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Ask HN: Hourly billers, do you bill for only focused work?

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Re: Ask HN: Hourly billers, do you bill for only focused work?

#11

Post by conductr »

> I guess what I meant to say, is lowering my rate by around 25%, but also being less picky on what I should bill before so that I can earn the same amount, acceptable?

Yes, it's fine, you should pad one of them. Either rate or time. Even if you just log in to a 1 hour meeting they host, bill them for 1.25-1.50 hours for context switching/ "prep work" is pretty acceptable. It is going to be client specific, if you find your clients are being overly sensitive to either - you probably want to find another client as it's just going to be a rough relationship when they're counting every minute/dime. Of course, the best practice is to put all of this in a contract but there's a million edge cases. Some general clause may work.

Re: Ask HN: Hourly billers, do you bill for only focused work?

#12

Post by vitaflo »

I bill by the hour, not the minute. If I work 10 mins on something and do nothing for the other 50, you are billed an hour. Frankly, this is how most clients have actually wanted it. They think in hours (or days) not some subdivision of them. And yes, thinking about work is the same as doing the work. It's all billable time.

As far as your rate, I always bill as high as I can without pushback. Where is that level? You'll know when your rate is too high. I kept increasing my rate with contracts until clients started to grumble a bit. Then I backed it off 10% and haven't had a problem since. Note this means I am getting paid 30% more than where I originally started. Wouldn't have known that if I didn't attempt to max out my rate.

In the end it's just business. You either make a client happy or you don't. As a business your goal is to maximize your profits without much pushback. That will just take some time and energy to find out what the market will bear.

Re: Ask HN: Hourly billers, do you bill for only focused work?

#13

Post by diob »

pm wrote: post #10

Do yourself a favour, and bill by the day, rather than by the hour. Engineering is creative work, and you're paid to think - code is just the end product. Thinking happens consciously and unconsciously, at all times of the day. Billing by the day will allow you to focus on the work rather than the administrivia. Whatever you do, do not drop your rate: you'll just be undervalued by your clients.

Yes, and if possible by more than a day.

Re: Ask HN: Hourly billers, do you bill for only focused work?

#14

Post by kennu »

It's not so easy to turn off the cognitive background processes that are generating the solutions you apply while doing "focused work". I mostly pay attention to the weekly level of total hours and achieved results. It seems a bit silly to think about individual minutes or hours here and there. I probably would not work long with a customer that was more concerned with distribution of minutes and hours than the overall delivered results and total time charged.

Re: Ask HN: Hourly billers, do you bill for only focused work?

#15

Post by anonymous_goat »

I bill everything, that I do for a client, on the clients premises, or that I feel like it's work - specifically if the client asks me to attend something. I draw the line when it's my benefit only (e.g. going out with the coworkers for a beer after hours). But beside that: If I don't get a problem I was working on out of my head and research it for 2h at 3 in the morning, I bill it.

I do not sign any contracts, which automatically cut my workday to 8h (because they are illegal in my jurisdiction). If I work more than 8h, I sometimes get into trouble with some tight-assed legal department and I then just shift my hours on the timesheet around, until it fits.

You should not under any circumstances reduce your rate, if you feel like the rate reflects your skill. Instead, explain your rate with your achievements, references, etc. and negotiate the gain/speed/performance your client is getting by hiring you with your higher rate instead of a competitor.

I recommend against daily rates if you are able to zone into work and get serious shit done in 12h-shifts, while other days are just "eh" and you go for a jog after 4h. Usually, everyone notices your 4h-days while ignoring your 12h-days.

If you trust your skills and your ability to define the scope of a project well, consider going into milestone-based payment (never for a whole project!). This might be more lucrative for you in the long run.

If you choose this, think about a timespan you're willing to work without payment and half that timespan - that's the number of days between milestones you'll define. Should you hit a bad client, you'll stop working if payment hasn't gone through for the past milestone for whatever reason and when you're reaching the second milestone - never accept apologies, process delays, "those pesky policies"; you work for payment, everything else is the clients' problem, not yours.

