Morality, yes, as well as the experience of the person doing the hiring / paying: knowing when that extra 100 hours is BS ...
That being said, back when I worked for a custom web development house, we quoted jobs by the project but we often got asked what the underlying hourly rate was. My boss, one of the owners, always said, "What do you want it to be?" The implication was that we had already fixed-bidded the project and we would do it for that amount regardless, and we had already estimated what we thought the hours were going to be, but if the client wanted to pay some specific hourly rate, we would simply adjust the hours to meet their dollar amount. (If the client didn't want to pay more than $50 / hr on a $60,000 project, then we just told them to assume it was a 1,200 hour project ...) They usually realized pretty quickly that they were asking a bad question, because they had no clue how to estimate our time. Now, when we did need to do something on actual time and materials, then of course we would agree to an hourly rate and track our hours very closely. Frankly, we tracked our hours closely on the fixed-bid work, too, because otherwise *we* had no way to determine whether or not we were making money on specific projects! In other words, it always helps to have some understanding of the work you are asking for ... like knowing when the auto mechanic is blowing smoke up your tailpipe. ---------------------------------------- From: "David McGuigan" <davidmcgui...@gmail.com> Sent: Friday, September 23, 2011 3:43 PM To: "cf-talk" <cf-talk@houseoffusion.com> Subject: Re: 20USD/Hour Seriously? Morality. On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 7:59 AM, Al Musella, DPM <muse...@virtualtrials.com>wrote: > > This may be a stupid question - I never worked by the hour, but I do > sometimes hire people by the hour to do programming - but prefer > paying by by the job.. > > There is no way to know how much time was spent programming > something. What is to stop someone from charging $20 an hour, but > doubling the amount of hours on the invoice so they really get $40 an hour? > I know when I am programming, sometimes I get an awful lot of work > done in an hour, and sometimes I am stuck looking for a bug or > adjusting something to be perfect and waste > > > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/message.cfm/messageid:347649 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/unsubscribe.cfm
