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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

#151

Post by denimnerd42 »

gnicholas wrote: post #131
gomox wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I was checking out your website and thought the product is actually deceivingly simple, but I couldn't find any mentions of actual reading speed improvements, other than the invitation to "take the challenge". What kind of speed improvement can I typically expect? Edit: I found the "research summary" link in the education page, but it doesn't appear to work in Chrome with uBlock for me. The actual "conventional" l…

> What kind of speed improvement can I typically expect? For a typical skilled reader, up to about 25-30%. For people with reading challenges (dyslexia, ADHD, vision impairments), it could be much greater. One fellow with ADHD (and two PhDs) said that he could read about 3x the speed with BeeLine versus regular text. To get a sense of what the speed difference could be for you, check out our "Reading Challenge". [1]…

I got 27% cool!

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

#152

Post by gnicholas »

mjreacher wrote: post #148
gnicholas wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What kind of speed improvement can I typically expect? For a typical skilled reader, up to about 25-30%. For people with reading challenges (dyslexia, ADHD, vision impairments), it could be much greater. One fellow with ADHD (and two PhDs) said that he could read about 3x the speed with BeeLine versus regular text. To get a sense of what the speed difference could be for you, check out our "Reading Challenge". [1]…

Has there been much scientific research into how much improvement you can get through beeline or other similar tools like bionic reading?

There have been several educational studies about BeeLine, and they've shown various benefits for reading fluency (which is measured as correct WPM) and reading comprehension. These were done with kids as young as six, but mostly older.

There was also a study done in an optometric office with patients, who saw improvements in visual tracking, not surprisingly.

Various of our partners have also tracked to see how user behavior differs between people reading with BeeLine and people reading traditional black text. These have shown increases in article completion rates, average scroll depth, pages per session, and app usage.

All of these studies were done independently and were not compensated. I don't know about bionic — they're pretty new, so I imagine they don't have a ton of research at this time.

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

#153

Post by gnicholas »

stavros_ wrote: post #149
gnicholas wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What kind of speed improvement can I typically expect? For a typical skilled reader, up to about 25-30%. For people with reading challenges (dyslexia, ADHD, vision impairments), it could be much greater. One fellow with ADHD (and two PhDs) said that he could read about 3x the speed with BeeLine versus regular text. To get a sense of what the speed difference could be for you, check out our "Reading Challenge". [1]…

Cool software. I have ADHD and it definitely made reading more comfortable (only 21% faster, but I read a LOT so that's not too surprising.) Hope it succeeds enough with commercial partners (especially ereaders!) that you can offer the browser extension for free on Chrome someday.

> Hope it succeeds enough with commercial partners (especially ereaders!) that you can offer the browser extension for free on Chrome someday.

This is 100% our plan. As our B2B revenue goes up, we will reduce our B2C pricing, hopefully to $0. We've already released one tool for free, our iOS extension for Safari. [1]

1: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/beeline-extension/id1571623734

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

#154

Post by gnicholas »

denimnerd42 wrote: post #151
gnicholas wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What kind of speed improvement can I typically expect? For a typical skilled reader, up to about 25-30%. For people with reading challenges (dyslexia, ADHD, vision impairments), it could be much greater. One fellow with ADHD (and two PhDs) said that he could read about 3x the speed with BeeLine versus regular text. To get a sense of what the speed difference could be for you, check out our "Reading Challenge". [1]…

I got 27% cool!

Glad to hear it! This thread is super awesome, and it's starting to remind me of our Show HN [1] from back in the day. Love this community!

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6335784

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

#155

Post by nonethewiser »

majormajor wrote: post #138
weq wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was in a lawtech startup and this is the EXTACT reason why i left and the reason why its hocky-stick never evolved. Sure they have customers, but they cant retain or grow. Lawyers get paid less the more efficent things are. Thats not a thing they desire, nore incentivize. Eventually they will come, kicking and screaming, but dont hold your breath.

Are there lawyers who want to do more instead of doing the same amount less efficiently? Or are there other limiting factors of how much work they can take on like court schedules or such?

Of course. There are a of small family owned firms. Some of these are sleazy and others have attorney's that really like to help people.

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

#156

Post by Winsaucerer »

movedx wrote: post #35

My approach to money has changed as I've come to better understand its purpose - the storage of a future promise to give me something I value. This leads me to ask, "What do I value?" I value my free time, being able to eat breakfast and coffee out on a daily basis, and simple things in life like just having a comfortable home, debts paid, bills paid, and a happy wife. My approach to money has, therefore, become one…

> "the storage of a future promise to give me something I value"

This is a good insight, and exactly how I've described money in the past -- a promise, that can be exchanged for goods and services. Everyone's happy to receive these promises in exchanges for goods and services because they know that they'll always be able to find someone else willing to do the same later.

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

#157

Post by shkkmo »

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…

I recently switched to billing by the half day and it has been a big improvement in my quality of life. I don't think I wanna bill by the full day because some days I wanna be able to take off after lunch, even if I have more work to do, without feeling guilty. On days where I go into and stay in a deep focus and work from early till late, I can bill for a day and a half and feel both productive and uncheated.

Perhaps full day billing is better for people who work on a more regular schedule, but for my nomadic lifestyle I think half day billing strikes the perfect balance. It certainly is a massive QoL improvement from billing in 15 minute increments.

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

#158

Post by tptacek »

shkkmo wrote: post #150
thebean11 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Project based billing just creates a different perverse incentive of churning out garbage that technically meets requirements

It also makes on fly design changes harder and makes managing scope creep critical.

Not really. You can bid a project-priced project with T&M overages, which is what every project at Matasano did; Matasano was founded by @stake people, which is where we got our project structure from; @stake was Cambridge Technology Partners people, which is presumably where they got it from; and so on down the line all the way back to, I assume, Samuel Adams or Patrick Henry or some other famous Bostonian who came up with the concept.

Just break the project out by week (or by day if it's short) and provide a "total project price" line, and then a clause saying you'll charge overages at a pro-rata day rate. Of course, you can decide whether or not to actually charge OT; if you're OT because of something you did wrong, you're best off not charging, while if the client did something flagrantly wrong, like not kick off the project until 2/3rds of the ostensibly billable time was over, you're well within your rights to do so.

This stuff isn't hard, and I've been a little confused for, like, about 17 years as to how message boards manage to make it seem complicated.

If this is news to you, and you start doing it yourself (you should; it's easy, aligns incentives, and will probably make you more money) you have to credit me, but also cite the whole Apostolic succession (Matasano, @stake, CATP, ..., Paul Revere) I just did.

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

#159

Post by tptacek »

shkkmo wrote: post #157
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…

I recently switched to billing by the half day and it has been a big improvement in my quality of life. I don't think I wanna bill by the full day because some days I wanna be able to take off after lunch, even if I have more work to do, without feeling guilty. On days where I go into and stay in a deep focus and work from early till late, I can bill for a day and a half and feel both productive and uncheated. Perhap…

You shouldn't feel guilty about this even a little bit. Consultants are a steal for clients. The alternative is to hire someone full-time, committing to their salary and benefits for years at a time. That you're willing to bill them a single day, and then get out of their hair? Unreal. Your bill rate should be an integer multiple of (your salary / 250).

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

#160

Post by kqr »

shkkmo wrote: post #150
thebean11 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Project based billing just creates a different perverse incentive of churning out garbage that technically meets requirements

It also makes on fly design changes harder and makes managing scope creep critical.

The way you phrased this makes it sound like you're in favour of using a design after you've discovered it's inferior to an alternative.
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