[sloopy543]

Yup. I suspect this sort of thing is going on all over the place but most people don't speak openly of it.

All work is value-based. Never forget that.

No clients care if you spent 80 hours a week not solving their problem, so why would they care if you spent 20 solving it?

[3u8Gf]

> No clients care if you spent 80 hours a week not solving their problem, so why would they care if you spent 20 solving it?

This has not been my experience at all. It's a different subject entirely, but it is very common for clients to be much happier to pay for 20 days at $550 a day than 5 days at $2,200 a day, even if they got it two weeks earlier. People are not rational.

[sloopy543]

Right right. They have other weird concepts like "market rates" and average timeframe lodged in their heads.

It's complicated and pardon me if I have glossed over the details somewhat.

If you're smart, you get all of the work done in advance, then stage it over the course the next few days, providing a steady trickle to create the perception of steady progress and to have something to mention at the standup meetings. I suspect a good percentage of experienced developers with good customer management skills do something akin to this.

[perl4ever]

This aggravates me, because as a customer, I want the expert who charges the highest rate, but also does things really fast and correctly, because I know what a difference there is between competent and incompetent people. But other people don't think like that, and if I say I'm ok with a high hourly rate, they think I'm saying I want to be ripped off in terms of both rate and hours.

[arithma]

If you spend 80 hours you're being inefficient. If you spend 20 hours (and they're being charged for value,) they feel they were deceived. Selling your hours to anyone truly seems like a lose-lose situation.

[sloopy543]

I meant more like 80 hours a week. It is, in my experience, difficult and cumbersome to charge for more than 40 hours a week since it kinda disrupts the usual cadence. You can do it sometimes for deadlines but wouldn't want to make a regular habit of it