Comment by cldellow | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cldellow | Hacker News Reader

Sorta related: when I was 22 or so, a friend and I sold some software to a school district.

We were young, poor engineers with no idea how sales worked. When they asked what the price was, we picked a nice round number that sounded appealing to us.

"$100,000."

Our counterparty may have actually laughed at us. "I can't just write two twenty-somethings a cheque for $100,000."

Oh, shit. They're on to us. They're gonna bargain hard, and we're going to have to lop off tens of thousands of dollars.

"But what I can do is write you a $10,000 cheque for a 1-day training session, a $15,000 cheque for installation support, a $10,000 cheque for 1 year of maintenance and a $65,000 cheque for a perpetual 5,000 seat license. Does that work for you?"

It did. To do this day, I'm pretty sure we sold the government $100,000 of services because two high-up administrators were incapable of working out their interpersonal issues. Instead, they used our software as a go-between. Absurd.

When I was 15 I made a scriptable screen automation tool. I gave it away for free on one of the forums I frequented, and people actually downloaded it. I was amazed. A couple days later a guy contacts me and asks me how much I'd charge to add a feature. At that point I was just thankful that anyone was actually using this thing I had made, but I couldn't pass up the chance to become a "professional" and make my very first sell, so I told him $60.

I've always been nervous about disappointing people, and I was extremely worried he'd scuff at my offer and maybe even stop using my program. Instead he was very kind and offered to pay up front. I made the feature and sent it to him.

A couple of days passed, and he messaged me again to tell me that he just wired me another $60 and that he didn't want anything for them. He just figured my price was too low, and that I really deserved more. That was a wonderful experience in how product can be worth so much more to the person receiving it than the one creating it. For me it was just a fun little project for a weekend, but for him it was genuinely useful and something he could not have created himself.

It's also a fun thing to be able to say. I once under priced a product so heavily the buyer took pity on me and offered more.

>I once under priced a product so heavily the buyer took pity on me and offered more.

I once got a "we're going to bump your offer salary to be more in line with the other devs" and that was a pretty similar feeling

But that one makes more sense from their pov, because you'd find out sooner or later.

In the government, and large organizations as well, there is often a large pot of money that is 'use it or lose it'. In fact, overspending can often justify need for larger budgets next year around and underspending can make you look bad as someone who doesn't know how to forecast their requirements better. It is diametrically opposite to how thoughtful people budget for themselves or their homes and leads to things that make no sense at a logical level 'save resources, etc' but makes perfect sense at another level, 'grow my empire'.

I've seen this even in relatively small private orgs (1000ish) - if you don't spend your budget, then next years +/- across the board spending change will be applied to the lower number you spent rather than what you forecast originally.

Org bloat & empire building is highly incentivized, and insulates you from the bad times. If you can get all your work done with 60% of the staff, then when you are forced to kick out your bottom performers annually.. it's easy to find some. If you are basically operating lean or at the redline, you need to fight the fight hard every time the axeman comes.

I don't think the system CAN accept a refund.

We were virtualizing 150 computers into a VM environment and I asked what was going to happen to the hardware replacement budget for the machines that were virtualized. I got a lot of Hem and Hawing and they said something like 'we can throw it at workstations or training or something.'

I remember talking to someone who had done a postdoc in Japan and he said that their labs had computers that had been budgeted as a consumable. At the end of a year some admin guy came with a small hammer and smashed the machines to make sure they were 'consumed'.

a part of it is also trying to avoid decision-makers cheaping out; eg you've been given a budget for social programs, it's your duty to use all of it and provide the impact that was expected. you can apply that logic to a lot of things - why are you building a 2 billion dollar metro when we budgeted for a 3 billion one? what corners are you cutting?

100k to solve or deflect interpersonal issues is sometimes worth it, too. One never knows when a lawsuit can pop up. :-)

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