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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?

#51

Post by halpmeh »

vitaflo wrote: post #12

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? Yo…

> 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.

I find it hard to believe anyone wants to over pay for your time by 6x what it's worth. I understand rounding up. But I don't understand working 10 minutes one day, billing for an hour, and then working 10 minutes the next day and billing for two hours total.

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

#52

Post by pwdisswordfish9 »

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.

Billing by the day is good advice, but

> Engineering is creative work, and you're paid to think - code is just the end product.

No you aren't. No one cares if you think. They care about what thinking is (supposed to be) getting them. It just so happens, though, that whatever that is requires thinking. So you do charge for that. But no one is paying you "to think".

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

#53

Post by xeromal »

halpmeh wrote: post #51
vitaflo wrote: post #12

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? Yo…

> 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. I find it hard to believe anyone wants to over pay for your time by 6x what it's worth. I understand rounding up. But I don't understand working 10 minutes one day, billing for an hour, and then working 10 minutes the next day and bill…

I do what OP does down to 30 min increments but I also bill a bit in how much cognitive power it required to do it. If I hopped on for 10 minutes to restart a server or something, I might bill 0 minutes or I might bill 30. If I had to drive out somewhere, live debug a device for 30 minutes, and drive back. I'm going to get an hour or two into my invoice somehow.

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

#54

Post by counttheforks »

halpmeh wrote: post #51
vitaflo wrote: post #12

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? Yo…

> 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. I find it hard to believe anyone wants to over pay for your time by 6x what it's worth. I understand rounding up. But I don't understand working 10 minutes one day, billing for an hour, and then working 10 minutes the next day and bill…

Which would obviously be malicious and your output would suffer and the client would probably notice. Everything within reason.

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

#55

Post by orthecreedence »

Any time or energy you could be devoting to something else that you spend on the client is billable. This includes thinking about the project while you're on the toilet. As others have said, billing in bigger increments (rounded up) might help you morally absorb more of this "idle" time.

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

Sure, why not? But I wouldn't do this with existing clients because you're basically telling them your time is worth less than it was before.

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

#56

Post by tomiplaz »

When I was being payed by hour, I billed only effective work hours.

I was pushing myself to do 6 effective work hours a day, which was not always easy (some days I would work throughout the whole day just to accomplish those 6 effective hours).

I was tracking procrastination / break / meal time initially in 5-min and later in 15-min intervals. That was kind of extreme and my friends did not understand why I was being so honest or felt guilty otherwise. In hindsight, they were right.

I suggest you bill by day, or by month if you can. Rather than lowering your rate, consider taking a slightly more relaxed, less stressful approach and don't feel bad about it as long as you deliver. If it'll make you feel better and you think there's no risk involved, consider discussing this openly with your client(s).

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

#57

Post by Natsu »

varispeed wrote: post #44
dbg31415 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the end it's just business. You either make a client happy or you don't. Spot on. 1) Do good work. Be patient and kind to clients. Remember when someone asks you to do something for the 8th time, "Hey, it's their money." 2) Make sure you write your contracts in a way that lets you raise rates every January. Aim for a 10% increase every calendar year. 3) Give clients a discount if they sign retainers, or longer c…

Re 5) you must be careful with the gifts as that may be misconstrued as bribery or a kickback. A card should be fine, but a bottle of Champagne rather won't be.

One of our salesmen seems to like giving out small bags of nice chocolates.

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

#59

Post by pm »

pwdisswordfish9 wrote: post #52
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.

Billing by the day is good advice, but > Engineering is creative work, and you're paid to think - code is just the end product. No you aren't. No one cares if you think. They care about what thinking is (supposed to be) getting them. It just so happens, though, that whatever that is requires thinking. So you do charge for that. But no one is paying you "to think".

I'll rephrase: they're not paying you to mindlessly churn out lines of code. The end product matters. But the bulk of that time is spent thinking, whether you realise it or not, and frankly that's a much more useful perspective for the OP to take, as they're trying to reconcile their comfort with charging for time in meetings and lunch, because they think they're not being "productive".
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