[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Hourly billers, do you bill for only focused...
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Ask HN: Hourly billers, do you bill for only focused work?
I have noticed that trying to bill at higher rates has been
becoming more difficult and if I don't work a full 8 hours it
appears that I am slacking off. The vast majority of software
engineers do not do 8 hours of actual work, even including
meetings. However, I sometimes notice other contractors billing a
full 40-hour work week and clients not batting an eye. Am I being
too honest, and should I continue billing for the fifteen minutes I
go off reading HN, having lunch, or any other short break? Edit: I
guess what I meant to say, is lowering my rate by around 25%, but
also being less picky on what I should bill so that I can earn the
same amount, acceptable?
Author : EduardoBautista
Score : 114 points
Date : 2022-11-15 15:17 UTC (7 hours ago)
| [deleted]
| karaterobot wrote:
| In my experience you bill what you can get away with billing
| while making the client happy. That may mean billing when you're
| not working, but it can also mean working without billing at all.
| The idea of time-based billing is pretty fuzzy when you get into
| the details, so it's better when nobody on either side tries to
| figure it out, and you just ship something that makes them happy.
|
| In terms of negotiating a rate that makes you competitive, your
| idea could work, yes. The danger is that (IME) clients who were
| that budget conscious were also generally worse clients in
| general: less organized, less of a vision, less willing to do
| things like pay for user testing and support, generally more
| stressful to work with. Often their projects were less
| interesting, too.
|
| At a certain point, my company just raised everybody's rates
| significantly, across the board, and rather than going out of
| business, we ended up getting better projects as a result. In
| that case, I was shocked to realize that software contracting can
| act like a Veblen good, though in an economic climate like this
| one, I'm not sure it would work that way.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| What about billing for time spent traveling for business relates
| trips? Especially long flights. Do you just bill as if you'd
| worked 8 hours that whole day, or by the hour spent traveling,
| including to and from the airport?
| moralestapia wrote:
| I usually bill those as travel expenses (flights, hotel, food
| and some extra per diem).
| FpUser wrote:
| My contracts are usually to design and develop new product for
| client. It is rather longer term involvement and I just bill them
| for 8 hours per day disregarding on what happens on any
| particular day. Clients know about it and it is agreed upon. If
| they are not happy about my work which luckily had never happened
| they're free to show me the door.
|
| Every once in a while I also do short term contracts with very
| limited scope. For those I would just do a lump sum payable in
| stages or just initial deposit and then pay balance at the end.
| datavirtue wrote:
| It pays eight. Period. You might run into some batshit clients
| that think they don't pay if there is nothing to do (they ran out
| of stories, project pauses, etc.) but that is not how it works.
|
| They are renting our attention. My current client operates under
| that assumption that I maybe work four hours a day and bill for
| eight. In other words...he is realistic. He is surrounded by
| contractors.
| ska wrote:
| Honestly it depends on the type of work.
|
| If you are essentially freelancing full time, consider changing
| your billing to daily or weekly rates anyway.
|
| If you are doing highly specialized work that relies on
| experience & knowledge, do hourly, only for focused work, and
| bill high enough that your "slack" hours are covered anyway (e.g.
| target approx 1000hr/yr actual billed will cover your salary
| needs).
|
| The "real" answer if you want the best return for your time is
| move to project level billing, not time, if you can with your
| clients.
|
| Sometimes your clients will drive how you can bill anyway, of
| course.
| wizzzzzy wrote:
| Personally I bill by the day and occasionally by half days. I
| consider 4 hours of focused work to be a full day.
| ilaksh wrote:
| I think it depends on the circumstances what you should do. Such
| as whether the client has a real budget. Honestly for me it is
| relatively trivial to find clients with shoestring budgets versus
| adequate ones.
|
| But ideally you set things up ahead of time by finding a client
| with a decent sized budget and then charging by the week. The
| billing increment is one week.
|
| Then just make sure to have regular delivery or discussions as
| often as possible with the client. They should see the
| deliverables progressing, even if it's just the architectural
| details being worked out at first. They should be judging based
| on useful things obviously happening and being explained or being
| able to use the next version rather than just looking at hours to
| try to guess whether they are getting a good deal or something.
|
| For me, we will see how it goes. Right now I have a weekly
| billing client who I am a bit worried I will have to replace
| because things in this niche are so dead right now. But there
| were a few other projects I may be able to pick up. I am
| definitely going to try to find one that can afford a week or two
| though because realistically all of the projects have gone on for
| more than two weeks so far, generally speaking more like 2-8
| weeks each.
|
| When it's going to almost certainly take a month to complete a
| project, trying to get out of an extra hour every day or
| something is a questionable strategy because it's a significant
| investment anyway, and the biggest risk really is most projects
| just not delivering usable software at all, which means all of
| that money gets wasted.
| treis wrote:
| I worked for several large consulting companies plus a little bit
| of freelance. None of them ever gave me a straight answer to what
| counts as a working hour. Even basic questions like does the
| clock start when I leave for the airport or when I get to the
| customer site? Or do I get a paid lunch? What about internal
| meetings regarding the customer?
|
| I eventually adopted a 40 hrs/week policy where that's what I put
| on my timesheet regardless of how much I actually worked. Which
| is what I think most people settled on.
| gchamonlive wrote:
| Anyone billing by the project? Maybe a two step billing
| procedure, once for a product discovery and a second for the
| final estimated project complexity.a0
| ilyt wrote:
| It kinda depends. If I did similar thing many times and can
| estimate it, why not, but a lot of jobs are not that easy to
| estimate upfront. Hourly billing also accounts easily for
| employer changing their mind and wanting something else or
| expanding scope, no need for "well, it's not what we agreed,
| pay me more" talk.
| 28304283409234 wrote:
| I always billed 40 hours. Even when staring out of a window for
| half that time. Because often, that staring brings the exact
| nugget of brilliance needed to solve the puzzle.
|
| You are not a widget puncher. You are an engineer solving complex
| problems. Act like it. Bill like it.
|
| Watch "Fuck you, pay me."
