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I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page

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Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page

#121

Post by readbeard »

atemerev wrote: post #52

Some static HTML pages (e.g. ICO landings when it was still a thing) could well be worth $18k and more.

Indeed! Consider a simple brochure-style marketing page, which is often a good use case for static HTML. Such a page should be centered around content, and that content (photography, illustration, copy, animation, etc.) may need to be specially built for the page and may be expensive to produce. Everything has to fit together flawlessly, telling a compelling story while staying on-brand. Performance needs to be great. And if the page is generating much revenue, it is easy to justify spending even more money in optimizations if they are likely to improve conversion rates.

I realize this has nothing to do with the ridiculous situation described in the article, but I do think it's worth pointing out that $18k is not at all an inherently ridiculous amount of money to charge for a static HTML page. In some cases, it may not be nearly enough.

Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page

#122

Post by jkingsbery »

ryanbrunner wrote: post #3

Entertaining 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.

Alternatively (or in addition): sending invoices periodically.

Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page

#123

Post by dalore »

axlee wrote: post #32
pornel wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large companies operate on a completely different scale of money. If this was a page for a product that's going to make a million dollars, this expense was still a rounding error.

But why are they so stingy with salaries, then?

I learnt a while ago that salaries come from a different budget then the project budget. Salaries are an ongoing cost. But a contractor comes out of the project budget.

So since the salary is ongoing and a higher risk (for them), it's priced lower. A contractor the risk is less for them since the project has a fixed budget.

Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page

#124

Post by ceejayoz »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #60
tomcam wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the article he emailed them daily.

Yeah but not to let them know his estimate was off.

Yeah. Maybe it's just an omission in the story, but once the original scope was exceeded, an "I wanted to let you know that we've reached the number of hours I estimated for the task; let me know if I should continue on this project on an hourly/daily basis of $x" email was probably warranted.

Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page

#127

Post by w23j »

umeshunni wrote: post #107
peteradio wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you are getting taxed >100% I never understood why you'd want to throw away money for "tax reasons". Can someone please help me understand this, it always comes up and I feel dumb for not understanding.

You have to spend X anyway, because the money is pre-tax or non-taxable, you can spend 1.5X-2X, so the extra money is 'free'.

I'm with peteradio, I also never understand this line of reasoning.

Let's say the company has earned 1,000$ and the tax rate is 50%. Your expenses X are 100$.

So 1,000$ - 100$ = 900$. Of which 50% (450$) are tax and 50% (450$) are profit.

Now double X to 200$:

Then 1,000$ - 200$ = 800$. Of which 50% (400$) are tax and 50% (400$) are profit.

That means your profit is 50$ lower (400$ instead of 450$) then if you hadn't increased your spending?

Clearly my thinking is wrong somehow, but where?

Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page

#128

Post by oceanghost »

I love this article. I had a similar thing once. I worked for this deeply, deeply dysfunctional company (salary). My project ended. I asked my boss for something to do, and he said something to the effect--"we're kicking off a new project at the end of the week until then look into XYZ because we'll be using those technologies."

So for political reasons, this new project was delayed and delayed again. I asked my boss for a project, he said, he'd get back to me. This ends up going on for a year. I stopped asking for new projects because I've done my duty frankly by asking several times, and at this time, I'm just reminding him to fire me.

It might sound like fun to get paid to do nothing, but, it's pretty demoralizing. There's a certain amount of paranoia associated with it as well. Eventually, I started taking long lunch breaks and going to the gym.

This went on for a year, then one day... We started a big new project, and I had something to do again. Very weird year, though.

Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page

#129

Post by nickpsecurity »

irrational wrote: post #35
protomyth wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be on a project where you billed over a 100 hours for some aspect of it that they decide to cancel. It is amazing how group decisions can blow so much. Now, I do not mean experiments and throwing the artifacts of that experimenting. That makes perfect sense. Its when they have a need for something that is part of their current business and they just don't execute properly to the point of cancellation.

I work for a Fortune 100 company. I've seen $5+ million spent on some software that was abandoned a year later, and nobody loses their job! It happens frequently enough that everyone is basically blase about it.

Ive heard $300 million was spent on a system at a comoany I worked at which didnt work at all. They bought it because a competitor did. The lower-level managers had to tell the higher-level ones that it was OK "despite some problems." They kept tying more things into it and recommending it to others. Media reports same thing.

Funny that the supplier's entire business model seems to be to charge so much for a BS solution that each company is forced to recommend it to others to avoid reporting the loss.

Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page

#130

Post by himynameisdom »

llamataboot wrote: post #83

Ha 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.

This is misguided anger at best, and trolling at worst. What were you hoping to achieve with this?
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