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by Lendal
2963 days ago
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I'm 49, still working, still learning new stuff all the time. You can't assume that someday you'll stop learning and start being productive. There is always something new to learn. Always. The next project is going to have new concepts that you haven't seen before. I still charge for it all. If the project requires a certain new technology, I'm not hiring someone new just for that project. I'll learn the new concepts, and then do the project. The technology world is so rich with concepts now that you could spend your whole lifetime learning and never accomplishing anything. So why should I pay to learn something that only this project requires? Every project will have something new, therefore I can never make money? No, the cost of learning is built into every project. That's the way it is. Software development is not plumbing or carpentry. It's different, and learning is part of the cost of doing any project no matter how old or experienced the engineers are. |
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i feel that it's easier to bill for something like time spent learning the customer's unique (-ly confusing) data model, or for figuring out the product's requirements (since the company has little to no documentation of that).
OTOH, i feel less confident charging for time i spend learning about the vagaries and unexpected behavior of the android platform since "i'm supposed to know that" (and also since those problems are the android platform's responsibility)
i find the balance hard to strike sometimes. i compromise a lot.