I like how these kind of lists get us talking and thinking about our own experiences. What do you agree with, not agree with?
“Those who bill by the hour work not for you but for the hour.” Strikes me as cynical. Yes some people can run up the clock, but paying by the hour is also fundamentally the most fair work arrangement. You are asking for someone’s time, you pay for that time.
Flat rate work gets into their own issues. For example, suppose you want your home deep cleaned and someone charges you $x to do so. A great deal!
Except you find after the fact they missed a lot of stuff. Technically they followed through on the letter of what you agreed to but they did the bare minimum. There’s no pride in the work. If you had paid by the hour, you could’ve asked them to stay and focus on some areas that matter more to you.
Or conversely, there’s lots of horror stories here about devs accepting flat rate work and getting endlessly dragged thru change requests
>I like how these kind of lists get us talking and thinking about our own experiences. What do you agree with, not agree with?
I panned this list in a different comment but I like it a lot better from this perspective. It's not necessarily there to be right. Sometimes it's there to say things to which your immediate response is "That's bullshit" but in a way that forces you to articulate why, or (and this is even better) to admit that you can't. Like when I read Heinlein.
I bill by the hour, but in chunks (20, 40, etc). I do discovery, define scope and that I determine scope, then work on narrow scoped thing. (Hard part) document each ECR, set scope and communicate price. Likely to next billed-task. Kinda combines fixed&hourly; not perfect.
“Those who bill by the hour work not for you but for the hour.” Strikes me as cynical. Yes some people can run up the clock, but paying by the hour is also fundamentally the most fair work arrangement. You are asking for someone’s time, you pay for that time.
Flat rate work gets into their own issues. For example, suppose you want your home deep cleaned and someone charges you $x to do so. A great deal!
Except you find after the fact they missed a lot of stuff. Technically they followed through on the letter of what you agreed to but they did the bare minimum. There’s no pride in the work. If you had paid by the hour, you could’ve asked them to stay and focus on some areas that matter more to you.
Or conversely, there’s lots of horror stories here about devs accepting flat rate work and getting endlessly dragged thru change requests