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| Me Saturday at 2am laying in bed half asleep, have random
| thought about what's causing the problem I've been beating my
| head against on for the last week and a half.
|
| Monday morning comes and yes 100% correct.
| conductr wrote:
| > I guess what I meant to say, is lowering my rate by around 25%,
| but also being less picky on what I should bill before so that I
| can earn the same amount, acceptable?
|
| Yes, it's fine, you should pad one of them. Either rate or time.
| Even if you just log in to a 1 hour meeting they host, bill them
| for 1.25-1.50 hours for context switching/ "prep work" is pretty
| acceptable. It is going to be client specific, if you find your
| clients are being overly sensitive to either - you probably want
| to find another client as it's just going to be a rough
| relationship when they're counting every minute/dime. Of course,
| the best practice is to put all of this in a contract but there's
| a million edge cases. Some general clause may work.
| Justsignedup wrote:
| Well, typically people like to see billing for hours used...
| so...
|
| If you work today: 8 hours billed.
|
| If you work part of the day: part hours billed
|
| If you work overtime: 8 hours + OT hours.
|
| I agree with conductr that this is creative work. If you talk
| to someone to gather requirements, do meetings, help teammates
| out, etc, it is all part of the process. If you need to look up
| stuff that is part of the process.
|
| Just like any engineer, you can't be "on" 24/7 so it is
| expected that some slack time is cooked into your hours. If
| your productivity doesn't make sense compared to the hours put
| in, that's the problem. If you're producing more than enough
| for your hours, where's the problem?
|
| Anyone nickle-and-diming you on checking that every 15 minutes
| is accurate is going to be a bad person to work for anyways, or
| just needs to negotiate less hours.
| leros wrote:
| From what I hear, more experienced contractors will often inflate
| their hours instead of charging more per hour.
|
| Apparently people will happily pay $100/hr for 3 hours of work,
| but not $300/hr for 1 of work from a more experienced person.
| vitaflo wrote:
| I bill by the hour, not the minute. If I work 10 mins on
| something and do nothing for the other 50, you are billed an
| hour. Frankly, this is how most clients have actually wanted it.
| They think in hours (or days) not some subdivision of them. And
| yes, thinking about work is the same as doing the work. It's all
| billable time.
|
| As far as your rate, I always bill as high as I can without
| pushback. Where is that level? You'll know when your rate is too
| high. I kept increasing my rate with contracts until clients
| started to grumble a bit. Then I backed it off 10% and haven't
| had a problem since. Note this means I am getting paid 30% more
| than where I originally started. Wouldn't have known that if I
| didn't attempt to max out my rate.
|
| In the end it's just business. You either make a client happy or
| you don't. As a business your goal is to maximize your profits
| without much pushback. That will just take some time and energy
| to find out what the market will bear.
| halpmeh wrote:
| > I bill by the hour, not the minute. If I work 10 mins on
| something and do nothing for the other 50, you are billed an
| hour. Frankly, this is how most clients have actually wanted
| it.
|
| I find it hard to believe anyone wants to over pay for your
| time by 6x what it's worth. I understand rounding up. But I
| don't understand working 10 minutes one day, billing for an
| hour, and then working 10 minutes the next day and billing for
| two hours total.
| vitaflo wrote:
| The only way I'd do that is if the client gave me 10 mins of
| work one day, followed by 10 mins of work the next and
| nothing else. Otherwise I'd just work 20 mins and bill an
| hour. More often however they are giving me 40 hours of work
| per week and I bill 40 hours, even if not every single hour
| is doing "focused work", and some of it may be downtime. Just
| like any employee who gets a salary.
|
| I've been a contractor full time for almost 15 years with
| dozens of different clients big, small and in between. You
| tend to get a feel for what clients want and/or need and what
| they don't. Mostly clients just want help getting work done
| and as long as you're meeting their deadlines and are
| pleasant to work with, they don't care that how much time you
| bill (as long as it's not more than 40 hrs per week).
|
| I'm not advocating for taking advantage of clients, but I am
| advocating for being realistic with running your own
| business. If you're only billing 10 min stretches you won't
| be in business for long. Clients understand this. It's just
| part of doing business.
| bityard wrote:
| Most people recognize that the value a contractor delivers is
| not linear with respect to the time it takes them to complete
| a job. See https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/know-where-man/
| halpmeh wrote:
| That's very different than agreeing to a price ahead of
| time.
| asciimov wrote:
| You're paying for more that just the task, you are paying for
| the availability. I'd rather not block off a whole hour for a
| "quick" fix, but if you don't the company will come to you
| more often with quick fixes and those start to really eat up
| your day.
| joenot443 wrote:
| >But I don't understand working 10 minutes one day, billing
| for an hour, and then working 10 minutes the next day and
| billing for two hours total.
|
| If someone's breaking up their time like this, they wouldn't
| be in business very long I don't think. Any reasonable
| contractor would complete the job in 20 minutes the first
| day, bill for an hour, and have everyone leave happy.
|
| It's easy to imagine scenarios where contractors take
| advantage of their clients due to information asymmetry, but
| most contractors eventually realize their lifetime value is
| probably higher if they can keep their clients happy. I think
| the same principle holds true if you're a contracted Rust
| engineer or a contracted plumber; it seems to be that the
| honest, skilled, and justifiably expensive ones float to the
| top.
| halpmeh wrote:
| Sure, I agree with everything you're saying. However, we
| don't know that the the original poster is a great
| contractor. All we know is they thing their clients can't
| think in non-hour units and prefer to be over billed, which
| is preposterous to me.
| xeromal wrote:
| I do what OP does down to 30 min increments but I also bill a
| bit in how much cognitive power it required to do it. If I
| hopped on for 10 minutes to restart a server or something, I
| might bill 0 minutes or I might bill 30. If I had to drive
| out somewhere, live debug a device for 30 minutes, and drive
| back. I'm going to get an hour or two into my invoice
| somehow.
| counttheforks wrote:
| Which would obviously be malicious and your output would
| suffer and the client would probably notice. Everything
| within reason.
| dbg31415 wrote:
| > In the end it's just business. You either make a client happy
| or you don't.
|
| Spot on.
|
| 1) Do good work. Be patient and kind to clients. Remember when
| someone asks you to do something for the 8th time, "Hey, it's
| their money."
|
| 2) Make sure you write your contracts in a way that lets you
| raise rates every January. Aim for a 10% increase every
| calendar year.
|
| 3) Give clients a discount if they sign retainers, or longer
| contracts. This ultimately means less sales cycle, and more
| profit for you.
|
| 4) Raise rates on clients based on how much you like the work.
| If you really don't enjoy working with one client, raise their
| rates until you can stomach the work. If you like a client...
| yeah cut them some slack.
|
| 5) Always know who your stakeholders are at a company, and make
| sure you send some nice thank you gifts this time of year. Even
| if it's just a card saying why you appreciate certain people on
| their team... letting those people know, and letting their
| bosses know... that buys you a lot of goodwill. 'Tis the
| season. (=
| varispeed wrote:
| Re 5) you must be careful with the gifts as that may be
| misconstrued as bribery or a kickback. A card should be fine,
| but a bottle of Champagne rather won't be.
