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Ask HN: Hourly billers, do you bill for only focused work?

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Re: Ask HN: Hourly billers, do you bill for only focused work?

#141

Post by zerr »

pm wrote: post #10

Do yourself a favour, and bill by the day, rather than by the hour. Engineering is creative work, and you're paid to think - code is just the end product. Thinking happens consciously and unconsciously, at all times of the day. Billing by the day will allow you to focus on the work rather than the administrivia. Whatever you do, do not drop your rate: you'll just be undervalued by your clients.

The issue with daily rates is that the client assumes you are available/working for a "full" magical 8 hours. On my side, I don't want to bill for a "full" day if I did some quick 1-2 hours of work. I also don't want to do such 1-2 hours of work for free.

Re: Ask HN: Hourly billers, do you bill for only focused work?

#142

Post by pm »

zerr wrote: post #141
pm wrote: post #10

Do yourself a favour, and bill by the day, rather than by the hour. Engineering is creative work, and you're paid to think - code is just the end product. Thinking happens consciously and unconsciously, at all times of the day. Billing by the day will allow you to focus on the work rather than the administrivia. Whatever you do, do not drop your rate: you'll just be undervalued by your clients.

The issue with daily rates is that the client assumes you are available/working for a "full" magical 8 hours. On my side, I don't want to bill for a "full" day if I did some quick 1-2 hours of work. I also don't want to do such 1-2 hours of work for free.

You can always charge an hourly rate for that duration of work whenever it comes up.

Re: Ask HN: Hourly billers, do you bill for only focused work?

#143

Post by ClumsyPilot »

pwdisswordfish9 wrote: post #111
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No you aren't. No one cares if you think. If you are a manager, an architect or a scientist, all you do is think. You literally don't do anything else. The only reason diagrams, meetings, documents and research papers exist is to communicate your thinking to others

> If you are a manager, an architect or a scientist, all you do is think. You literally don't do anything else. First of all, no; it's not true that, "You literally don't do anything else". Even if we were to accept that, though, it's besides the point, because what you're saying right now is a change of subject. What I said was that you don't get paid to think. You're getting paid for what the customer (hopes) they'…

> If you could somehow manage to deliver the same results without thinking, you'd still get paid--because you're not actually getting paid "to think".

Reductio Ad absurdum:

If you are a miner, you are not being paid to dig, you are being paid to find coal. If you could deliver coal without digging, you would still get paid.

But wait, you are not being paid for coal, you are being paid for keeping house warm. Id you could keep their house warm without them burning coal, you'd still get paid.

But wait, they don't actually want to keep the house warm, they want to not feel cold. If they could achieve that without heating the house, you would still get paid.

So no matter what you job is, I couls always say 'you are not getting paid to code/trade/do X, instead people want results of X' and you could repeat that process for X,Y and Z ad infinum. So the argument has no value

Re: Ask HN: Hourly billers, do you bill for only focused work?

#144

Post by gloosx »

Hmm, in a nice company, you bill for 160(80,40) hours a month, maybe less, maybe more, but the baseline trust is that you spend 8(4,2) hours a day on the work, based on your agreement, even if it's just being online / available for communication. You get paid for office hours, not for actual work minutes, even if your office is at home. Of course it's easier to be slacking at home, but it's not so hard in the office too after all. Everything which involves tracking and screenshooting is pure evil and i suggest to avoid this snake lair

Re: Ask HN: Hourly billers, do you bill for only focused work?

#145

Post by WirelessGigabit »

piva00 wrote: post #109
chubbnix wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you in the public sector is this a common issue in your industry? I ask because gifts and emoluments are common in my industry (manufacturing) with contracted clients in the private sector.

I'm in the private sector and I'm in no way allowed to accept gifts worth more than 10-15€ and even those are under strict premises to not allow it to be misconstrued as a bribe. Not even working in any industry that is usually under scrutiny for bribes (finance, defence, pharma, etc.).

You sure this is about bribes and not about taxes?

Re: Ask HN: Hourly billers, do you bill for only focused work?

#146

Post by mylons »

I TRY to bill on the half day/day or ideally for the entire project. But, if I have to bill hourly then the moment the clock starts an hour has begun. If I only work 10 minutes that day, then I bill the client an hour. If I work 10 minutes at 5 different times during the day, then I typically consider that all to just be 1 hour. If I do it 7 times, then that's 2 hours, etc.

I've also started a passion project to help aggregate data and stories like these. So far, only aggregating that data. https://hourly.fyi/

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