Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ugh, but who wants to do nothing all day? You get one life; why waste your days?
Are your days any less "wasted" laboring away?
Labouring away can be hell, unless you're like me and doing what you love :)
I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page
441–450 of 458 posts
Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page
#442Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
According to ABlogToWatch, you're completely incorrect. https://www.ablogtowatch.com/rolex-prices-past-60-years-reve... It's a pretty stable increase, and adjusting for inflation it's actually a fairly low increase for a product that has improved over time.
Thanks, my bad.
Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page
#443Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's lucky. When I sas 19, around the height of IE and 'every Windows box with malware,' I tried to start a similar business. Probably my most wealthy client, with an oversized SUV in the driveway, had a home computer rendered unusable by malware--something I had fixed before. But she ended up asking me to leave. She decided she wanted "real professionals" working on her computer. She told me I didn't know what I w…
Goosh.org "You're not paying me to search Google, you're paying me to know what to search for and how the results apply or don't to your particular situation."
They should put a black background on this with green text to make it more realistic.
Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page
#444At this point it is mandatory to remind us all the story of the forgotten employee. https://sites.google.com/site/forgottenemployee/
Is this real ?
Well, this one sure is: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35557725
Spanish civil servant off work unnoticed for six years
Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page
#445You should try working in an investment bank as a contractor. You need to find the right team, but a lot of them are massive collections of people doing virtually nothing but getting paid great daily rates. The trick is to look busy and wrap your team/yourself in a perceived sense of enigma and complexity. If you play your cards right, you can end up in a situation where no one will ask questions as long as you fire…
The trouble with bank that I had - most of the websites were firewalled.
I was gardening various projects on GitHub and increasing my StackOverflow reputation.
I wasn't enjoying it.
At some level there is a need for accomplishment.
Poor work ethics become a virus, difficult to concentrate at home later.
Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page
#446Entertaining 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.
Just to clarify, he got paid $21k for 7 weeks of time. He just so happened to only deliver a static HTML page, but was on prem as requested during the engagement. Still, it's a quick way to get a reputation for running up the clock.
In fact, it's actually only about $50/hr.
Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page
#447Earlier 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…
As a freelance dev I've worked with a ngo where they paid me to get their junior to create an application. Then another. Then later just to help him with some new concept.
I'm not freelance any more (yet) but if you just wanna chat about it, I'd be happy to relay my experience.
Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page
#448Would love to see the finely-crafted, artisanal HTML and heirloom CSS.
^ organic Javascript, ;)
Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page
#449Earlier quoted context omitted.
No matter what you think you are selling, you are always selling the buyer's experience. And for some work, framed the right way, high prices improve the experience.
It absolutely does. Some expensive things aren't all that high quality. It's just expensive for the sake of being expensive.
Remember the "I'm Rich" app on the iPhone years ago? It was just a picture of a spinning diamond. I think it was like $1000 per download? The dude who made it had a bunch of sales before Apple took it down.
People will definitely buy stuff JUST because it's expensive.
Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page
#450Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
No matter what you think you are selling, you are always selling the buyer's experience. And for some work, framed the right way, high prices improve the experience.
I'd modify this statement to "you're selling the customer a story", but you're right. When trying to sell a customer an expensive wine, you don't say "This is a cherry-chocolate red wine with earthy undertones", you say "This is a 1787 Chateau Margaux, grown on the left bank of the Garonne estuary in the Médoc region, in the département of Gironde."
Nobody will follow that up with "but what does it taste like", they'll say "oh that's very interesting I'll take it", despite the fact that the whole point is the taste.
By the way, there's nothing wrong with this. Experience is HUGE in how you perceive something. Consider your favorite wine from your honeymoon.
Let's say you're at a restaurant on the beach in Greece, the sun is setting and the weather is perfect. There's a light breeze, and you can hear the waves gently breaking on the shore. You take a sip of the wine and it's wonderful, so you buy a bottle and take it home. You rave to your friends and when you finally crack it open, they're not nearly as impressed as you were. It's not an uncommon story, and it's because half of the enjoyment was the perfect day, the perfect weather, the perfect setting.