| chubbnix wrote:
| Are you in the public sector is this a common issue in your
| industry? I ask because gifts and emoluments are common in
| my industry (manufacturing) with contracted clients in the
| private sector.
| piva00 wrote:
| I'm in the private sector and I'm in no way allowed to
| accept gifts worth more than 10-15EUR and even those are
| under strict premises to not allow it to be misconstrued
| as a bribe.
|
| Not even working in any industry that is usually under
| scrutiny for bribes (finance, defence, pharma, etc.).
| toqy wrote:
| They make a big deal about it in pharma in trainings and
| whatnot, but then they don't really seem to enforce it.
| Adobe providing catered box seats to a big game? No
| problem. Random director spending too much on an internal
| team dinner, problem. It's pretty strange.
| Arrath wrote:
| Yeah this is a great cautionary point. A goodly chunk of my
| annual training is about bribes/inappropriate gifts.
| Natsu wrote:
| One of our salesmen seems to like giving out small bags of
| nice chocolates.
| arikr wrote:
| Seems surprising to me. Rounding to 15 minutes, sure, but 60
| seems surprising. Can more people chime in?
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| Imagine it was 10 _seconds_ instead. Would rounding it to 15
| seconds be reasonable, but 1 minute too much?
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > I bill by the hour, not the minute. If I work 10 mins on
| something and do nothing for the other 50, you are billed an
| hour.
|
| I deal with a lot of contractors. To be clear: If I asked for a
| single task that takes 5 minutes and they bill me an hour for
| it, that's 100% fine in my book. Context switching, recording,
| billing, etc. aren't free. The difference between a 60-minute
| bill and a 10-minute bill is nothing. Let's just keep it simple
| and bill an hour.
|
| But this is only for individual tasks. If someone is working
| independently on a project with 10 minutes here, 15 minutes
| there, 5 minutes a few hours later and billing each as an hour,
| that's not okay.
|
| Depending on the contractor, we don't really scrutinize line
| items all that closely. However, once you're dealing with
| multiple contractors and gathering experience about how long
| things generally take, you start to notice some contractors are
| outliers in how many "hours" they claim to get things done. In
| some cases, if their hourly rate is low enough we may not
| _really_ care, but when someone hits the combo of billing a
| high hourly rate and also racking up a lot of hours for
| relatively simple things with no ability to explain _why_ it
| took longer than everyone else, it 's time to phase out that
| contractor.
| vitaflo wrote:
| >If someone is working independently on a project with 10
| minutes here, 15 minutes there, 5 minutes a few hours later
| and billing each as an hour, that's not okay.
|
| Yeah I certainly wasn't advocating that. It's a two way
| street. Clients tend to understand they're paying for
| availability as much as anything and contractors understand
| clients want work done on time and within budget as much as
| possible. In my experience (having done this for almost 15
| years) the best client/contractor relationships are built on
| respect and trust that both sides are not being taken
| advantage of. And I've certainly seen my fair share of
| contractors that try to take advantage of clients or let
| clients take advantage of them. Both tend to not last long as
| contractors.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| I used to work as a project manager , where we had a large
| pool of vetted freelancers. You'd select the type of work,
| specify the price and the system would send a mass email to
| those- whoever accepts first, gets the job. Most of our
| clients were banks or investment funds. The company was
| providing translation services. So a fund gets to update one
| word in one of their files and it does happen in 12 different
| languages. We charge minimum fee per job, so 12 words becomes
| PS360. The fund couldn't care less. However, because it's
| only one word, a single freelancer( 12 in total, for each
| language) would only get like PS0.12 or so. They would also
| need to update the translation memory and send us an invoice.
| Nobody wanted to do it, because of this. So I used to
| struggle to get these jobs done because time was always very
| limited. We also had 50% margin per project requirement. So I
| ended up paying PS5 per word, which would end up costing me
| PS60, but it would still leave PS300 profit for the company.
| Just like that I solved my issue, because the freelancers
| were happy to do it. The vendor management killed it a couple
| of months before my departure claiming no freelancer should
| get more than the agreed rate....
| kqr wrote:
| When I've charged for consulting work the smallest unit I've
| allocated to a client is half a day. That means I work for one
| client before lunch, and potentially another after, both get
| charged 4 hours (or 3 hours when I did 6 hour days).
|
| If I finish my assigned task within 10 minutes, then I find
| something else to do for that client to fill up the rest of the
| time. It usually leads to them being pleasantly surprised at me
| taking lead on improvements, and gives me a chance to refactor
| things that are difficult to maintain.
| inphovore wrote:
| I see by the comments that a lot of intelligent people do not
| understand billing ethics.
|
| There are many layers of relationship, and your relationship will
| truly define the nuances of your billing process.
|
| However regarding your question, there are a few considerations
| which determine when you are being "flexible" and when billing
| becomes corrupt (if you are not objectively providing value you
| are stealing.)
|
| Are you in the office? On call? Devoting exclusive attention? Or
| otherwise billing for full days (with hours as increments?) If
| you're in the office or real time "available" then it's a
| billable hour even if you check HN or eat at your desk or wander
| around wondering what everyone else is up to (some call it
| insight.)
|
| If you're really billing hourly and your not working, you
| shouldn't bill for those hours you are not working (like playing
| hooky.)
|
| Fifteen minute increments are the floor for technical work (more
| common once you're over $100/hr)
|
| It's okay to round up (or down) one total hour if you do not want
| to split hairs on an invoice (sic. 45 minutes of hand holding.)
| put a foot note on the invoice (total hours round up) if you want
| to be transparent.
|
| You should be billing for all one off tasks. Talking about the
| project. Doodling about the project in your notes. Fastidiously
| rolling up and double checking your work/time spent. Email. Chat.
| Learning something new that evaluates into what you are doing can
| often be included (if not abused.)
|
| I usually budget in 25% of project hours for one off tasks.
|
| If you have a full time relationship (40 actual hours), you
| should fill the time with something, even if doodling in your
| journal about observations.
|
| Hourly is a great way to build if your a "lone ranger"
| contractor.
|
| Usually I like to only bill 15 hours a week! True liberation.
|
| You shouldn't lower your rate (unless you must.) Work fewer
| hours! That's the real dream. Independent and gainful.
| ilyt wrote:
| Do you also bill for the moment in the shower or where you lie in
| bed and find a solution to a problem?
|
| > Am I being too honest, and should I continue billing for the
| fifteen minutes I go off reading HN, having lunch, or any other
| short break?
