I'm shocked at how much this person undercharged, for a contract like this to a large company $1K P/D AUD time and materials is not even particularly high. A consulting firm would be 2.5-3.5 so it's a bargain.
I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page
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Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Big companies (rather, people at big companies) WANT to spend money on this kind of stuff for all sorts of reasons. -A team might have use-it-or-lose-it budget, so they have to spend it on something, and a contractor might be the lucky recipient! -Tax purposes! -Spending a lot on a contractor gives them someone to "fire" when they need to explain why something wasn't getting done or something went poorly! The list go…
One would think the use-it-or-lose-it problem would've been solved by now. It's so obviously dysfunctional. Is there really no better way to determine budget?
There are, of course, better ways; the thing is that non-dysfunctional methodology is not evenly distributed.
This comes to mind:
Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page
#83Ha ha cute! Meanwhile that's about half of what we pay teachers for a full year of work tending to the emotional and intellectual well-being of children.
Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page
#84This is how your tax payer money is wasted in State & Federal Gov IT agencies. I spent an entire year doing nothing in a Gov agency and in the end I was so bored that I quit. Fannie & Freddie hires tons of non citizen constractors with usually no work. It’s a big carnival.
Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page
#85Great illustration of why hourly billing makes no sense, for either side. In this case, as usual, the amount of hours "spent" on the project has little to do with actual value provided. From the contractor's side, he's excited about getting 12x the original quote, instead of realizing he's been severely undercharging for his work and could've been earning 10x or more all this time. I wonder if the author will start c…
Hourly billing is how you protect yourself against a sloppy client like this, especially with unpredictability. I have seen fixed price blow up so much I would never ever do it personally - I would have to add so much it would be astonishing to be worth it.
Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page
#86Ha ha cute! Meanwhile that's about half of what we pay teachers for a full year of work tending to the emotional and intellectual well-being of children.
u mad
Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page
#87I've got similar experiences working for corporate clients, but it was legal work, not tech stuff. It was a bit more complex than the equivalent of a static HTML, but something that anyone with an IQ of > 90 could learn in less than half a year. There were days when I'd charge clients $15k... for a day's work. This wouldn't have been possible if I worked on-site. But I was essentially completing $15k of contracted wo…
These types of gigs are more about who you know rather than the work that gets done. I'm guessing that you didn't just cold interview for this work, right?
Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page
#88Entertaining story - although as advice to anyone reading it, running up the clock without proactively notifying people that you're going way beyond your original estimate is a very good way to make getting paid incredibly difficult.
It was my impression that that's what he did. Of course the whole situation still could've made it difficult to get paid, but I don't think there's anything else he could've done.
Specifically telling them that they had kept him over his initial estimate (and so his estimate was increasing) when he neared or passed that point. He didn't sound terribly proactive about bringing this up while talking to people, either. Lunches with the manager where they didn't talk any business, etc.
Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page
#89[deleted]
Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
One would think the use-it-or-lose-it problem would've been solved by now. It's so obviously dysfunctional. Is there really no better way to determine budget?
Some organization have this issue where you get a budget for your group, and if you don't use it then upper management will think you don't need more resources next year and will budget less or even cut from your department. If you don't use it, they reallocate it to a department that needs it and you never get it back. Another part is where if you get a hiring budget they expect you to use it because if you aren't s…
You just restated the problem in more detail.
What I'm asking is, if the above system encourages managers to waste money, why hasn't anyone come up with a better system?