Every freelancer starts out undervaluing their work • Hacker News Board

Re: Every freelancer starts out undervaluing their work

#81

Post by soft_dev_person » Mon, May 11, 2015, 8:15 AM UTC

rogerbinns wrote: post #16

soft_dev_person wrote: post #7

> No one is paying you for your “time,” they are paying you for a result, so stop charging for your “time.” I wish regular employers would adopt this more as well. My value is what I do/produce, not how much time I spent doing it. Some days I produce massive amounts of value, while others I barely get anything valuable done. I'd like a work place that would encourage me to go home and enjoy myself on the bad days and…

I charge by time, even though I am producing results. The biggest advantage is that it deals with changes in the specs, addition or removal of features, new environmental issues (eg also test on ARM, use a cluster). If you charge for results only, then any change in what is desired means a renegotiation. Attaching a dollar figure to every "could you also ..." gets old quickly. For your regular employer what you are a…

Changes in the specs requires negotiation anyway if you have a contract with an upper time/cost value. Charging by the hour doesn't solve that, unless you have a no limit contract that puts more or less all the risk on the client.

This is very rare where I work.

Re: Every freelancer starts out undervaluing their work

#82

Post by soft_dev_person » Mon, May 11, 2015, 8:18 AM UTC

Swizec wrote: post #20

soft_dev_person wrote: post #7

> No one is paying you for your “time,” they are paying you for a result, so stop charging for your “time.” I wish regular employers would adopt this more as well. My value is what I do/produce, not how much time I spent doing it. Some days I produce massive amounts of value, while others I barely get anything valuable done. I'd like a work place that would encourage me to go home and enjoy myself on the bad days and…

> Some days I produce massive amounts of value, while others I barely get anything valuable done. I'd like a work place that would encourage me to go home and enjoy myself on the bad days and stay as long as I want on the good days, instead of expecting a regular 40 hour work week every week (I have flex, but on average...). In the words of Stephen King, "Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get…

Sometimes the cost of fixing bad work is actually greater than just doing it right when your mind is capable of it.

Also, I don't think software development is very comparable to writing a book. Unless you need to finish a book every day, your mistakes one day can easily be fixed the next.

In software, if your bad work on a project is committed to a place where it affects others, it may very well be too destructive to be worth it.

Re: Every freelancer starts out undervaluing their work

#83

Post by soft_dev_person » Mon, May 11, 2015, 8:22 AM UTC

nightski wrote: post #15

soft_dev_person wrote: post #7

> No one is paying you for your “time,” they are paying you for a result, so stop charging for your “time.” I wish regular employers would adopt this more as well. My value is what I do/produce, not how much time I spent doing it. Some days I produce massive amounts of value, while others I barely get anything valuable done. I'd like a work place that would encourage me to go home and enjoy myself on the bad days and…

Value of items produced isn't always so easy to measure.

Which is probably exactly the reason why charging/paying by the hour is the default. Much easier to reason about, and much easier to measure.