Tangentially: I liked listening to the article, with the background soothing music, in the author's voice.
If only we could change the speed.
I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page
251–260 of 458 posts
Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page
#252Earlier 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…
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.
Some companies get tax breaks for hiring X number of workers in certain locations. Which is why sometimes you get companies hiring a bunch of people at a data center who don't do anything related to the data center, but mostly exist as a way to get a tax break and good press.
Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page
#253My 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.…
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Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page
#254I 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 had a similar experience a few years ago. 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 able to learn AngularJS and some other stuff
Yeah that's what I would hope to do too. Lots of time, let's dig in to that stuff there's never time to learn!
Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is the further down you go the more narrow the focus. When I worked on MS Office I was always annoyed they were spending all the money on other products with few users and no revenue. 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.
I don't think that really addresses "use it or lose it" type policies though.
Use it or lose it is a blunt hammer to basically say "You get enough for subsistence but no more". Sure there are smarter ways but intelligence costs time and money too.
Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page
#256Earlier 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?
In government (usa) it absolutely still exists. As the financial period ends each department spends hugely and really wastefully to ensure their full budget is spent. Its actually quite infuriating.
It’s the same in corporations.
Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page
#257Ha 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.
Don't hate the player, hate the game. And if you want to compare income, look at C-level executives... don't look at devs who are actually doing work.
Oh, don't worry, my comment was directed against the game :)
I advise all programmers to grab as much money as they can until it stops making them happy and then give a bunch away during an existential crisis...
Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, "charge accordingly" means different things to different customers. My parents never advertised their tailor shop, it was all "word-of-mouth" business. After the pricing jack-up, every customer got charged what my mother felt they could pay (with a very loose regard for consistency and some allowance for negotiation). I used to think that was sketchy. It wasn't until much later that I realized that B2B enterpris…
> I used to think that was sketchy. It wasn't until much later that I realized that B2B enterprise sales people do that stuff ALL THE TIME even with their onerous kpi's, forecasting and fiscal quarter expectations! Depending on how it's done, it still is, and enterprise salesmen doing it doesn't make it less so. As a customer, I don't necessarily seek absolute minimum price, but I want it to be a fair price that I ca…
How do you determine whether a price is targeted/individual? Do you check in different browsers / on different devices?
Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page
#259My 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.…
This is a classic example of a Veblen good [1]. "Veblen goods are types of luxury goods for which the quantity demanded increases as the price increases, an apparent contradiction of the law of demand, resulting in an upward-sloping demand curve. Some goods become more desirable because of their high prices." The suits are expensive, so they must be good. It's also a status signal to others that you can afford such g…
For anyone interested, I highly recommend _Theory of the Leisure Class_, in which Veblen developed the notion:
Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page
#260I'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…
> $15k of contracted work in a single day, which was sold as a fixed-fee in return for a legal report. The type of work that should cost maybe $200 in total. This sounds like a SaaS waiting to happen.