undefined | Better HN

0 pointsDrewADesign5mo ago0 comments

Yeah contracted flat rate and hourly billing are just different. If you’re billing someone for time and not deliverables, it’s not ethical to bill someone for more time than you spend on it because you were more efficient. The ‘right’ way to do it is be able to deliver more than everyone else so you get a lot more work, undercut your competition, and take a bigger market share. If you’re not willing to do that, use a different metric to bill or charge 10x your hourly.

0 comments

hirvi745mo ago

> The ‘right’ way to do it is be able to deliver more than everyone else so you get a lot more work, undercut your competition, and take a bigger market share.

You are absolutely correct from a business perspective. However, I just cannot shake the feeling that I am so 'over' this society that we have created. I'm near my breaking point, I swear. Each passing day, I just think living off the grid sounds better and better.

Again, I am not trying to dog you or anything. It's just that reading statements like yours reminds my how unfit I am for this society. It's a 'me problem' not a 'you/them problem.'

I know life today provides an abundance of boons. However, I sometimes wish I could live in a time where I could be the town blacksmith, cooper, tailor, etc.. My job would be to provide a role for my small community and we would all know and rely on each other. I'm not cut out for this hyper-optimized world.

DrewADesignOP5mo ago

I work in manufacturing, having left software. You won’t find me extolling the virtues of tech freelancing.

However, what I said would be even truer then than it is now. Our modern society lets people obfuscate things like saying you’re charging for time but retrospectively increasing the hourly rate like 20x because you felt like you had a really great 15 minutes. But if the guy selling you grain agreed to pay $10/day plus materials for four days to make him nails, but you personally think you made four days worth of nails in one day, you might ask him if this was enough and then if so move on to the next job… but if he finds out you charged him for four days work while you were making horseshoes for someone else, you’re gonna have a real big problem.

The real problem is living in a society where extracting as much as possible out of everyone you deal with is not only acceptable, it’s expected.

anarticle5mo ago

Software isn’t real, and your employer would sell you for meat if they could. It is only that your current value is worth more than your meat value.

The value of your product is much more scalable than a pile of horseshoes to your employer. It all depends on who is capturing that efficiency. How else do you end up with billionaire CEOs?

Do everything right in your career, get RIF’d, live through an era like 2008, and watch people who have zero qualifications get promoted over you and you’ll change your tune.

The world is not fair and I will no longer be on the losing end. It’s not nice but neither is my old CEO buying their second boat and bragging about doing yoga on it at Cannes while people are living in basement apartments in NYC during COVID. I think we’ve all seen enough.

See you on the battlefield.

1 more reply

gretch5mo ago

I'm not sure where you live, but you can probably still do this.

Although the internet has globalized a lot of services, there's still local, labor intensive jobs that can never be scaled up like this.

To name a few:

- Garbage man - bus driver - child care provider - teacher

Tailors still exist. I went to one last week to get an inch off my pant legs.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse