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One Thousand Dollars an Hour

samsoff.es

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Re: One Thousand Dollars an Hour

#101

Post by nicky0 »

einhverfr wrote: post #99
btilly wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a bit off topic.. but I found this he/she thing really annoying. Then use singular they. See http://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/singular-th... for verification that this is acceptable English.

I don't like the singular they. I find it far more annoying than the generic he or the construct of he or she. The generic he actually has an interesting history. In Old English, the word wifman (-> woman) is a masculine noun and wif (-> wife) is neuter. This is because man though meaning basically "human" is a masculine noun so any compound of -man is also masculine. If one wants to specify a male man in Old English…

Does it have a "rule" like that really? Isn't grammar just a description of the patterns we see in languages?

Re: One Thousand Dollars an Hour

#102

Post by roel_v »

RedwoodCity wrote: post #73

There are many lawyers that have their hourly billing rate set at $1000/Hr.

No, there aren't. There are some biglaw partners who for some, very specific work charge amounts that are in the general vicinity of USD 1000. And that kind of money includes office costs (or whatever the term is that the firm uses to describe the fixed overhead rate they apply to billables to cover secretaries, stationary etc.)

Actually, USD 1000 per hour is special enough to merit an article in the WSJ about it: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870407130457616... . I certainly wouldn't say that 'many' lawyers bill those amounts.

Re: One Thousand Dollars an Hour

#103

Post by danso »

oinksoft wrote: post #44
danso wrote: post #37

I don't think the rate is unreasonable, given the value of great advice. But I could see some internal techies at a company scoffing at a consultant who is using Rails to run his personal blog: https://github.com/samsoffes/samsoff.es I'm not defending that scoffing, mind you, as playing around with frameworks is good initiative...but anyone who's been burned by a consultant/vendor who recommended a bazooka to kill a…

What's wrong with using Rails to run your blog? If your website is built on a given web framework, it is often more sensible to run the blog on that than to introduce a standalone blog engine.

Because it's a very heavy solution for a relatively simple site?

Re: One Thousand Dollars an Hour

#104

Post by lgieron »

vegas wrote: post #14
DigitalSea wrote: post #8

I think the part that shocks me the most is the fact that he has a client who is willing to pay him at this rate for 3 hours. I can see the benefits of doing this, but lets be frank here unless you're good and have the proof to back up the rate then you'll be laughed at by everyone for charging so much and be undercut. It's more than obvious Sam is more than just mediocre and can justify this hourly fee, I wish I cou…

You can and should charge at least $225/hour if you are a competent software person. There are far less competent software people then there are mediocre lawyers, and mediocre lawyers can charge $225/hour.

I'm thinking lawyers might, by the nature of their profession, provide more value than devs though, since they can keep you out of jail or prevent you from being seriously screwed in a deal, while a dev is mostly just increasing your revenue/profits by extending your software. Also, lawyers are able to provide value within relatively small timeframes (compared to developing something meaningful), which makes high hourly rates more acceptable to clients (as clients are mostly interested in "how much for not going to jail" total amount, not the hourly rate)

Re: One Thousand Dollars an Hour

#105

Post by [deleted] »

georgemcbay wrote: post #45
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #20

Is $1000/hr really a fuck-you rate for IT? Coming from finance and eyeballing management consulting rates that are a healthy multiple of those I didn't get the marketing ploy at first.

Yes, $1000/hr really is a fuck you rate for software development. Most software development projects are months/years long and there are huge context switching costs when trying to swap a new developer in for an old one so you tend to get stuck with the same contractor for the duration which means you're committing to paying someone $1000/hr for months/years. This is quite different than finance/legal where maybe you…

[deleted]

Re: One Thousand Dollars an Hour

#107

Post by patio11 »

ladon86 wrote: post #89
CaptainZapp wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an anexdote for that: woman is strolling through a local park, when she happens upon Pablo Picasso sitting on a bench. Struck by her good fortune, she summons the courage to speak to him. “Excuse me. You’re Pablo Picasso right?” The man smiles. “Would it be possible to have you sketch my portrait? I’ll pay.” Picasso accepts the offer. He considers the woman carefully for a few moments and then takes out a pen…

This kind of dynamic exists in a few professions. About a year ago I was locked out of my house and had to call an emergency locksmith - the cost was around $150. He turned up and inserted a piece of rigid plastic into the gap between door and frame, opening the lock. The process took 5 seconds, and I immediately realized that, given the knowledge that this would work, I could have opened the door myself using a cred…

Locksmiths are sort of a weird case: you can learn to open 95%+ of commercially relevant locks with $100 of tools and less than an hour of training. The biggest reason it costs $150 and not $25 is that your locality makes it illegal to advertise as a locksmith, and illegal to possess locksmithing tools, without certification. There's a nebulous security rationale for this, because apparently normal people can be allowed to own credit cards and compressed air cans but if we allow them to open locks for money as well then they'll burglarize every house in sight.

Re: One Thousand Dollars an Hour

#108

Post by gyardley »

citricsquid wrote: post #95
gyardley wrote: post #92

Good for Sam. Now you just need to get your prospective clients to get wind of this, right before you quote them your steal of a $300/hour rate. Level-setting is a powerful thing.

I don't think that is the point at all. His own projects are so important to him that unless someone offers him $1,000 per hour to work for them, it isn't worth his time. He isn't trying to get new business: he's trying to keep business away, unless it's so lucrative ($10,000 for 1 days work) that it's nonsensical not to take it.

Yes, what I wrote obviously isn't Sam's point, which is plainly written and quite clear.

I was writing about what you as a contractor could potentially do, independent of Sam.

Re: One Thousand Dollars an Hour

#109

Post by aravenel »

creamyhorror wrote: post #97
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #20

Is $1000/hr really a fuck-you rate for IT? Coming from finance and eyeballing management consulting rates that are a healthy multiple of those I didn't get the marketing ploy at first.

Are we talking about $X000/hr for a single finance/consulting professional's time? That rate seems rather unbelievable, but maybe only senior folk in the top-tier firms get to charge that? Are market conditions in finance/consulting just that skewed towards the suppliers?

Yes, that kind of rate is only for partner-level time at a Big 4/Big 3 type shop--and those guys aren't billing more than a few hours a week typically. Even then, $1k/hour is pretty high.

Now, it's not uncommon at all for the staff folks who are on the ground 40+ hours a week to be billed out at anywhere from 200-600/hour. But >$1k? Very rare.

Re: One Thousand Dollars an Hour

#110

Post by michaelochurch »

Makes a lot of sense to me. I don't think it's a marketing ploy.

Going out and trying to get work is massively annoying. So is context-switching. Plus paying your own benefits, dealing with non-paying customers, legal fees (yes, you need a lawyer if you're going to freelance) and having a complete lack of job security. I don't envy freelancers when I look at what they have to put up with. With all this, a typical hourly rate (and this is generally considered fair) is 1/800 of salary.

He also has an existing project that he's working on full time, and that he'd presumably be taking time away from to work on the consulting gig. When you're already working full-time, it makes sense to tack a factor of 3 on to your hourly rate, on the supposition that leisure time is worth (when you work full time and have little of it) 3 times as much as regular work time.

Given all this, a reasonable consulting rate might be 1/250 of annual salary, so he's rating himself as being at the same level ($250k/year) as a mid-career Wall Street quant. I don't think that's unreasonable.

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