|
| Salaried workers (...well at least in EU) are entitled to paid
| breaks, I just treat it same
|
| It would maybe be different if it was some very low hours thing,
| but if I'm working 2-3+ hours for same client a day, well, in
| actual job (as per my country laws) it's 15 minute paid break +
| 5min for every hour of computer work.
| stephen_g wrote:
| I don't bill lunch, but short breaks between stints of focused
| work are absolutely billed (especially if I'm in the client's
| office, which I am much if the time, because I'm available at a
| moment's notice.
|
| I wouldn't lower your rate... That doesn't really affect the
| ethics of billing, or contractual obligations or anything. If the
| client is unhappy with what you're doing it's not going to matter
| whether you're paid more or less, and vice-versa (if they're
| happy with how you work either way doesn't matter).
| jot wrote:
| Hourly billing is nuts.
|
| This book helped me stop. I'm happier and, more importantly, so
| are my clients.
|
| https://jonathanstark.com/hbin
| kpatrick wrote:
| You should only bill for time spent on client work, unless stated
| in the contract. When I did consulting, I worked over 40 hours to
| bill 40 client hours, because there is always some company
| overhead that isn't related to customer work.
|
| The 40 hours you see billed regularly is maybe to avoid
| triggering overtime/excess hours clauses or norms.
| dougmwne wrote:
| You bill as long as you are even minimally plugged in. If you
| can't crack a beer or head off to the gym, you are on the clock.
| hxugufjfjf wrote:
| I do both, and bill 8 hours while I'm at it. Fuck the greedy
| bastards. I've solved advanced technical problems at the gym or
| on the couch with a dark ale.
| dougmwne wrote:
| And I think that can be legit as well. If you are engaged on
| their problems then you are billing. They are not paying you
| by the keystroke.
| katla wrote:
| This is a question I've struggled with a lot myself. From my 15
| years of experience as a contractor:
|
| 1. Never lower your rate, bringing it back up will be way harder
| then you might think.
|
| 2. Breaks etc. are billable. I even bill for walks that may be a
| long an hour, as long as I think about work. If I stop doing that
| I stop the clock too. Like others said, code is just the end
| result. I will usually produce better if I take a breather.
| Thinking things through will almost always let you find ways to
| write less code, resulting in a more stable and maintainable
| solution. Nothing suggests you think better while seated infront
| of your screen.
|
| 3. Always round up to the next hour.
| neilv wrote:
| I'm curious for HN's ideas on doing this with WFH, for fine-grain
| billable time, since I wasn't entirely happy with how I did it,
| as an independent consultant.
|
| On-site billing was _much_ easier and more lucrative than WFH --
| just bill any time on-site, except for lunch breaks.
|
| When WFH, I was very serious about billing focused work only.
| Work included lots of heavy coding, heavy architecture, advising,
| and the occasional quick technical question. I logged time in
| 15-minute increments (at least not 6-minute), and only when I was
| in front of the workstation and actively ready to start working
| (but if I got up to pace while thinking about the work, and then
| went back to type, all that was billable). At one point, I even
| had client-dedicated laptops and email accounts, for focus and
| for data handling.
|
| I'd also (unless sometimes in a rare marathon or very urgent
| situation) be all awake and alert, showered, dressed in biz
| casual Dockers, etc., before I started the clock.
|
| One time, an exec at a client said something like "if you go for
| a walk to think about an algorithm, you should bill it", but that
| seemed too fuzzy or slippery-slope for me.
|
| With my favorite client, I got WFH flexibility (before that was
| commonplace), further developed skills all over the stack and
| lifecycle, and made key contributions to very important
| projects/programs that I'm proud to have been a part of.
|
| However, TC was a small fraction of what it would've been
| performing similarly at Google. So today I still have to hustle,
| long after doing similar work at a dotcom would've let me
| "retire" (i.e., do angel investment, while self-funding my own
| work in whatever catches my interest, or fundraise for a startup
| when I don't personally need the money). Being a little less
| stringent with the WFH clock would've helped, though I don't know
| where to draw the line.
|
| (When non-consulting employed and WFH, I just make sure I put in
| a solid day. It's often, say, 8 "billable" hours spread across 12
| clock hours, not counting meals, errands, chores, exercise, HN
| breaks, etc.)
| oldstrangers wrote:
| How you do the job is rather irrelevant to the billing process
| (assuming you meet the deadlines). Occasional breaks and downtime
| are part of the process for much of any job, and there's no
| reason not to include it.
| stevage wrote:
| Ultimately the only thing that really matters is whether the
| client feels good when they pay your invoice. Charge twice as
| much for half as many hours, or the reverse, it doesn't really
| matter. Deliver results at a cost they are ok with.
|
| The tricky part is how to bill when you have expended effort and
| time but there are no results to show for some reason.
| Justin_K wrote:
| You are undervaluing yourself. You should bill by the hour and
| round up where appropriate. Bill for time spent thinking, on
| calls, emails, presenting, testing, QA, go live, etc...
|
| Dev might actually be 20% of your overall billable time.
| janetacarr wrote:
| I only do time-based rates for vague work products, like
| consulting. Usually it's a quarter-day/half-day/day/week/chunk
| rate depending on the arrangement, and I try to limit my exposure
| to time-based rates, especially hourly, because they often give
| clients permission to eat up all my time whether or not I want
| them to.
|
| For more concrete work products (with deliverables), I do fixed
| rate billing.
| DueDilligence wrote:
| .. if to enhance my knowledgebase, no. I of the strong 'no nickel
| and diming' belief.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| turdprincess wrote:
| Even if my client thinks I am billing hourly, in my head, I am
| billing by the day, which happens to cost about 8 times the
| hourly rate I quoted them.
| brudgers wrote:
| _clients not batting an eye_
|
| Better clients is the solution to all
| consulting/contracting/freelancing problems.
|
| Lower rates is never a good solution, though occasionally it is
| the only one.
|
| Good luck.
| jedberg wrote:
| I always try to avoid hourly billing. At a minimum I try to bill
| per day or week, but my preferred is billing by job. I estimate
| how many hours something will take and then price it accordingly.
|
| Usually clients are happier to have that because they know the
| cost up front, and I am happier because I don't have to track
| hours.
|
| The most important part of billing by project is that
| requirements are rock solid before you start (and the hours you
| spend on that should be rolled up into the total project cost
| after you make the requirements). And make sure your contract
| specifies what happens when there is scope creep (new contract?
| daily rate for changes?).
|
| And lastly make sure your contract has milestone payments if it's
| a long contract. You don't want to work for four months and then
| have to wait to get paid or argue about completion. Have a
| milestone that might hit every month or so and get 20% of the
| payment, so there is a larger bulk payment at the end for
| completion but also some payments on the way.
| joebob42 wrote:
| I have minor adhd, which winds up meaning I rarely make it
| through a full hour of work without some small diversion, and
| each days work looks a little different, but I still get done
| what needs doing in aggregate.
|
| I moved to billimg by the day to avoid this, it has felt like a
| good compromise between people wanting granular controls and me
| not wanting to go insane tracking every second.
