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by jeroenvlek 609 days ago
As a freelancer myself I go one step further and actually charge hourly rates. This granularity helps both with short workshops and fulltime projects because with the latter I'm often asked to work overtime or I have personal errands to run. Charging by the hour smooths this quite a lot.
5 comments
cranium 609 days ago
I went the other way (hourly -> daily) and found it much more enjoyable. I have multiple clients and it's clearer for everyone what days I'm available for them. Otherwise I might juggle between "urgent" work for two clients and have a call for a third, which is suboptimal. Now, I'm considering adding back some hourly rates for calls outside my working days and for overtime work, to align incentives of all parties.

Rates and what you charge is a major interface with clients so it's worth taking the time to come up with a structure that suits you (first).

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lelanthran 609 days ago
> I went the other way (hourly -> daily) and found it much more enjoyable.

Doesn't work too well with maintenance on existing products; clients really would rather not pay for the hours between a PR being submitted and the PR being merged. Toss in a good dose of 'waiting for your tech lead to answer these questions', 'waiting for feedback on this proposed document', 'waiting for infra to give me access', etc, and many clients completely balk at daily rates[1].

For complete products daily billing works nicely.

[1] This is because they know that a turn-around time for granting access to their labyrinthine infra for all the machines that might be needed is going to take more than a day.

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fguerraz 609 days ago
For me hourly rates work best too. I charge only for real work, not for breaks, because really working an 8h day is unrealistic for me.
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angra_mainyu 609 days ago
As someone transitioning into contracting (Senior dev), do you have any advice?

Was thinking of hitting up recruiters with my rates.

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mpeg 609 days ago
I think hourly attracts cheaper clients that will want you to be extremely exact in your timesheets.

Day rate clients often don't necessarily care what you do with the time as long as your deliverables are being met – but it still helps them to pay on a time-basis as it's an easier model and more predictable

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b5n 609 days ago
I've found hourly with an initial up front minimum works well.
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