Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Prosperous Software Consultant (2018)

dabit3.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 82 posts

Re: The Prosperous Software Consultant (2018)

#71

Post by mooreds »

mettamage wrote: post #30

> Flat Rate Pricing > This also applies to software development. If an e-commerce application you are building will bring in $500,000.00 in sales in the next year, then charging 10% to 20% of this amount is acceptable. The same goes with feature implementation. If your feature will save them $200,000.00 in the next year, price with that in mind vs the hourly rate. And how do you know what amount of money they'll make…

Here's a great book about this topic: https://www.amazon.com/Value-Based-Fees-Charge-Youre-Worth/d...

Re: The Prosperous Software Consultant (2018)

#72

Post by mooreds »

jcadam wrote: post #52

I'm going gray and have been thinking about going the freelance/consultant route. Problem: Getting started without having to go to freelance sites and charge considerably less than what I can get as a FTE. I make a very comfortable salary these days, but I worry about only having a single income stream.

Avoid those freelance sites like the plague. It's a race to the bottom.

Other places to look:

    * Ask former colleagues if they need any off-hours help.
    * Ask people you meet at meetups if they are looking for help. (If you attend meetups.)
    * Look at the 'whose looking for a freelancer' posts here.
    * Look at fast growing companies in your area or network and ping folks there. They may want only FTEs, but they may also be open to contractors.
    * Look for part time opportunities. For example, there's a big need for training in certain technologies (AWS, k8s, terraform), and that can be a nice base for a consultant.
Another thing I've done is leave a job and offer to contract back for a time. This hasn't been a long term option for me, but is nice to bridge income.

If you are doing any moonlighting while employed, check your employment contract and ensure it is allowed.

Re: The Prosperous Software Consultant (2018)

#73

Post by tptacek »

zerr wrote: post #67
rukuu001 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Didn't the clients expect holy 8 hours in this case? It's your day, not theirs. Accounting for number of hours spent in a day on client work is just getting back to hourly charging.

That is when agreeing on some fixed nbr of days, i.e. fixed price. In case it is indefinite contract without upfront estimations, day would be expected to be a full day, i.e. back to hourly.

I'm not really sure what the discussion here is about. If you sell someone 5 days of your time, starting Monday, and Wednesday is a billable day, then, yes, you need to spend Wednesday working on that project. In the sense that you can't spend half the day billing on someone else's project (you'd be double-booked, which is a no-no), sure. But nobody is looking to make sure exactly which hours you worked on a given billable day; that's just not how it works.

For the most part, this stuff is honor system.

Re: The Prosperous Software Consultant (2018)

#74

Post by poulsbohemian »

tptacek wrote: post #47
zerr wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> day rate Didn't the clients expect holy 8 hours in this case? Another class of freelancers/consultants which are missed out from this discussion (hourly rate vs other): long-term/indefinite flex-time workers. No estimations or promises, just pay-as-you-go for several years or more. With the hourly rate, in this setup, one can work 5 hours one week, 0 hours second week, 35 another week... So a kind of very flexible…

Clients expect the work they plan to get done. They don't care about the hours you spend unless you demand they care about it, by running an hourly meter.

^tptacek speaks wisdom here. If you have a client giving you a hard time about your time units, that's probably a client who will be more trouble than they are worth. When I was still doing consulting, I got to a point where I steered every client toward monthly retainer billing because I was tired of the ones who wanted to count every hour rather than focus on outcomes.

Re: The Prosperous Software Consultant (2018)

#75

Post by jholman »

bruce343434 wrote: post #12
fsloth wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything does not need to be made part of culture wars. Why would using she be any different than he? It's like Alice and Bob of oh so many quantum thought experiments but without Bob. If there is only one protagonist you have to go 50/50.

Off topic question for you: I'm an ESL speaker and I notice a trend where some people phrase it like "Everything does not need" But in my head it sounds better as "Not everything needs" Is the latter not acceptable English? Or is it something regional? In my language, it is customary to negate individual nouns, but some English speakers seem to only ever negate the verb.

Fluent native English speaker here.

"Not everything needs..." is definitely acceptable English, and sounds more-correct to my ears. It would also be fluent to write that sentence as "Some things do not need...".

As a logician, I find the phrasing "Everything does not need..." to make me a bit queasy, and I would prefer if it were regarded as unacceptable.

HOWEVER, it's not unacceptable. For example, a famous aphorism is "all that glisters is not gold" (often diluted, in recent centuries, to "all that glitters is not gold"), which is surely not intended to claim that gold never glitters. So I guess I have to tolerate hearing it the illogical way.

Re: The Prosperous Software Consultant (2018)

#76

Post by jholman »

Silhouette wrote: post #58
bruce343434 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off topic question for you: I'm an ESL speaker and I notice a trend where some people phrase it like "Everything does not need" But in my head it sounds better as "Not everything needs" Is the latter not acceptable English? Or is it something regional? In my language, it is customary to negate individual nouns, but some English speakers seem to only ever negate the verb.