Re: Ask HN: Hourly billers, do you bill for only focused work?

#16

Post by newbYhrly »

pm wrote: post #10

Do yourself a favour, and bill by the day, rather than by the hour. Engineering is creative work, and you're paid to think - code is just the end product. Thinking happens consciously and unconsciously, at all times of the day. Billing by the day will allow you to focus on the work rather than the administrivia. Whatever you do, do not drop your rate: you'll just be undervalued by your clients.

Yes, this. If I think it will take 2 days, I say 3 and hand off on day 3. Numbers are just examples.

I get half up front, half on delivery.

Trying to juggle a set of rules for when to run the clock is a distraction.

Re: Ask HN: Hourly billers, do you bill for only focused work?

#17

Post by Justsignedup »

conductr wrote: post #11

> I guess what I meant to say, is lowering my rate by around 25%, but also being less picky on what I should bill before so that I can earn the same amount, acceptable? Yes, it's fine, you should pad one of them. Either rate or time. Even if you just log in to a 1 hour meeting they host, bill them for 1.25-1.50 hours for context switching/ "prep work" is pretty acceptable. It is going to be client specific, if you fi…

Well, typically people like to see billing for hours used... so...

If you work today: 8 hours billed.

If you work part of the day: part hours billed

If you work overtime: 8 hours + OT hours.

I agree with conductr that this is creative work. If you talk to someone to gather requirements, do meetings, help teammates out, etc, it is all part of the process. If you need to look up stuff that is part of the process.

Just like any engineer, you can't be "on" 24/7 so it is expected that some slack time is cooked into your hours. If your productivity doesn't make sense compared to the hours put in, that's the problem. If you're producing more than enough for your hours, where's the problem?

Anyone nickle-and-diming you on checking that every 15 minutes is accurate is going to be a bad person to work for anyways, or just needs to negotiate less hours.

Re: Ask HN: Hourly billers, do you bill for only focused work?

#18

Post by biztos »

First, I'd point out that there is a lot more acceptance now for "day rate" or "week rate." You can find its advocates in most contracting-related threads here on HN. If you are paid by the day, it doesn't matter if that's a 10-hour day or a 4-hour day as long as the client doesn't feel taken advantage of.

Nor should you be taken advantage of: I have friends in other industries where "day rate" is the standard, and it's a high rate but it sure does involve crazy hours when the project is in full swing. Ask a film editor about "work hours" and they will either laugh, or cry. Let's not normalize the 18-hour day!

Second, you should feel good about even worrying about this: it means you've got some ethics. But you shouldn't feel like you owe "flow state" for every hour you bill. Do you need to take a walk to clear your head and better concentrate on the problem? That's work. Lunch isn't that much harder: is it a working lunch? Bill it. Are you having a nice long lunch in order to not think about work, or maybe meeting friends? Don't bill it. (Day/etc. Rate obviates this problem.)

Third, socializing with the staff is a little complicated if you're billing hourly, or sometimes even daily. I would be pretty happy if a contractor went out for social food/drinks with my employees, but I would much prefer to pay for that in good will than in actual billed hours. On the other hand, if you're at one of those places with ping-pong tables and the SRE peeps really want you to play with them: bill it!

Re: Ask HN: Hourly billers, do you bill for only focused work?

#20

Post by karaterobot »

In my experience you bill what you can get away with billing while making the client happy. That may mean billing when you're not working, but it can also mean working without billing at all. The idea of time-based billing is pretty fuzzy when you get into the details, so it's better when nobody on either side tries to figure it out, and you just ship something that makes them happy.

In terms of negotiating a rate that makes you competitive, your idea could work, yes. The danger is that (IME) clients who were that budget conscious were also generally worse clients in general: less organized, less of a vision, less willing to do things like pay for user testing and support, generally more stressful to work with. Often their projects were less interesting, too.

At a certain point, my company just raised everybody's rates significantly, across the board, and rather than going out of business, we ended up getting better projects as a result. In that case, I was shocked to realize that software contracting can act like a Veblen good, though in an economic climate like this one, I'm not sure it would work that way.

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