121–130 of 137 posts
It's incredibly important to have a clearly defined scope prior to entertaining fixed pricing. If expectations are not established with the client, they will make assumptions and they won't be in your favor.
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Good luck ever getting that share of revenue
Can't you just change the music in a silent update if the thing took off?
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> This year I'm on track to bill out between $360k and $400k > To anyone reading this [post] and thinking they are offering you helpful advice, consider their motive Honestly I'd be happy to sign up to your newsletter and be upsold into a private $20/mo high-end consulting community forum if I were to learn how to earn those kind of numbers and I was disappointed you didn't.
> Honestly I'd be happy to sign up to your newsletter and be upsold into a private $20/mo high-end consulting community forum if I were to learn how to earn those kind of numbers Based on communities I am aware of that basically do this…: 1. $20 a month might get you a community that is working to get to $100k. The biggest hurdle will be simply taking action, with the second hurdle of having that action be reasonable…
I charge by the hour and will never change. It forces the customer to focus on getting the requirements right instead of hand waving it like "oh yeah, that's just what I want" and then come back later "I didn't want that, what I meant was" repeat ad infinitum. You see they are paying for my time, not results. If they choose to waste it... doesn't matter to me, it's all billable just the same. I will do my best to ste…
One thing I've noticed more now that I read HN more than other places... Software people sure like to talk/write a lot of about their business. Like, a lot. I'm a mechanical/aerospace engineer, and I've done some short term consulting for startups (but now mostly retired). There is verrry little online in the form of blog posts like this mulling over how people work in that type of engineering (especially in the high…
I charge by the hour and will never change. It forces the customer to focus on getting the requirements right instead of hand waving it like "oh yeah, that's just what I want" and then come back later "I didn't want that, what I meant was" repeat ad infinitum. You see they are paying for my time, not results. If they choose to waste it... doesn't matter to me, it's all billable just the same. I will do my best to ste…
This is amateur because you are leaving an insane amount of money in “change orders” on the table.
That is fine if you don’t want to do it, but it is sub optimal for maximizing your revenue stream.
I charge by the hour and will never change. It forces the customer to focus on getting the requirements right instead of hand waving it like "oh yeah, that's just what I want" and then come back later "I didn't want that, what I meant was" repeat ad infinitum. You see they are paying for my time, not results. If they choose to waste it... doesn't matter to me, it's all billable just the same. I will do my best to ste…
It should go without saying to non-amateurs that exceptions happen, no general advice fits every situation, and your mileage may vary.
Then you boast about your own success. You don’t add anything to the conversation, offer no meaningful critique.
Good for you with the high earnings and luxury SUV. For most freelancers (or consultant if you prefer, clients don’t care how you style yourself), especially the amateurs just starting out, the article addresses a very real set of problems. Those less experienced freelancers do face a race to the bottom as commodities. The article might help them think about how they position themselves and structure their projects so they aren’t struggling on freelancer marketplaces.
If readers take nothing else away from the article they might think about adding business value versus selling their time, and having some skin in the game (assuming some risk) as a way to build better relationships with clients and improve their technical and business skills.
I charge by the hour and will never change. It forces the customer to focus on getting the requirements right instead of hand waving it like "oh yeah, that's just what I want" and then come back later "I didn't want that, what I meant was" repeat ad infinitum. You see they are paying for my time, not results. If they choose to waste it... doesn't matter to me, it's all billable just the same. I will do my best to ste…
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I've never had to fix bid for work, always had hourly gigs in the wings. I hold the philosophy that sw dev is a product development, iterative exercise, not a construction metaphor that is predictable. Yeah, I expect you would be able to do the same if you billed hourly. If a client insisted I bill daily, I'd probably have no issue with it either. It's just so rare to bill daily in my circles that I've never consider…
When you bill hourly you are literally demanding that your clients account for your time on an hour-by-hour basis. So, no, it's not the same. If you're subcontracting in order to make ends meet, then you don't have any control over your project structure; you're a subcontractor. My advice is to plot a course to not subcontracting anymore as soon as you can. I doubt that the driver developer who kicked this thread off…
Working with a few customers as a freelancer, I agree, a lot of time they can't express what they actually want. They know it when they see it, but they can't express it correctly so you end up building a product, and having a thousand change requests - basically the customer uses you as a prototyping machine until you build what they want.
Obviously this can't work with fixed pricing, BUT this is where the point of the article comes in. If the only thing you can offer to your customer is writing code based on a requirement - you're racing to the bottom because thousands can write code based on a requirement.
BUT, if you focus on outcome - I will build you what you want, AND I'll help you figure out what that is!! That service will include asking the right questions, helping the client figure out what they want, and you can put all of that in your fixed price offer. At this point you aren't just writing code for them, you are their business partner, you want them to succeed, and you will use your experience to offer advice. If you become good at this, you are much more than just a programmer, or what the article calls "technician".
So, thanks for the article, I found it interesting and have some food for thought.