191–200 of 458 posts
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Keep in mind the work being done. He emphasizes its simplicity. This is not a senior role requiring a huge amount of expertise. Of course, he's probably charging too little in general. Everyone is.
3x salary is the general advice given to contractors starting out.
I know someone working as a contractor for a big company. 1 year contract. 6 months have gone by and they've done ... nothing. Their boss keeps saying "Don't worry we'll get to you, we're just swamped right now, you're good." They're already talking about extending the contract.
i worked for lockheed martin 10 years ago (give or take) on a client site. I was W2 (although I wish i was 1099). Anyways, when the government changed from W -> Obama a lot of the DOD contracts were changing because everyone anticipated the Obama was going to cut defense spending (which he did). The project found out that the DOD was not going to be able to re-fund the project, but we had to continue to the end. I en…
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This describes >80% of engineering departments at past large firms where I've worked. Ironically, these people are 'architects' and get paid handsomely.
The IT department in my company is full of “senior architects” and “principal architects” who are very pleasant talkers but don’t do anything from what I can tell. They have a ton of stories how they helped others but whenever I needed something from them nothing ever happened besides a lot of meetings.
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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?
I think the issue is management unwilling to trust other levels of management to make the call when they need money / a strong desire some folks have to filter / make decisions for others. I don't know what the fix is for that except to take a chance and trust folks but ... it doesn't seem to be a thing and instead they come up with easy systems to just make arbitrary decisions and there ya go. It boggles my mind som…
After all we were the ones taking in the dollars. Of course at an organizational level it was understood they need to invest in the next big thing even if it’s not making money right now.
Great 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…
I'm gonna disagree that hourly billing makes no sense for the contractor. He clearly just didn't charge enough per hour; $75/hour is way too low for contract work, and his $21k could have been $56k at $200/hour. What if the project was billed at a fixed cost, he negotiated $21k, but the project took a year to complete because the company moved so slowly? That'd be a terrible salary. He'd have to quit and somehow bill…
Simple: Charge $21k per month. If the company drags it for a year then you make $252k.
My parents had been running their own tailor shop in the 80's, barely making ends meet, pulling in less than $20K a year. It wasn't for lack of business, father was a master tailor trained in Italy and capable of elite bespoke craftsmanship. They had as much business as they could handle. The problem was that they were charging what they thought the work was worth rather than what their customers were willing to pay.…
Long story short, a jeweler was trying to move some turquoise and told an assistant to sell them at half price while she was gone. The assistant accidentally doubled the price, but the stones still sold immediately.
Turns out there's a phenomenon where humans automatically associate price to quality. So getting charged more means we think we're getting better quality, regardless of the actual quality
I don't find this to be beyond belief, but there are a few things the author should have done differently. 1) Notify when hours were exceeded 2) Get written notification that he was still required to come in to the office while waiting for assets or otherwise at a blocker 3) Ask questions to further cement the requirements 4) pick up a phone? I think that ethically this was not a great move on this persons part, but…
Sounds like the author reluctantly learned the opposite lesson, that ethics are silly and big companies will happily overpay you. He mentions multiple times his qualms about the whole situation.
I know someone working as a contractor for a big company. 1 year contract. 6 months have gone by and they've done ... nothing. Their boss keeps saying "Don't worry we'll get to you, we're just swamped right now, you're good." They're already talking about extending the contract.
I quit at a company I was contracting at because they kept dangling the whole, "We're going to convert you to an FTE next." in the meantime, I was working less than 20 hours a week. If you didn't have a project to bill hours to, you didn't get paid, period. I was floating between teams, fixing bugs and doing minor stuff, not being able to bill much of anything. Once I quit I was offered another contract role. I basically told the recruiter, "Listen, if I'm in the office, I'm getting paid for my time, period." Recruiter got it cleared with HR and the hiring manager.
My first day went like this:
Manager: "Ummm yeah, the two major projects we had you slated on, ummmm those got put on hold for the time being. Get your desk and PC setup and we'll have something for you soon."
I literally went 4 months and barely billed any real project work. My last two weeks I had 36 hours of non-billable time. I had two weeks where I actually billed a full weeks worth when a dev took off for his honeymoon and did exactly zero work he was assigned. The funny part is when I quit, the hiring manager told me he would hire me in a minute and to keep in contact.
In the meantime, I was able to learn AngularJS and some other stuff while I was sitting at my desk all day. In a sense, I was very productive when I was there.
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How are dollars I have paid to the government any more mine than dollars I have paid to a company?
a company is accountable for the dollars you pay to it, and has to provide a commensurate value, or you take your business elsewhere. dollars paid to the government keep coming in no matter how wasteful their practices
This is how corporate works. They have budgets for things. The money doesn't come out of the pocket of the person who cuts the cheque. You send in an invoice and it gets paid. If it doesn't, the company is insolvent or they are at risk to lawsuits which will cost them more than your paltry $18000. But they don't even think about the lawsuit part. Bill comes in, cheque goes out.