Every billable hour is amateur hour

[Kent Sharkey]

DaedTech[^]:

Understanding my premise hinges on understanding that someone (a technician, in particular) can simultaneously be a craft professional and a business amateur.

What's your hourly rate to discuss this?

[Nelek]

Kent Sharkey wrote:

What's your hourly rate to discuss this?

Depends on the clicks he get?

M.D.V. ;) If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about? Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.

[Sander Rossel]

That could work and you could even come out on top. Let's say a project is ten hours for €90 an hour, that's €900. However, if the customer asked for a quote you'd charge them €1000, or maybe even more. That's at least €100 profit! However, customers rarely know exactly what they want (less even what they need). So after five hours they call you and they want feature X and of course that's only a small feature so it can be included in the original quote, yes? But then you deliver it and they forgot feature Y, edge case Z and feature B should be different. Now you need to talk price again, which also costs time (and someone's money). The bigger the project the more changes you're going to get and the less accurate your estimate will be (because it'll always be an estimate). I've once done a six week project that turned into a six month project and basically is still going three years later. The client simply decided they wanted this and that as well and the new software they bought didn't do everything they thought it would so I had to make that too. Imagine if I'd quoted them for the original six weeks! Also, there's the kind of customers that call you once every two or three months (maybe even less) for a quick question or a small change. Or even the customers that call you daily with short questions and small changes! For the latter you could have a support contract that covers X hours. For the former, not only would a quote for anything less than, say, a day be quite inefficient, the customer just wants their fix, not a quote! So let's say, all in all, I very much disagree with this article. Only for some projects do I quote up front and make it fixed price and more often than not do I come to regret it. There's a reason why everyone bills by the hour.

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