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| I am required to bill in 15 minute increments for public sector
| work and 1 hour increments for private sector work. I don't bill
| for time I am actively concertedly doing something else. But if I
| am so much as reading a research paper that touches tangentially
| on their work, I bill them for that.
|
| When my client roster is heavy, I bill about 32-36 hours a week.
| The other 4-8 hours is mentor, team building, personal
| development, networking, etc.
|
| I only bill 40 hours when I'm overbooked or I have a big
| dedicated project and I can drop a lot of the other activities
| because I don't need to be branching out and maintaining
| awareness so much of various projects.
|
| I have colleagues who bill 40 hours almost every week. I believe
| most of these people are being honest and they're working nmore
| hours and pushing their non-project work into their personal
| lives/time. I'm pretty strict about containing my work schedule
| so I bill less. It has never been a problem at my work.
| kurtreed wrote:
| I bill for actual productive hours worked. Two half hours are one
| hour not two hours.
| lemax wrote:
| I bill by the week only and generally tie it to functional
| deliverables. E.g, deliver x feature in y weeks. Instead of going
| back and forth on how I spent my time, it works better for me to
| invest the time to scope things out carefully ahead of time. This
| process also forces clients to think things through earlier on
| and do their homework on what they're asking for.
| subtledigital wrote:
| Tough one.
|
| Some people value hours as output, while others look at things in
| a project scope (I don't care how long if you charge me a fixed
| rate).
|
| Two sides.
|
| Employer side
|
| If I'm paying someone for 38hrs a week I want to be able to have
| access to them during their hours that's all. If they can get the
| work done during this period I'm happy to not worry about hours
| per say.
|
| Client Side. We don't charge hourly for anything but retainers
| (20-30 hr blocks per month). All of our projects are fixed rate
| but focus on value pricing rather than output (hrs). This negates
| the BS that comes with tracking hrs and time sheets. It may not
| work for everyone but it works for us -- plus leaves a lot of fat
| in our projects.
|
| Few amazing resources for value pricing and ditching hourly
| billing: Jonathan Stark - Any of his books, podcast and website
| www.jonathanstark.com Ronald J. Baker -- Implementing Value
| Pricing Blaire Enns -- The win without pitching manifesto
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| When I consult hourly, I bill in 6 minute increments for only
| focused work. Anything 3 minutes or less doesn't cost you any
| money.
|
| If you have me do something that is longer than ~30 minutes, I
| will charge you from the moment I start to prepare your project,
| catching the spin-up/context switch time. If you interrupted my
| focus time with another client, nobody gets charged for my break
| if I need one to refocus.
|
| This is how a lot of lawyers do it, and my clients tend to be
| familiar with that model. I also charge lawyer-level rates, so I
| think people appreciate only paying for focused work and
| receiving an itemized bill.
|
| This is all for when I bill hourly - I prefer to bill a project
| rate instead.
|
| Many engineers charge much less per hour but charge for an hour
| every single time they think about your project. That also works.
| skydhash wrote:
| Hourly billing burnt me out. I started on Upwork with the spying
| software installed. I was desperate for money at that time. But
| my own methodology when working is to think about the problem,
| only typing code when I have a good hint about a solution. So for
| a day of work, I may spend one hour typing code, three hours
| reading code and the rest of the time thinking hard. But the
| activity monitor inside the software only picked up the time when
| you're actively using the computer so, I was always distracted in
| my thinking with the reminder that I have to use the mouse for
| the timer to resume.
|
| Now I'm paid a fixed price each month (fairly high for where I'm
| living). So, wages are not something I think about. But when I
| try to negotiate other project, I either go fixed, or billed by
| the day at the smallest. My usual hours for work range from 10am
| to 5pm, so I bill this amount if the client really wants hourly
| invoicing.
| macawfish wrote:
| The thought of going back to upwork gives me nightmares.
| moralestapia wrote:
| If you don't mind me asking, how much where you (GP as well)
| charging there and for what kind of work?
| macawfish wrote:
| I didn't get to choose. I felt desperate at the time and
| took flat rates for jobs that seemed fair, only to find
| that the requirements kept shifting. The client would
| refuse to pay unless I did more work. It ended up being
| like $5/hr in the end. Like I said I felt desperate and
| needed rent money. It sucked.
|
| Another time I'd put all this work into bidding for a job
| only to find out they didn't really have any money for the
| project and were just using the conversation to get
| feedback on their idea.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Dang, that's WAY too low, sorry you had to go through
| that and I hope you're in a MUCH better place now.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Upwork absolutely sucks. Never again.
| rr888 wrote:
| A lawyer died and arrived at the pearly gates. To his dismay,
| there were thousands of people ahead of him in line to see St.
| Peter. To his surprise, St. Peter left his desk at the gate and
| came down the long line to where the laywer was, and greeted him
| warmly. Then St. Peter and one of his assistants took the lawyer
| by the hands and guided him up to the front of the line, and into
| a comfortable chair by his desk. The lawyer said, "I don't mind
| all this attention, but what makes me so special?"
|
| St. Peter replied, "Well, I've added up all the hours for which
| you billed your clients, and by my calculation you must be about
| 193 years old!
