I billed by the quarter hour and came to consider those as units of attention.
Ask HN: Hourly billers, do you bill for only focused work?
121–130 of 146 posts
Re: Ask HN: Hourly billers, do you bill for only focused work?
#122Do 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.
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Re: Ask HN: Hourly billers, do you bill for only focused work?
#123I logged my time in quarter-hour increments and came to consider those as units of attention.
Re: Ask HN: Hourly billers, do you bill for only focused work?
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thought of going back to upwork gives me nightmares.
If you don't mind me asking, how much where you (GP as well) charging there and for what kind of work?
It varied. I got my first programming job on Upwork (React Native), and it was around $3/hr. At the time, it felt magical earning something from the internet, and I was in college at the time. $3 was the amount I spent a day. It went sideways due to various things. Then I did a couple of tasks for a fixed priced and then went on to a React job for $18/hr. Most of my jobs have been around $20/hr, which is wonderful where I live. I tried raising, but good luck with that when it shows you're not in a developed country. But the major burden was the tracking. After, there were the shifty clients, the client that won't communicate with you, and the ones that consider you as a serf.
Now I've got the work experience and the savings to be really picky about work. So, I can take my sweet time to consider posting, if I ever go back to Upwork.
Re: Ask HN: Hourly billers, do you bill for only focused work?
#125Re: Ask HN: Hourly billers, do you bill for only focused work?
#126Hourly billing burnt me out. I started on Upwork with the spying software installed. I was desperate for money at that time. But my own methodology when working is to think about the problem, only typing code when I have a good hint about a solution. So for a day of work, I may spend one hour typing code, three hours reading code and the rest of the time thinking hard. But the activity monitor inside the software onl…
The thought of going back to upwork gives me nightmares.
Any good alternatives if you're desperate for money, and also a bit rusty (on real, complex codebases etc, not just leetcode/euler etc) due to being out of work for a while (and old)? Asking for a friend...
The thought of a screen monitor checking keystrokes sounds completely distopian to me, and also just not a useful a measure of value.
Re: Ask HN: Hourly billers, do you bill for only focused work?
#127I bill by the half hour and typically allow that to be consumed in maybe 10 minute increments depending on whether the task is technical and focused or project management.
But rule one is it's always half an hour for any project.
Re: Ask HN: Hourly billers, do you bill for only focused work?
#128I 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…
Seems surprising to me. Rounding to 15 minutes, sure, but 60 seems surprising. Can more people chime in?
I've got a half hour floor and bill in half hour segments.
But if it's project management I watch quantity of increments and add accordingly.
But bottom line is nothing takes less than a half hour per day per project
Re: Ask HN: Hourly billers, do you bill for only focused work?
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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. If someone's breaking up their time like this, they wouldn't be in business very long I don't think. Any reasonable contractor would complete the job in 20 minutes the first day, bill for an hour, and have everyone leave happy. It's easy to imagine scenarios where contract…
Sure, I agree with everything you're saying. However, we don't know that the the original poster is a great contractor. All we know is they thing their clients can't think in non-hour units and prefer to be over billed, which is preposterous to me.
Some people are willing to pay a lot for the convenience of not having to plan.
Re: Ask HN: Hourly billers, do you bill for only focused work?
#130My 2 cents as someone who billed engineering work (not software) for 5 years (again, my experience and it is totally industry dependent!)
For every two hours of billed work, there's an hour of non billable work. There's admin, billing, reporting, business development, etc. that comes with being a contractor ... and that's if you're efficient!
Do you only have one project / client at a time? If so, bill 40 hours and don't bat an eye. Bill at the highest rate you can. My guess is this is the salary at a comparable position divided by 2000 hours ($100k per year is $50 per hour) and add 30% to it or whatever your overhead rate is. If you're talking lawyer rates (~$400 an hour) then yea, you need to bill in small increments and hire out your admin / other stuff to a staff.
Once you dedicate over half of your working hours to a single client / project the rate becomes a comparable employee plus 30%.