Precisely the reason why we built TapFame (tapfame.com) Businesses always have hard time finding the developer under their budget and we developers don't want to waste our time dealing with the low budget projects or just the idea people. After connecting a couple of projects we are realizing the tremendous value we can provide to the app ecosystem.
One Thousand Dollars an Hour
121–130 of 167 posts
Re: One Thousand Dollars an Hour
#122Sam's resume: http://assets.samsoff.es/pdf/Sam%20Soffes%20Resume.pdf This, to me, is more surprising than the rate.
It was surprising to me too, I work as a consultant and am regularly billed out at up to $400/hr. I have a resume and a "consulting resume", which is a list of all the projects I've been staffed at for my current employer with the company name's redacted.
People are willing to pay the high rates because you bring a wide range of knowledge about how other companies have done things, your level of technical skills is usually secondary.
The dirty little secret of consulting is that at a high level everyone is obsessed with NDAs and the like, even to the point of not letting you claim we've worked for them in any capacity, however once they've got you there they want you to name names. When it comes down to making a choice between several options, the option that company X chose is seen as the "safer" one.
Edit: after re-reading, I wanted to be clear that I wasn't suggesting that consultants do (or should) divulge this information; my emphasis should have been more on the experience vs. skills part.
Re: One Thousand Dollars an Hour
#123Good 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…
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."
Re: One Thousand Dollars an Hour
#124Earlier 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…
I was charged $750 last time I used a locksmith :-( They did change the lock though ...
Re: One Thousand Dollars an Hour
#125That copypasta tastes delicious.
Re: One Thousand Dollars an Hour
#126There 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…
Sometimes the dam just breaks. If you are so good as to be able to predict such an instance, you can see the future and should BE trading stocks, not working on the systems that facilitate trades.
If you are very good at building the systems that facilitiate trades, you should be paid well, but you will be paid for building stable, reliable systems and not for predicting one off gotchas. That is impossible to do consistently.
No amount of money can prevent the one off events. You can only hedge. As a result, is $1000/hr worth a hedge? Likely not.
Now, is a guy worth $1000/hr if there's a crisis, he can come it and make it better and we are talking millions of dollars. Likely so.
All of these things to say: no, he's not worth $1000 on any given hour, but might be on a very particular hour.
Re: One Thousand Dollars an Hour
#127Ok, his link baiting articles start to get ridiculous.
Re: One Thousand Dollars an Hour
#128Heh, sounds like it started out as something in between an ego-trip and a way to shoo customers away which has taken a life of its own and is now hotly being debated by the HN community. Now I'm following him on twitter to see what he's doing right :-)
Re: One Thousand Dollars an Hour
#129There 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: h…
Also, consulting a lawyer for specific work is different from hiring an iOS programmer. You get specific help that you cannot get otherwise and the law firm is on the hook for the services provided. iOS programmers are dime a dozen. Assuming this guy is the best of the lot, I still don't see him giving the kind of concrete guarantees a law firm would provide with their service. Lastly, the value-add from a law firm consultation is different (and much more concrete) than a top-notch iOS programmer, assuming he is one.
Re: One Thousand Dollars an Hour
#130Makes 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 hou…
It's quite simple actually. If your business is not dependent of consultancy, i.e. it's not your primary source of income, you'd do yourself a disservice by not TRYING to charge a significant amount: you never know who might be willing to pay it. In particular, an amount that would be at least the lower bound of what you expect your app to generate in terms of income on an hourly basis.
After all, you're not dependent of those consultancy funds, but if you find someone who's willing to pay the requested amount, it's win-win. You're basically put in a unique situation where you're able to experiment with that and you might end up with a few interesting contacts as well by doing so.