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| From John Grisham's "The Firm" :
|
| Avery taught Mitch all about billing clients for his time. As
| an associate he could bill $100 an hour. His future progress at
| the firm, he was warned, depended on how much income he made
| for the firm. He learned that it was acceptable to bill clients
| more than he actually worked. 'If you think about a client
| while you're driving over to the office in the morning,' Avery
| told him, 'add on another hour.' He could bill clients for
| twelve hours a day, even if he never worked twelve hours a day.
| Mitch also learned that Avery liked to bend the firm's rules.
| milesvp wrote:
| On the topic of lawyers, a good friend is a solo practice
| lawyer. She says the general rule as a solo lawyer is that you
| generally can't bill more than 20 hours of a 40hr week. The
| rest of the work time is marketing and business related. But
| that also means they need to charge enough to make those
| billable hours worth it. That said, there's also currently a
| big push in her specialty to move to fixed billing to avoid
| many of the problems of billable hours.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| Any time or energy you could be devoting to something else that
| you spend on the client is billable. This includes thinking about
| the project while you're on the toilet. As others have said,
| billing in bigger increments (rounded up) might help you morally
| absorb more of this "idle" time.
|
| > is lowering my rate by around 25%, but also being less picky on
| what I should bill so that I can earn the same amount,
| acceptable?
|
| Sure, why not? But I wouldn't do this with existing clients
| because you're basically telling them your time is worth less
| than it was before.
| blitzar wrote:
| You make up the number
| circuit wrote:
| This is the strategy I use. I determine ahead of time how much
| money I want and distribute the hours such that it adds up,
| plus or minus a few here and there. It is all made up.
| ushercakes wrote:
| IMO, when billing hourly, it should only be focused work. They
| aren't paying for you to go on lunch, etc. That's for salaried
| workers. I'm not saying don't go on lunch, I'm just saying you
| can't charge for that in good faith.
|
| In a single day, you should target 5/6 hours of billable work.
| The extra 2-3 hours are for lunch, and other management type work
| you need to do to keep your freelance business afloat.
|
| Btw, not to be a broken record, but you should try charging
| either by the day or by the project. It's just more security and
| takes the pressure off of needing to justify every individual
| hour spent.
|
| Another tidbit of advice: use https://contractrates.fyi to figure
| out what you should be charging by the hour. A solid chance that
| you are undercharging.
| justanother wrote:
| I agree with all of this. I round up to the nearest 15-minute
| increment on hourly gigs, and I stay 'clocked in' except for
| lunch, cardio, siesta, and other unrelated activity. Even so, 6
| hours is a very full day (sometimes even involves a bit of
| after-dinner work depending on the day), and people billing
| hourly like this would likely do well to consider that when
| setting their rate.
|
| Day rates and retainers are much nicer in this regard, and
| should be used whenever possible.
| Loic wrote:
| I bill per week, but I keep track of my hours to the minute to be
| fair with my customers. My customers only get the number of days
| I have been working on an item, the exact number of minutes
| making a day is my own cooking.
|
| The cooking is that, I can only get 5h to 6h of highly focused
| work per working day "over the year".
|
| Sometimes, even if I recorded some hours for the customers, when
| I consider them not well spent, I just remove them from my logs.
| The goal is always to make my customers happy.
|
| I have been doing it like that for the past 15 years, the
| customers keep coming, so I suppose it works well.
| kennu wrote:
| It's not so easy to turn off the cognitive background processes
| that are generating the solutions you apply while doing "focused
| work". I mostly pay attention to the weekly level of total hours
| and achieved results. It seems a bit silly to think about
| individual minutes or hours here and there. I probably would not
| work long with a customer that was more concerned with
| distribution of minutes and hours than the overall delivered
| results and total time charged.
| orangesite wrote:
| Unless the work you're doing provides meaningful output in an
| hour:
|
| Bill per day, maybe even per week, ideally per % of your focus
| you're giving your client during the month.
|
| Ultimately, what a client cares about most is whether the output
| you produced helped them achieve their goals and that you charged
| a sustainable price for it.
|
| How many minutes you spent doing it is rarely the important
| factor.
| warp wrote:
| Bill per day, not per hour.
| brezelgoring wrote:
| If you can't sell those 15-minute intervals to someone else, you
| should probably bill them anyhow. If the customer thinks you are
| expensive then drop the price a bit, you know what you did so
| round the final number down to a nice even number.
|
| In the future, try to be more diligent, both for your customers
| and for you. In the future you'll be able to fit more clients in,
| and your customers will get a better price.
| molsongolden wrote:
| Be fair to both the client and to yourself.
|
| Some of this depends on your role and the specific
| contract/agreement but a couple of general thoughts:
|
| * If you're having short breaks midday where your attention
| drifts to non-work, do you also have short moments at home where
| your thoughts drift to work?
|
| * Remember that there is value in you "being available". Even if
| you have a slow day or less than 100% focused day, you're still
| working and available if something urgent comes up.
|
| * How is your output and impact? Are you contributing on par with
| others?
|
| * If you catch yourself thinking "Wow, I haven't done anything
| for the past hour" maybe that time shouldn't be billed but that's
| different from a quick HN skim or stretching and grabbing coffee.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| You are kinda tapping in to why I stopped billing hourly where
| possible and went to a monthly retainer model. The answer wasn't
| to give clients more granular tracking - that just made them
| argue over every 5 minute task - the answer was to find better
| clients who understood they are paying for my skills not just my
| time.
|
| > fifteen minutes I go off reading HN, having lunch, or any other
| short break?
|
| On the other hand, you also have to be fair and realistic if you
| are spending a lot of time on non-client activities, especially
| if you are billing hourly. Don't bill the client for your lunch
| break, bill them for work.
| Zak wrote:
| When billing hourly, I only bill when I'm actively working.
| Actively working can include continuing to think about the
| project while stepping away to use the bathroom, or "hammock
| driven development" that doesn't look like work to a casual
| observer but absolutely is.
|
| It does not include stopping for lunch, spending 15 minutes on
| HN, or anything similar that definitely isn't work. Those kinds
| of breaks on the clock seem reasonable to me for daily or weekly
| billing, but not hourly.
| anonymous_goat wrote:
| I bill everything, that I do for a client, on the clients
| premises, or that I feel like it's work - specifically if the
| client asks me to attend something. I draw the line when it's my
| benefit only (e.g. going out with the coworkers for a beer after
| hours). But beside that: If I don't get a problem I was working
| on out of my head and research it for 2h at 3 in the morning, I
| bill it.
|
| I do not sign any contracts, which automatically cut my workday
| to 8h (because they are illegal in my jurisdiction). If I work
| more than 8h, I sometimes get into trouble with some tight-assed
| legal department and I then just shift my hours on the timesheet
| around, until it fits.
|
| You should not under any circumstances reduce your rate, if you
| feel like the rate reflects your skill. Instead, explain your
| rate with your achievements, references, etc. and negotiate the
| gain/speed/performance your client is getting by hiring you with
| your higher rate instead of a competitor.
|
| I recommend against daily rates if you are able to zone into work
| and get serious shit done in 12h-shifts, while other days are
| just "eh" and you go for a jog after 4h. Usually, everyone
| notices your 4h-days while ignoring your 12h-days.
|
| If you trust your skills and your ability to define the scope of
| a project well, consider going into milestone-based payment
| (never for a whole project!). This might be more lucrative for
| you in the long run.
