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One Thousand Dollars an Hour

samsoff.es

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Re: One Thousand Dollars an Hour

#131

Post by illuminate »

patio11 wrote: post #107
ladon86 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 allo…

"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."

I'd say the number of shady "locksmiths" in the phonebook that only know how to drill and replace locks should alter that assumption somewhat.

Re: One Thousand Dollars an Hour

#132

Post by genwin »

patio11 wrote: post #54

There exist many, many things one could do with a computer worth piles of money. Knight just blew $400 million in 45 minutes. What rate could you have charged them in the middle of that for credibly offering a fix? That's worth a few orders of magnitude more than a lot of work, but there are plenty of companies with revenues in the millions or tens of millions with very specialized IT needs. They might be unable to h…

> What rate could you have charged them in the middle of that for credibly offering a fix?

Plenty of course. But the odds that such person exists outside their organization is nil. The world's top programming expert would take more than 45 minutes to assess the issue. (I'm assuming that cutting off power wasn't an option.)

Re: One Thousand Dollars an Hour

#133

Post by wallawe »

If you've ever read a book called "Influence: The Art of Persuasion" [1] you'll recall a story about a store that sold rocks in New Mexico. The woman who owned the store was trying to offload all of her turquoise during peak tourist season, so she set the price a lot lower than normal. Although this was the most popular sell typically, fewer people started buying thus having the reverse effect of what she wanted. She relocated the stones' showcase to the front and center of the store. Sales plummeted further.

As she left for a short vacation, she left a note for one of her employees to drop the price to half of what it already was, and at least try to make a little bit of money back. But the employee misread the note and accidentally doubled the price of the turquoise. By the time the store owner got back, the rocks had sold out, at DOUBLE the price.

The store owner contacted the author of the book, a psychologist (I forget why) and he explained the reasoned this may have happened. Most of her customers were affluent and wealthy tourists who had been under the subconscious impression that you get what you pay for. When they saw high-priced stones, they knew that they were getting quality stones, at least that's what they had been led to believe through years of dealings.

This is why this guy's experiment will work and is a great idea. He is probably no more skilled than many of the hackers on here, but he stands out with his exorbitant price tag and some companies figure, 'hey, you get what you pay for.' This is especially true in the business world. So regardless of the fact he may not be worth it, or may not possess superior abilities, if he is getting the money which I hypothesize he will, more power to him.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-Busine...

Re: One Thousand Dollars an Hour

#134

Post by tomjen3 »

patio11 wrote: post #107
ladon86 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 allo…

It very much depends on which locality you are in. In plenty of places it is legal to own locksmithing tools. You can find many videos of lockpicking on youtube.

Re: One Thousand Dollars an Hour

#135

Post by ruswick »

delinka wrote: post #123
suresk wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a decent to-do app is enough advertisement to be able to justify an hourly rate of $1000 (or even 1/4 that), I've been doing something really wrong. However, the $10,000 fee (or at least some significant fee) for signing an NDA bonus is fairly reasonable. Most NDAs are usually unnecessary, inappropriately scoped, and force the person signing it to take on a substantial legal liability - I wish more people would re…

"...justify an hourly rate of $1000 (or even 1/4 that)" No. He didn't justify anything. He's limiting the type of clients that talk to him. Point: "This rate is designed to weed out less serious clients. [...] If anyone hires me to write code for $1000/hr, they are wasting their money."

You're missing the point. Clients can't justify hiring him for such an exorbitant rate because his claim to fame is somewhat mediocre.

Re: One Thousand Dollars an Hour

#136

Post by manmal »

antidaily wrote: post #119

This has been done. Off the top of my head: Thomas Fuchs ( http://script.aculo.us/thomas/ $800/hr). I even think this was posted to HN.

It's not up to date - he's also not living in Vienna anymore AFAIK :) With their 2 products churning out big $, I'm not sure Thomas would do consulting at the moment.

Re: One Thousand Dollars an Hour

#137

Post by ruswick »

cageface wrote: post #19
johnnyg wrote: post #16

Good marketing ploy. Causes people to freak out for a minute with thoughts like "is this a trend? Can this rate be sustained? Am I behind?". And here I am commenting, so he wins. All that said, please keep in mind: 1. Gravity still exists, financially and otherwise. Reality too. 2. Strong teams still win. "Pay me $1000/hr with $10,000 NDA bonus or I'll be in my trailer" might get press, but the assumptions and arroga…

CheddarApp is just ok. As a card carrying yearly CheddarApp subscriber, I can say that I've used it for a week and meh. I'm all for bringing up programmers' hourly rates but I think I'd want to have a little bigger feather in my cap than another to-do app before I tried a ploy like this.

I agree. There are people with far superior resumes who will work for less. Frankly, I think he realizes that he won't get much work charging what he is going to charge. This seems to be a publicity stunt and nothing more.

Re: One Thousand Dollars an Hour

#138

Post by manmal »

rachelbythebay wrote: post #42

Pay me the right amount of money and you too can have many of my cycles devoted to solving your problems. Exactly how much money depends on what the problem is. Or, you know, you can just pay me to learn (really, internalize) your stuff and point out problems or potential problems. I tend to find things in complicated systems. It's what I do. I'm dead serious. Bring it on.

I'm inclined to think that such amounts of money aren't paid for some things you find out in systems, but they are paid for you knowing every last bit of the system and giving advice on how to exploit it.

Re: One Thousand Dollars an Hour

#139

Post by caw »

wallawe wrote: post #133

If you've ever read a book called "Influence: The Art of Persuasion" [1] you'll recall a story about a store that sold rocks in New Mexico. The woman who owned the store was trying to offload all of her turquoise during peak tourist season, so she set the price a lot lower than normal. Although this was the most popular sell typically, fewer people started buying thus having the reverse effect of what she wanted. She…

I believe in the same book, the author explains black pearls. They were previously trinkets--very cheap. It wasn't until they were put in a high end jewelry store in New York that they were suddenly desired, and commanded a price premium.

Re: One Thousand Dollars an Hour

#140

Post by mikeash »

cageface wrote: post #19
johnnyg wrote: post #16

Good marketing ploy. Causes people to freak out for a minute with thoughts like "is this a trend? Can this rate be sustained? Am I behind?". And here I am commenting, so he wins. All that said, please keep in mind: 1. Gravity still exists, financially and otherwise. Reality too. 2. Strong teams still win. "Pay me $1000/hr with $10,000 NDA bonus or I'll be in my trailer" might get press, but the assumptions and arroga…

CheddarApp is just ok. As a card carrying yearly CheddarApp subscriber, I can say that I've used it for a week and meh. I'm all for bringing up programmers' hourly rates but I think I'd want to have a little bigger feather in my cap than another to-do app before I tried a ploy like this.

What's the worst that could happen? Nobody wants to hire him for that rate? Sounds like he'd be perfectly happy with that outcome.
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