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The billable hour is a trap into which more and more of us are falling

timharford.com

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Re: The billable hour is a trap into which more and more of us are falling

#101

Post by Buttons840 »

Saw this in consulting. Members of my consulting team were not a good fit for the project, but the consulting company prefered to leave them on the team because it paid everyone's paychecks, except the clients. The client will complain about the teams performance, but this is actually desired, if the client isn't complaining you're not slacking as much as you could be.

Same thing happens with individuals and hourly work, to be fair, but an individual can have integrity or at least find an excuse they're at peace with. When it's a group - a company - that is slacking some like myself inevitably feel they're being dishonest.

Re: The billable hour is a trap into which more and more of us are falling

#102

Post by BitwiseFool »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #95
leetcrew wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you have to wonder how much of that content is actually retained by the jurors. I always make a good faith effort to pay attention when I am selected, but I have a hard time remembering exactly what was said after a mere three days, let alone six weeks. in a criminal case, I suppose that works in favor of the defense (at least ideally). I have no idea what it does in a civil case.

Being on a jury was one of the few times in life when taking notes paid off for me, mostly to correct the memory of other jurors! oddly some judges don’t allow it.

I was allowed to take notes, but I was not permitted to bring them with me during the deliberations. Were you allowed to look at your notes, and share them, during the entire process?

Re: The billable hour is a trap into which more and more of us are falling

#103

Post by tptacek »

I've been beating a related drum on HN for years, about billing hours, and I'll try not to repeat too much of it:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

I know this post is mostly not about billing strategy (though that's what the thread is now about), but I'm going to chime in with a simple bit of advice for tech workers that I believe is universally applicable:

Bill days, minimum.

A lot of the pathologies involved in metered billing, time tracking, and perverse incentives vanish when you bill days instead of hours. People have all sorts of weird excuses to talk themselves out of billing days --- "what if I only have an hour worth of work to do?" Bill a day. See how easy it is?

The last consulting company I built had a minimum billing increment of a fiscal quarter. I co-ran a consulting company for almost 10 years that did minimum-daily billing, for a pretty big and diverse set of clients, and nobody pushed back on the billable day. Bill days (minimum), not hours!

Re: The billable hour is a trap into which more and more of us are falling

#104

Post by rogers18445 »

tomatowurst wrote: post #80
SkyPuncher wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's inconclusive if it's fraud without knowing contract details. If you're being paid simply to travel, then it is not fraudulent to also work on another client. If your being paid to travel _and_ focus on that client, then it would be fraudulent to work on another client.

question: how would they know?

If they suspect and sue it would come out during discovery. There is very little you can do to hide that fact at any point.

Re: The billable hour is a trap into which more and more of us are falling

#105

Post by bayareabadboy »

gnicholas wrote: post #27

Another downside of the billable hour: it encourages perverse incentives. I was recently talking with a potential customer in the legal field, and he was interested in my startup's software, which helps people read on screen more quickly/easily. But at one point he turned to me and said "I know one of the senior lawyers is going to ask me if using your software is going to cause the billable volume to go down for the…

This sounds fake. Every lawyer I’ve met is perennially overworked. Not saying it isn’t true, but it’s completely antithetical to my own experience.

Re: The billable hour is a trap into which more and more of us are falling

#107

Post by micromacrofoot »

kposehn wrote: post #55
spyke112 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you mind giving an example of how exactly you would bill your client, what does a “retainer block” mean?

* A retainer block is a fixed price for up to a certain number of hours per week, usually 10 hours and clients can buy multiple blocks. There are four blocks in total (all sold currently) * The client pays this amount regardless of how much time is worked * The advantage for the client is they have this time available to them and them alone - no one else will take it since it is already sold * The limit of hours per…

How often does the client use all the reserved hours?

Re: The billable hour is a trap into which more and more of us are falling

#108

Post by usrn »

humanrebar wrote: post #20
InefficientRed wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The loss of the sabbath in Christianity really puts a limelight on the dark side of grace. Rest is for eternity; clock back in.

A lot of Christians still do some sort of Sabbath. It could be a sin to skip the Sabbath, even, depending on the theology. But the definition of sin in some theologies can be quite broad, personal, and circumstantial.

We weren't really told it was a sin I guess but that it was more honorable or optimal to not do anything except reflect and socialize on Sunday? It's not as extreme as what my great grandmother talks about where they really did nothing on Sunday. She was an atheist too so there definitely was a shift in American culture here.

Re: The billable hour is a trap into which more and more of us are falling

#109

Post by chasd00 »

kache_ wrote: post #67

The high rolling software contractors I know use "billable hours" as a random meter stick to charge whatever they feel like. I know a guy who has more billable hours than waking hours across the week across three contracts. The customers know and don't care, because he gets things done. I've even heard people complain about clients over beers and say "because they were being so stupid I added 8 billable hours" charge…

For really big clients the trick is finding out the maximum allowed budget before the next approval escalation kicks in. You divide that by the LOE in hours and that’s your hourly rate.

Re: The billable hour is a trap into which more and more of us are falling

#110

Post by dataflow »

tptacek wrote: post #103

I've been beating a related drum on HN for years, about billing hours, and I'll try not to repeat too much of it: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... I know this post is mostly not about billing strategy (though that's what the thread is now about), but I'm going to chime in with a simple bit of advice for tech workers that I believe is universally applicable: Bill days, minimum. A lot of…

> A lot of the [...] perverse incentives vanish when you bill days instead of hours.

I'm confused how that's supposed to eliminate perverse incentives. Doesn't it exacerbate them? Don't you now have an incentive to spread out every client's work over every day possible? Like doing a few minutes of work for each client every day round-robin?

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