|
| If you choose this, think about a timespan you're willing to work
| without payment and half that timespan - that's the number of
| days between milestones you'll define. Should you hit a bad
| client, you'll stop working if payment hasn't gone through for
| the past milestone for whatever reason and when you're reaching
| the second milestone - never accept apologies, process delays,
| "those pesky policies"; you work for payment, everything else is
| the clients' problem, not yours.
| 22c wrote:
| I bill a small amount ( < 50 hours ) a year mostly to family
| friends who need a bit of IT help. I pick a price that I think is
| fair for the service and divide that by my hourly rate.
|
| The hourly rate is simply there because it was too confusing for
| both me and my customers to have a fixed price for each random
| thing they might need help with.
|
| ie. Instead of billing $500 for a "Basic Website", I'd bill 10 x
| $50/hr for "Web Consulting".
| tomiplaz wrote:
| When I was being payed by hour, I billed only effective work
| hours.
|
| I was pushing myself to do 6 effective work hours a day, which
| was not always easy (some days I would work throughout the whole
| day just to accomplish those 6 effective hours).
|
| I was tracking procrastination / break / meal time initially in
| 5-min and later in 15-min intervals. That was kind of extreme and
| my friends did not understand why I was being so honest or felt
| guilty otherwise. In hindsight, they were right.
|
| I suggest you bill by day, or by month if you can. Rather than
| lowering your rate, consider taking a slightly more relaxed, less
| stressful approach and don't feel bad about it as long as you
| deliver. If it'll make you feel better and you think there's no
| risk involved, consider discussing this openly with your
| client(s).
| matthewcford wrote:
| We bill by the hour (5min rounded) and only charge for focused
| work, if your rate is too low then increase it (if you can)
| pm wrote:
| Do yourself a favour, and bill by the day, rather than by the
| hour. Engineering is creative work, and you're paid to think -
| code is just the end product. Thinking happens consciously and
| unconsciously, at all times of the day. Billing by the day will
| allow you to focus on the work rather than the administrivia.
|
| Whatever you do, do not drop your rate: you'll just be
| undervalued by your clients.
| pwdisswordfish9 wrote:
| Billing by the day is good advice, but
|
| > Engineering is creative work, and you're paid to think - code
| is just the end product.
|
| No you aren't. No one cares if you think. They care about what
| thinking is (supposed to be) getting them. It just so happens,
| though, that whatever that is requires thinking. So you do
| _charge_ for that. But no one is paying you "to think".
| pm wrote:
| I'll rephrase: they're not paying you to mindlessly churn out
| lines of code. The end product matters. But the bulk of that
| time is spent thinking, whether you realise it or not, and
| frankly that's a much more useful perspective for the OP to
| take, as they're trying to reconcile their comfort with
| charging for time in meetings and lunch, because they think
| they're not being "productive".
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > No you aren't. No one cares if you think.
|
| If you are a manager, an architect or a scientist, all you do
| is think. You literally don't do anything else.
|
| The only reason diagrams, meetings, documents and research
| papers exist is to communicate your thinking to others
| pwdisswordfish9 wrote:
| > If you are a manager, an architect or a scientist, all
| you do is think. You literally don't do anything else.
|
| First of all, no; it's not true that, "You literally don't
| do anything else". Even if we were to accept that, though,
| it's besides the point, because what you're saying right
| now is a change of subject.
|
| What I said was that you don't get paid to think. You're
| getting paid for what the customer (hopes) they'll get from
| you. (And yes, that's true even if they never get anything
| from you.)
|
| To say it again: nobody cares if you're thinking. The
| exercise of thinking has no intrinsic value to the people
| who people who are paying you. All of the value is
| _consequential_. Ergo, even if you are thinking over the
| course of your work day, you are not really getting paid to
| think. If you could somehow manage to deliver the same
| results without thinking, you 'd still get paid--because
| you're not actually getting paid "to think".
| lawn wrote:
| Indeed.
|
| Many of my best ideas have come to me in the shower, on a walk
| and even in the middle of the night.
|
| It's ridiculous to say you should have a stopwatch with you at
| all times, so daily billing it is.
|
| If they don't want to that, just assign 8 hours as a full day
| and stop worrying of you reach them or not.
| linsomniac wrote:
| There is a science component to ideas in the shower. I read
| somewhere that the shower puts you into a similar state to
| the waking/sleeping transition that people like Einstein
| tried to ride by sitting and holding something heavy and
| loud, so if the slipped too far towards sleep they'd drop it
| and wake themselves up. I don't have any references to where
| I heard that though.
|
| Similar lines, I read about some earlish computer pioneer
| that was offered a senior position at a company and the deal
| breaker was whether he could get a shower in his private
| bathroom off his private office. Company said no so he moved
| on. "I have my best ideas in the shower." I don't recall who
| it was, Cray sticks in my head, but I don't think it was him,
| someone similar though.
|
| Sorry for the vast amounts of vague above.
| lawn wrote:
| I think I've heard the same story about sleeping with a
| ball, but with Edison.
| huffer wrote:
| Dali ;)
|
| (or maybe they all did it)
| greenpeas wrote:
| daVinci
| WorldMaker wrote:
| I have also heard it referred to it as "body is busy, mind
| is open" states. In the shower you've got a routine that
| keeps your body busy enough doing things, but you generally
| don't have to devote a lot of mental effort to that
| routine, most of it is truly muscle memory.
|
| Similarly, things like going for a walk or getting a little
| exercise can give your body plenty of things to do, but
| fewer things the mind needs to check on.
| diob wrote:
| Yes, and if possible by more than a day.
| CyanBird wrote:
| Yap, this is the correct way of doing it
|
| That and Value based pricing
|
| https://youtu.be/ivKnj9ffcmE
| newbYhrly wrote:
| Yes, this. If I think it will take 2 days, I say 3 and hand off
| on day 3. Numbers are just examples.
|
| I get half up front, half on delivery.
|
| Trying to juggle a set of rules for when to run the clock is a
| distraction.
| mrkeen wrote:
| I've been in the same boat. My resentment just built up over
| years, and for what? It just made me seem like an uptight
| arsehole. And I probably was too. _Looking like I 'm working_
| used to be a (minor) concern of mine, but I'm more focused if it
| doesn't enter my mind.
|
| Charge for your time. Don't stop the clock for meetings, short
| breaks, toilet etc. Lunch is debatable. If you go for a short
| lunch, with your work colleagues, then I'd probably bill. If you
| like to get out and clear your head and go and hermit somewhere
| for a full hour, I'd say probably not.
