Ask HN: Freelancers/Contractors: Do you work 8hrs/day? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Freelancers/Contractors: Do you work 8hrs/day?

4 pointsgranshaw8 comments

There’s been many discussions lately about how most devs don’t have the stamina for more than ~4hrs of focused dev time a day, which I find to be mostly accurate.

The question then becomes for freelancers, when you’re in the middle of a longish contract, how do you actually maximize your billable time? Eg do you find client work that much more palatable that you actually do manage to work 8hrs a day on it? Are your rates high enough that you can do about 4hrs/day and still come out ahead? (Probably took a long time to get to that point?) Something else?

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I think most of them do. Freelancers at Gigzoe (https://gigzoe.com) on avg work work about 8-9 hrs daily as per our survey.

I am in an unqiue position that clients seek me out based on my experience to solve problems, that their inhouse staff can't solve. (software engineering, architecture or specific technologies ) They are often happy and making a bargain letting me do those things at rates of 350 € / hour compared to having to hire / find specific people having that kind of experience and paying them long term . My contracts are usually 6-12 months only.

On the other hand i often negotiate a flat fee for a specific task... For example my last one was solving a very specific computer vision problem for a client after their inhouse project team(s) of 5 people were not able to solve it over the course of 6 months.

It took me about 8 hours in total to solve it, and maybe 40 hours to integrate it with their product/document it.

However i billed them close to 100.000 € for that task, ( pre agreed by them upon successful completion ) and worked bascially a week only.

But compared to 5 people * 6 months * salaries of 100k = 250.000 it was a bargain for them ( not counting overhead costs and the likely hood of further time not solving it )

Hey Gluber, funny enough we might require your computer-vision expertise for an upcoming product – do you have a website or linkedin where we can find out more and/or engage you further? Thanks!

Sure, but I would rather not post my info publicly... If you have a throwaway email or other way of me sending you my information i would be glad to.

Yes feel free to email selma.griggs at outlook dot com

Thanks!

Sent, if you don't have my info it might be in Spam :-)

Patio11 recommends to charge weekly instead of hourly (and raise your price): https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/consultin... HN discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4805091 (1034 points | Nov 19, 2012| 263 comments) and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15994410 (780 points | Dec 23, 2017 | 481 comments)

Thanks, but easier said than done in practice, as clients just don’t go for it. Heard from a long time contractor that the most he can swing is daily rates for some clients

Plus it puts a lot more risk on yourself, your estimation skills, and potential unknowns and events

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