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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

#391

Post by 55555 »

crispyambulance wrote: post #178

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.…

One day randomly in the 80s IIRC, Rolex tripled their prices, and they haven't lowered them since. The same watch cost three times as much at retail one day than it did the day prior.

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

#392

Post by 55555 »

duxup wrote: post #18

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.

Yeah I know a guy who had that waiting gig for 1.5 years before he was finally assigned his first bit of work.

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

#393

Post by megaremote »

_bxg1 wrote: post #8
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.

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.

No, he clearly didn't. He only worked out the costs at the end.

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

#394

Post by xrd »

n-exploit wrote: post #386
Bokanovsky wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As the Director of Technology at a non-profit organization, how am I supposed to staff software engineering resources when these pricing practices like these are commonplace in the for-profit world? How am I supposed to make an argument to the board that a single technology staff member, let alone a working team, is 5x-10x more valuable than the rest of the workforce? I'm going to admit it - it's hard to see stuff li…

Have you considered training internal people to do what you need?

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

#395

Post by glennpratt »

antepodius wrote: post #153
madeofpalk wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its stories (and personal experience) like this that make me laugh when people try and say that governments are inefficient and lacks accountability.

Big things are more likely to be inefficient and lack accountability. Governments are big, so are big corporations.

My experience working my way up from small companies didn't really bear this out. Budgets at my bigish company are strict and audited; having a contractor results in regular check-ins from managers to see if it can be cut off. The smallest companies I worked for were family slush funds.

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

#397

Post by blunte »

fibers wrote: post #152
blunte wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've lived this. Myself and a very expensive team of EY kids were waiting eagerly every day for anyone in corp management to throw us any kind of tasks. On the rare occasion that we were given a task, we would all descend upon one computer like vultures, group-solving the problem typically in 60minutes or less. Then it was back to doing nothing. Diplomacy (the game) became our primary activity. It was fun, but such a…

That's awesome. What group were you in?

I wasn't EY, I was in through a small local firm. And we billed much less :). So the weekends when the EY guys didn't fly home, they had a few hundred $ to burn. We lived well on the weekends!

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

#398

Post by stuart78 »

Wistar wrote: post #340
droithomme wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “How can you ask for so much? It took you only a minute to draw this.” translation: I expected to pay $5 for this napkin drawing, and later sell it for $10,000. Then you asked me $1000 for the drawing. That means you just tried to steal $995 from me. Outrageous! You are a thief, Mr. Picasso!

When I first read the story many years ago, Picasso's ask was $10,000.

You know, inflation...

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

#399

Post by sureaboutthis »

I charge $30,000 and did absolutely nothing.

I was hired by a publishing company to take their 1990s web site into the modern age, a couple of years ago. I reported directly to the owner of this small but well known company in their industry. On day one, he sat with me for 10 minutes and outlined what he wanted done and then promptly left for a publishing conference for two weeks. He gave me nothing to access the web server or any of the source.

So, I spent two weeks putting together a few potential designs and showed them around to influential persons inside the company. They loved it! But when the CEO returned, he immediately pushed back against the hamburger icon for a menu selection among other things he thought his customers would find difficult to use.

I said I would work on that, made some changes I thought he would like, but when it came time to present them, he was gone again on another sales meeting out of town for a few days.

When he came back, he asked me to work with his graphic designer to create some animations for an iPad program they sold. I had never done that but quickly learned. He then went to France. He called me twice to ask about the progress and some additions he wanted but, when he returned, he was too busy to meet with me about that project.

I continued to ask for access to the server but never received a response.

Then, he presented me with an iPad app they had some company in India develop. He said it had some minor issues but he wanted me to work on it. It was written in ObjectiveC but I knew nothing about it and had never developed anything for Apple products before. He gave me access to his Lynda account but he needed the app fixed in two weeks. I told him it was impossible.

So, he hired a college kid who was fluent in all that. He gave the kid two months to solve the problem but he hit a road block and last I heard it past the three month mark trying to get that to work.

For me, since he didn't have time to work with me on the company web site, he said his mother had an event coming up for a charity she ran and she needed a web site right away. I knew nothing of the charity or the event. I had no pictures, no text, no idea what she would want beyond a general outline the CEO gave me but he wanted the whole thing up and running...in two weeks.

I said I can't do that. So he fired me.

I had accomplished absolute nothing. I asked him why he thought I could write iPad apps. He said it was because I said in the interview I once wrote an app for the iPhone. I said, no, I wrote a little test program--a "Hello World"--using Cordova but that was it.

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

#400

Post by jtmb »

chaiii wrote: post #353
gus_massa wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me one of my favorite comments of patio11 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4477088 >> Frew, who apprenticed with a Savile Row tailor, can — all by himself, and almost all by hand — create a pattern, cut fabric and expertly construct a suit that, for about $4,000, perfectly molds to its owner’s body. In a city filled with very rich people, he quickly had all the orders he could handle. > You don't hav…

I wonder if it's sustainable though. If you keep raising the prices and people buy what you're selling, and then eventually realize the quality isn't up to par of what they're paying for.

Eventually you become a Veblen good. Or you finally get to work less hours.
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