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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?

#71

Post by PragmaticPulp »

vitaflo wrote: post #12

I bill by the hour, not the minute. If I work 10 mins on something and do nothing for the other 50, you are billed an hour. Frankly, this is how most clients have actually wanted it. They think in hours (or days) not some subdivision of them. And yes, thinking about work is the same as doing the work. It's all billable time. As far as your rate, I always bill as high as I can without pushback. Where is that level? Yo…

> I bill by the hour, not the minute. If I work 10 mins on something and do nothing for the other 50, you are billed an hour.

I deal with a lot of contractors. To be clear: If I asked for a single task that takes 5 minutes and they bill me an hour for it, that's 100% fine in my book. Context switching, recording, billing, etc. aren't free. The difference between a 60-minute bill and a 10-minute bill is nothing. Let's just keep it simple and bill an hour.

But this is only for individual tasks. If someone is working independently on a project with 10 minutes here, 15 minutes there, 5 minutes a few hours later and billing each as an hour, that's not okay.

Depending on the contractor, we don't really scrutinize line items all that closely. However, once you're dealing with multiple contractors and gathering experience about how long things generally take, you start to notice some contractors are outliers in how many "hours" they claim to get things done. In some cases, if their hourly rate is low enough we may not really care, but when someone hits the combo of billing a high hourly rate and also racking up a lot of hours for relatively simple things with no ability to explain why it took longer than everyone else, it's time to phase out that contractor.

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

#73

Post by hxugufjfjf »

dougmwne wrote: post #61

You bill as long as you are even minimally plugged in. If you can’t crack a beer or head off to the gym, you are on the clock.

I do both, and bill 8 hours while I'm at it. Fuck the greedy bastards. I've solved advanced technical problems at the gym or on the couch with a dark ale.

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

#74

Post by linsomniac »

lawn wrote: post #40
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.

Indeed. Many of my best ideas have come to me in the shower, on a walk and even in the middle of the night. It's ridiculous to say you should have a stopwatch with you at all times, so daily billing it is. If they don't want to that, just assign 8 hours as a full day and stop worrying of you reach them or not.

There is a science component to ideas in the shower. I read somewhere that the shower puts you into a similar state to the waking/sleeping transition that people like Einstein tried to ride by sitting and holding something heavy and loud, so if the slipped too far towards sleep they'd drop it and wake themselves up. I don't have any references to where I heard that though.

Similar lines, I read about some earlish computer pioneer that was offered a senior position at a company and the deal breaker was whether he could get a shower in his private bathroom off his private office. Company said no so he moved on. "I have my best ideas in the shower." I don't recall who it was, Cray sticks in my head, but I don't think it was him, someone similar though.

Sorry for the vast amounts of vague above.

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

#75

Post by treis »

I worked for several large consulting companies plus a little bit of freelance. None of them ever gave me a straight answer to what counts as a working hour. Even basic questions like does the clock start when I leave for the airport or when I get to the customer site? Or do I get a paid lunch? What about internal meetings regarding the customer?

I eventually adopted a 40 hrs/week policy where that's what I put on my timesheet regardless of how much I actually worked. Which is what I think most people settled on.

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

#76

Post by kqr »

When I've charged for consulting work the smallest unit I've allocated to a client is half a day. That means I work for one client before lunch, and potentially another after, both get charged 4 hours (or 3 hours when I did 6 hour days).

If I finish my assigned task within 10 minutes, then I find something else to do for that client to fill up the rest of the time. It usually leads to them being pleasantly surprised at me taking lead on improvements, and gives me a chance to refactor things that are difficult to maintain.

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

#77

Post by justanother »

ushercakes wrote: post #42

IMO, when billing hourly, it should only be focused work. They aren't paying for you to go on lunch, etc. That's for salaried workers. I'm not saying don't go on lunch, I'm just saying you can't charge for that in good faith. In a single day, you should target 5/6 hours of billable work. The extra 2-3 hours are for lunch, and other management type work you need to do to keep your freelance business afloat. Btw, not t…

I agree with all of this. I round up to the nearest 15-minute increment on hourly gigs, and I stay 'clocked in' except for lunch, cardio, siesta, and other unrelated activity. Even so, 6 hours is a very full day (sometimes even involves a bit of after-dinner work depending on the day), and people billing hourly like this would likely do well to consider that when setting their rate.

Day rates and retainers are much nicer in this regard, and should be used whenever possible.

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

#78

Post by bityard »

halpmeh wrote: post #51
vitaflo wrote: post #12

I bill by the hour, not the minute. If I work 10 mins on something and do nothing for the other 50, you are billed an hour. Frankly, this is how most clients have actually wanted it. They think in hours (or days) not some subdivision of them. And yes, thinking about work is the same as doing the work. It's all billable time. As far as your rate, I always bill as high as I can without pushback. Where is that level? Yo…

> I bill by the hour, not the minute. If I work 10 mins on something and do nothing for the other 50, you are billed an hour. Frankly, this is how most clients have actually wanted it. I find it hard to believe anyone wants to over pay for your time by 6x what it's worth. I understand rounding up. But I don't understand working 10 minutes one day, billing for an hour, and then working 10 minutes the next day and bill…

Most people recognize that the value a contractor delivers is not linear with respect to the time it takes them to complete a job. See https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/know-where-man/

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

#79

Post by pclmulqdq »

When I consult hourly, I bill in 6 minute increments for only focused work. Anything 3 minutes or less doesn't cost you any money.

If you have me do something that is longer than ~30 minutes, I will charge you from the moment I start to prepare your project, catching the spin-up/context switch time. If you interrupted my focus time with another client, nobody gets charged for my break if I need one to refocus.

This is how a lot of lawyers do it, and my clients tend to be familiar with that model. I also charge lawyer-level rates, so I think people appreciate only paying for focused work and receiving an itemized bill.

This is all for when I bill hourly - I prefer to bill a project rate instead.

Many engineers charge much less per hour but charge for an hour every single time they think about your project. That also works.

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

#80

Post by Arrath »

varispeed wrote: post #44
dbg31415 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the end it's just business. You either make a client happy or you don't. Spot on. 1) Do good work. Be patient and kind to clients. Remember when someone asks you to do something for the 8th time, "Hey, it's their money." 2) Make sure you write your contracts in a way that lets you raise rates every January. Aim for a 10% increase every calendar year. 3) Give clients a discount if they sign retainers, or longer c…

Re 5) you must be careful with the gifts as that may be misconstrued as bribery or a kickback. A card should be fine, but a bottle of Champagne rather won't be.

Yeah this is a great cautionary point. A goodly chunk of my annual training is about bribes/inappropriate gifts.
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