Logically, the two constructions have different meanings. The first is equivalent to "nothing needs", so it excludes the possibility of some but not all things needing, while the second includes that possibility. However, some people use the first incorrectly when they really mean the second. This happens often enough that you could argue the incorrect usage has now become idiomatic as well.

I'd like to agree with you about the "nothing needs..." construction being incorrect, but remember that you're never allowed to accuse Shakespeare of using English poorly.

  All that glisters is not gold—
  Often have you heard that told.
Merchant of Venice, Act II Scene 7

(Also Tolkien, in the Riddle of Strider, in Fellowship. Imagine a comparison where Tolkien is the less-distinguished writer, how often does that happen.)

Re: The Prosperous Software Consultant (2018)

#77

Post by bruce343434 »

jholman wrote: post #75
bruce343434 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off topic question for you: I'm an ESL speaker and I notice a trend where some people phrase it like "Everything does not need" But in my head it sounds better as "Not everything needs" Is the latter not acceptable English? Or is it something regional? In my language, it is customary to negate individual nouns, but some English speakers seem to only ever negate the verb.

Fluent native English speaker here. "Not everything needs..." is definitely acceptable English, and sounds more-correct to my ears. It would also be fluent to write that sentence as "Some things do not need...". As a logician, I find the phrasing "Everything does not need..." to make me a bit queasy, and I would prefer if it were regarded as unacceptable. HOWEVER, it's not unacceptable. For example, a famous aphorism…

Exactly! English is the only language where I hear such illogical statements. Same goes for the inverted usage of "all but", which imo _should_ mean "everything except for" but seems to mean "almost". I wonder what causes this.

Re: The Prosperous Software Consultant (2018)

#78

Post by [deleted] »

mooreds wrote: post #71
mettamage wrote: post #30

> Flat Rate Pricing > This also applies to software development. If an e-commerce application you are building will bring in $500,000.00 in sales in the next year, then charging 10% to 20% of this amount is acceptable. The same goes with feature implementation. If your feature will save them $200,000.00 in the next year, price with that in mind vs the hourly rate. And how do you know what amount of money they'll make…

Here's a great book about this topic: https://www.amazon.com/Value-Based-Fees-Charge-Youre-Worth/d...

[deleted]

Re: The Prosperous Software Consultant (2018)

#79

Post by zerr »

tptacek wrote: post #73
zerr wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is when agreeing on some fixed nbr of days, i.e. fixed price. In case it is indefinite contract without upfront estimations, day would be expected to be a full day, i.e. back to hourly.

I'm not really sure what the discussion here is about. If you sell someone 5 days of your time, starting Monday, and Wednesday is a billable day, then, yes, you need to spend Wednesday working on that project. In the sense that you can't spend half the day billing on someone else's project (you'd be double-booked, which is a no-no), sure. But nobody is looking to make sure exactly which hours you worked on a given bi…

Consider a rolling yearly renewable contract, with no upfront estimations whatsoever. Just a continuous stream of work. The hourly billing allows "guilt-free" flexibility. I can work 2 hours one day, 0 another day, 6 yet another day, etc...

Re: The Prosperous Software Consultant (2018)

#80

Post by CRConrad »

bruce343434 wrote: post #77
jholman wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fluent native English speaker here. "Not everything needs..." is definitely acceptable English, and sounds more-correct to my ears. It would also be fluent to write that sentence as "Some things do not need...". As a logician, I find the phrasing "Everything does not need..." to make me a bit queasy, and I would prefer if it were regarded as unacceptable. HOWEVER, it's not unacceptable. For example, a famous aphorism…

Exactly! English is the only language where I hear such illogical statements. Same goes for the inverted usage of "all but", which imo _should_ mean "everything except for" but seems to mean "almost". I wonder what causes this.

> English is the only language where I hear such illogical statements.

Fear not, the exact same thing happens in other languages. Must be that you just don't hear much, for instance, Swedish: "Allt som glittrar är inte guld." (Should logically be "Inte allt som glittrar är guld", just like in English.)

> Same goes for the inverted usage of "all but", which imo _should_ mean "everything except for" but seems to mean "almost". I wonder what causes this.

That doesn't feel "inverted" at all to me. You just need to interpret the "all" as it must have been intended: "the whole"; "all the way there" -- then "all but" quite logically becomes "not quite the whole way there".

Like, if a piece of software was almost, but not quite completely, finished ==> "the software was all (the way to) but (not quite arrived at) finished."

Maybe it helps to see the similarity with this related form: Almost all the bugs were fixed, but one was left ==> "All but one of the bugs were fixed." (The bug-collective was all but vanquished. :-)

Post reply on HN