Hacker News Reader

Comment by hackeronymous | Hacker News Reader

The problem with billing by the hour is that developer performance varies by a factor of 10x or more, whereas hourly fees vary by about 5x. And most clients would not feel comfortable playing $250-$300/hour unless there was some way for them to justify it. (i.e. more people involved, despite the fact that they may do nothing). Besides, why charge per hour? If I solve your problem, what does it matter how long it took me to do it?

View on HN

I was not saying that you should charger per hour. I was asking that the numbers you floated will make more sense if you can provide how much time you spent on each of those projects. For example: you mentioned $100k on RoR project. This number will make more sense if you mention whether it took you 1000 hours or 10000 hours or maybe 3 months or 3 years.

Oh, I see what you mean. It probably took about 1000 hours total, but spanned over a period of a year. So maybe 20 hours per week. I was just learning Rails at the time, so it took a bit longer than it otherwise would have. I could probably make what I made in about 1 to 2 months tops now.

100000$ for two months work seems like a good price.

hmm. even for a year's worth of work it seems like a good price.

100k/year gross working only 20 hours a week is pretty badass if you ask me. The average (full-time) web developer salary according to salary.com is 70k/year.

Sure but at most shops the client will be charged about 3x the salaries of the developers - to pay for overheads and so on.

I should probably mention that even though I spent 20h/day working on it, I spent/spend virtually every waking hour either reading/writing/thinking about writing software/business. I don't drink, I don't do drugs, I don't party. I live with my fiancee, and work pretty much every waking hour on something or other. I don't have a blog because it would consume too much time, and I don't interact with other developers because I worry that it will pull me toward the middle of the bell curve. I worry that I may be going insane, but only passively.

I don't interact with other developers because I worry that it will pull me toward the middle of the bell curve.

Didn't you say you used RoR? You're okay with using other folks high-level code, but you think interacting with them will pull you towards the middle of the bell curve. Interesting.

I don't interact with other developers because I worry that it will pull me toward the middle of the bell curve

This will almost surely be damaging to your career and education. If this means that you are too easily influenced or cannot identify a good influence, then I would focus on improving that in yourself.

Surrounding yourself with intelligent people in a field such as this is incredibly important. You are missing out otherwise.

the reason why many of us charge by the hour is that it requires less negotiation. When is the project 'done'? a flat rate contract requires a lot of work up front to define things that might be better defined after you are most of the way done. Hourly rates make last minute changes simple, and mean that you don't have to argue if it's a last minute change or not.

it also means that the employer bears more of the risk if the work is harder than originally imagined.

(Now, I also agree with your points about why charging a flat rate is better; I'm just pointing out that there are also reasons why charging an hourly rate is better.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com