|
| If there are weekly perk-style activities that happen in-hours
| (Table-tennis, multiplayer games, etc.,) bill them. Otherwise
| your boss is just making you stay in the office playing vidya for
| free when you could be going home to your kids. If an after-work
| activity starts early, e.g. drinks at 4:30 followed by a team
| dinner at 6:30, I'd probably bill up until when I would have
| usually worked until (so 5:00 or 5:30).
|
| One time I went and got coffee with some of my teammates in the
| cafeteria, and we sat around for a while and chatted. Later I was
| quietly praised by my manager for making that happen. Because his
| job was to make sure we could actually get along and produce work
| together.
| john-radio wrote:
| > Looking like I'm working used to be a (minor) concern of
| mine, but I'm more focused if it doesn't enter my mind.
|
| You can stop an intrusive thought from entering your mind just
| by realizing that it would harm your focus? Is it possible to
| learn this power?
| fundad wrote:
| With time and effort, Yes you can. !Si se puede!
| mrkeen wrote:
| If you accept that the whole job isn't just interacting with
| your IDE, then you stop thinking stuff like "Oh no, who's
| looking at my screen now? Who's gonna find out that I'm on
| HN?"
| biztos wrote:
| First, I'd point out that there is a lot more acceptance now for
| "day rate" or "week rate." You can find its advocates in most
| contracting-related threads here on HN. If you are paid by the
| day, it doesn't matter if that's a 10-hour day or a 4-hour day as
| long as the client doesn't feel taken advantage of.
|
| Nor should you be taken advantage of: I have friends in other
| industries where "day rate" is the standard, and it's a high rate
| but it sure does involve crazy hours when the project is in full
| swing. Ask a film editor about "work hours" and they will either
| laugh, or cry. Let's not normalize the 18-hour day!
|
| Second, you should feel good about even worrying about this: it
| means you've got some ethics. But you shouldn't feel like you owe
| "flow state" for every hour you bill. Do you need to take a walk
| to clear your head and better concentrate on the problem? That's
| work. Lunch isn't that much harder: is it a working lunch? Bill
| it. Are you having a nice long lunch in order to not think about
| work, or maybe meeting friends? Don't bill it. (Day/etc. Rate
| obviates this problem.)
|
| Third, socializing with the staff is a little complicated if
| you're billing hourly, or sometimes even daily. I would be pretty
| happy if a contractor went out for social food/drinks with my
| employees, but I would much prefer to pay for that in good will
| than in actual billed hours. On the other hand, if you're at one
| of those places with ping-pong tables and the SRE peeps really
| want you to play with them: bill it!
| toomanyrichies wrote:
| patio11 recommends charging by the week [1]:
|
| """
|
| Charging Weekly: It Makes Everything Automatically Better
|
| What's the difference between $100 an hour and $4,000 a week?
| Aren't they mathematically equivalent? No. Weekly billing
| strictly dominates hourly billing.
|
| - Weekly billing means you never waste time itemizing minute by
| minute invoices ("37 minutes: call with Bob about the new login
| page").
|
| - Weekly billing means you have uninterrupted schedulable
| consulting availability in weekly blocks, and non-billable
| overhead like prospecting or contract negotiations happens
| between the blocks (when you weren't billable anyhow) rather than
| during the workday (when, as an hourly freelancer, you are in
| principle supposed to be billing).
|
| - Weekly billing makes it easy to align units of work to
| quantifiable business goals, where those goals dwarf the rate
| charged.
|
| Weekly billing also does wonderful things for pricing
| negotiations... because you'll stop having them. When I write a
| proposal for an engagement, I typically write a list of things we
| can do and my estimate for how many will fit into 1, 2, or 3
| weeks. If clients don't have 3 weeks in the budget, we can
| compromise on scope rather than compromising on my rate.
|
| If you quote hourly rates rather than weekly rates, that
| encourages clients to see you as expensive and encourages them to
| take a whack at your hourly just to see if it sticks. Think of
| anything priced per hour. $100 an hour is more than that costs,
| right? So $100 per hour, even though it is not a market rate for
| e.g. intermediate Ruby on Rails programmers, suddenly sounds
| expensive. Your decision-maker at the client probably does not
| make $100 an hour, and they know that. So they might say "Well,
| the economy is not great right now, we really can't do more than
| $90." That isn't objectively true, the negotiator just wants to
| get a $10 win... and yet it costs you 10% of your income.
|
| When you're charging weekly rates, the conversation goes
| something more like this: "So you don't have $12,000 in the
| budget for 3 weeks? OK. What is the budget? $10,000? Alright,
| what do you want us to cut?" You can then give the negotiator
| something to hang his cost-cutting hat on while still preserving
| your ability to charge your full rate in this engagement and all
| future engagements. (Word to the wise: no client, anywhere, likes
| giving up discounts after they've been given them. I have
| ridiculously successful client relationships where I, stupidly,
| cut them a discount years ago and I'm still paying for that
| decision.)
|
| """
|
| 1.
| https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/consultin...
| dahdum wrote:
| I only bill focused time, and never charge for breaks or lunch. I
| also bill a lower rate (~50%) for regular meetings, and usually
| no charge for meetings with external vendors/parties where the
| client needs technical representation or exploratory discussions.
| I also don't charge for any research or personal learning time
| required to achieve the task I contract for.
|
| This has let me keep my base rate quite high while not
| discouraging clients from utilizing me in other aspects of their
| business. This has gained me far more business than it cost in
| time, and made client relationships pretty amiable.
|
| It works for me, but I understand that it would not for many. I
| primarily work on projects/industries I find interesting and have
| less financial pressure than younger devs.
| varispeed wrote:
| It was bothering me quite a bit in the past, but I came to a
| conclusion that "slacking off" is actually a part of work. I
| wouldn't be able to achieve tasks if I was not able to let my
| mind wander off a bit and while you could say I am technically
| not working, I am still being constricted by the task I am
| supposed to complete and subconsciously thinking about it. For
| instance, during the working day, often you would see me type
| something for like half an hour and rest of the day "slacking",
| but what I type in is well thought through (I hope!) and usually
| works the first time as intended. Everyone is also happy with
| pace of my delivery.
|
| Would I be able to do more tasks during the day if I only spent
| 30 minutes on typing? No. I tried and it is too taxing and leads
| to burn out. When I was younger I would literally be whizzing
| through tasks, but by the end of the day, I wouldn't even be able
| to speak properly. Completely brain dead. It sent me through
| severe depression and eventually I had to quit the job I had then
| for my sanity.
|
| Basically if I have a task to do, I bill for it for each working
| hour (typically 7.5) until it's done.
| [deleted]
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