A Modest Proposal for Hourly Billing | Hacker News Reader

A Modest Proposal for Hourly Billing

daedtech.com

12 pointsesaym10 comments

When I negotiate consultant work that I don't want to do that much, I tell my hourly rate and estimate. That usually scares people off.

When I think the job would be fun/interesting/challenging(intherightway) I tell "I will do this, it will cost you $LARGE_SUM, and in the odd case I can't fix the problem, you pay nothing." Companies are usually very happy with this arrangement, as they can quickly consider whether having their problem fixed is worth $LARGE_SUM, especially since the not-fixed scenario means no risk for them. My hourly income from those tasks is sometimes very small, sometimes very very large, and on average, I earn more pr. hour than I could ever charge on a $/h deal.

...I think the author has several strong arguments, but I'm really having trouble getting past the tone.

Business is business, but the people who work for you deserve to be treated with some degree of empathy and respect. If the author thinks how he writes, I would not want to work for him, ever, regardless of how I billed him.

I think the tone is intended to mimic the acerbic and deadpan style of satire of the original "A Modest Proposal".

Through the years, referencing that title has indicated author understands the proposal in question is a truly terrible idea, satire, deliberately ludicrously bad (solving hunger by eating babies) in order to point out it's a seriously skewed problem.

It's not clear this author thinks his proposal is ludicrously bad, or satire.

I believe the author thought the proposal itself ("I will bill you hourly for the time I spend I spend reviewing your hourly bill") was a terrible idea, and in that section, I understood the tone. But he kept it up for the rest of the article as well, despite explicitly saying "Alright, that was fun, but now I’ll break character." I don't think he was being satirical at that point.

I feel guilty for complaining about the tone rather than addressing the substance, but it was really hard to concentrate on the substance through the tone, and I think the tone speaks to the level of empathy the author has for his colleagues. That matters a lot when you're making an argument like this.

Long post of someone making an ass of themselves because they demand every cost be knowable up front.

The article explicitly mentions predictable work.

And says that's what you pay hourly for. Says that in detail. Misunderstands that the experts are generally hired to "discover" or "invent" an answer that wasn't known, and discovery / invention often isn't estimable.

Further, author goes into risk, the real risk is of course acceptability of the expert's answer, which involves the buyer "being brought along" with accepting the answer, a process the expert genuinely cannot predict.

Note: link leads to halfway in the article. I don't know if this is intended.

Author wants everything to be like some grocery store. But if there's no such thing in store, there's no fixed price for this.

Seems like author has no logic in head.

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