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When you're charging for work like this, you aren't just charging for the 30 seconds it takes to fix it - you're charging for the years of experience that enabl
by cheald 14y ago
When you're charging for work like this, you aren't just charging for the 30 seconds it takes to fix it - you're charging for the years of experience that enable you to do it, plus the 30 seconds it takes to actually do it.
To put it in strictly economical terms, it would have taken the client more than $120 worth of her time to develop the expertise necessary to fix the problem. Thus, paying $120 for the fix - no matter no long it actually takes - is worth it for her.
- paulgb 14y agoNot only that, the sale had more than 30 seconds of overhead. It may be 30 seconds of actual work, but the $120 includes soliciting the sale, invoicing the client, communication, transferring credentials, etc. There's no such thing as 30 seconds worth of work. I used to do this sort of work in high school. I got to know a bunch of bugs in IE and when people were having trouble I'd help them for money. There were times when I'd net over $100/hour, but they were few and far between.
- Turing_Machine 14y agoRight. Back in the day a friend and I got paid to crack a pediatrician's Xenix-based billing system (at the pediatrician's request). He'd forgotten the admin password. We basically just fired up some crack scripts and let them run, then charged him (what we thought was) a lot of money. Only later did I realize why he was so happy with the deal, and seemed to think he'd gotten a bargain -- without the admin password he couldn't generate any bills. I would wager that the amount of receivables in the system exceeded what we charged by at least one order of magnitude, maybe two.