10k, which is roughly $150/hour if you want to calculate it that way, or another specific solution that takes me 3 weeks of 10 hour days for $15k which amounts to $100/hour. And like any good consultant, I'll eat the cost if I'm wrong. Other times I'll charge $40k when I know it will take a few months of dedicated work and I have to really lock in. In practice, I never actually charge hourly. So the $999/hour is really Schrodinger's rate.

captain_coffee 9mo ago

How do you get clients on that rate? Genuinely curious

Nextgrid 9mo ago
Hourly rates are inherently risky for clients - you're asking them to part with money with no guaranteed outcome, so there's a natural ceiling where the financial risk becomes untenable regardless of your expertise and reputation. Clients don't buy hours though, they buy solutions. They have problems costing them money or preventing revenue and they'll pay a percentage of that value to solve it. When you price based on solution value rather than time, your effective hourly rate merely becomes a function of your efficiency and expertise delivering said solution. They key to achieving such a rate comes down to your sales and business skills: understanding what to sell, how to structure it to maximize your earnings and make it palatable for the client. For example I generally avoid hourly billing except as a filter for time-wasters. Instead, consultancy becomes a loss leader for the real business: deeply understanding client problems and delivering high-value solutions. Clients happily pay premium rates when they see the price as a fraction of the solution's worth to them. I only resort to quoting (quite high) hourly rates where it's clear the client just wants consultancy/advice (basically a glorified IT/business support) as a way to make it worth my time and gently encouraging them to bounce (I openly suggest more cost-effective options and refer them there).
- captain_coffee 9mo ago
  OK so in this case how do you set the price? Based on the final solution to be delivered? Can you give one (or a few) concrete examples by any chance? I am not sure if I fully understood what you meant exactly with your (detailed) reply.
  - shermantanktop 9mo ago
    I read it as: “This is the price for me to do work I don’t want to do, but will do, if you make it impossible for me to say no.” It’s not about justifying the rate, that’s the wrong way to think of it.

yieldcrv 9mo ago

Have you tried Claude Opus 4.5 within Claude Code? it's only been released for two months but its changed the calculus entirely if its been over two months since you've tried any LLM generated code solution, or are still occasionally copy pasting code requirements into a browser chat session as if its still 2023, then I can't put any weight into the opinion

input_sh 9mo ago
I've read this same comment for every model since GPT-3.
- yieldcrv 9mo ago
  so have I and this time I wrote it, this broken clock only has to be right once, forever its beneficial to check it
- CamperBob2 9mo ago
  That's because it's been true for every major new model release since GPT-3. HN is full of people who tried the free version of ChatGPT a couple of years ago, got a load of random hallucinated slop, and concluded it was all a bunch of useless hype. They enjoy parroting a lot of obsolete stuff they read once about stochastic parrots, without the slightest sense of irony. When I was growing up, my old man recalled engineers who reacted the same way to transistors, which sucked even more than early-generation LLMs when they first came out. Most of them got over vacuum tubes eventually, though. So will most of the HN'ers, likely including you.
  - senordevnyc 9mo ago
    This is so true, and it's been genuinely painful for me to realize how fucking lazy and close-minded many in our industry actually are when you get down to it.
  - input_sh 9mo ago
    I don't know whose thoughts you're trying to attribute to me, but I've been pretty up-to-date myself (while still keeping myself to a $20/month budget that I switch between providers every few months). Every generation has at best been a 5% improvement, and nothing revolutionary compared to the last generation. Absolutely no significant improvements between me selecting say Claude 3.7 Sonnet, Claude Sonnet 4, or Claude Sonnet 4.5. Still the same somewhat useful tool for specific purposes, still not good enough to be let loose on production, still not better than what I can do myself with 10 or so years of experience. Genuinely useful from time to time? Sure, I agree completely. Anywhere near being revolutionary enough as people here insist on gaslighting themselves to be? Absolutely not. Not even remotely.