[jeffparsons]

I've regularly heard something similar said of consulting work, too. Many people new to the game worry about charging too much, because if a client is paying more then surely the pressure will be higher. Instead they end up experiencing the opposite: charging a higher rate tends to get them a better kind of client.

I'm not sure what the exact lesson is here. Something about stingy people not being nice to work with, perhaps?

[noduerme]

Stingy people are indeed not nice to work with, which is why I raised my prices as a freelance coder through the roof about 20 years ago, usually pacing about triple the going market rate. But filtering out stingy people isn't the main factor in the phenomenon you're describing, because some of my happiest customers have been stingy people who capitulated to paying much more than they initially thought the work was worth. They tend to also be the ones who are most prone to congratulating themselves and bragging to their friends on springing for the most expensive option, and when they do, they invariably (even pathologically) need to assert to themselves and everyone else that they paid for "the best".

The name for this is the Veblen Effect [0], and it applies to all irrational market behaviour where people are actually happier with luxury goods the more they pay for them.

Funnily enough, I've seen some of the exact same clients brag about how cheaply they got something else. The lesson I've drawn is that they're mostly looking for approval, so they're equally interested in buying status as they are in getting real stuff done. It's a win/win if you deliver a great product that they can brag about, because they'll do the hard work of selling it to themselves for you.

A corollary of that psychology is that some, maybe even most people are never happy with stuff they paid market price for. They either think they could've gotten it cheaper, or they think they could have gotten more for their money. Paying market price makes them feel like a chump. But paying way more than market has to be justified to themselves first. It's simply too embarrassing to admit that they might have overpaid an arm and a leg. So as a contractor, pricing your work as either very cheap or very expensive, on the margins of the parabola, alleviates this vague sense of dissatisfaction from your clients' internal debate, and gives them the peace of mind that they're actually trying to buy.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good

[hirako2000]

Value is relative. Effort-to-income ratios vary significantly between traders.

The pragmatic accept that work ≠ value, some do so permanently. But someone newly aware of this may deem it unfair, and react with totally disproportionate demands, some do so permanently.

Then you come across those who already benefit greatly from the imbalance, yet still make disproportionate demands. These tend to be good at it, subtle, strategic. Which may explain why they end up on the benefiting side.

Broadly, you find three types: the greedy, the balanced, and the generous pragmatic.

The greedy exploits relativity. The balanced respects it. The generous navigates it without resentment. Whether consciously or not.

[echelon]

Not to mention that "OSI open source" is basically sponsored and advocated by the firms that stand to benefit the most: hyperscalers that will embrace, extend, and encrust the thing you built with their monetization tendrils and leave you without a way to make money on it yourself.

See: Redis, Elastic, etc.

Not an ounce of AWS or GCP is open source, yet they'll happily spin up a managed version of your thing and make hundreds of millions without cutting you in.

We need new licenses that are more "shareware" like. That permit individuals, but slap big trillion dollar companies.

"Fair source", "Fair code", the defold license, etc. are all pretty good.

[uncircle]

I agree. Free Software is a good idea in concept, but it is the foremost reason there exist billion dollar tech monopolies today built on the free work of idealists worldwide.

In the age of LLMs and entitled users, I must be selfish and cannot release my work as free software any more. The best of all worlds, for me, is to provide source code along with binaries to paying customers.

[-mlv]

Firecracker and gVisor are used by AWS and GCP, respectively, are open source. That's just off the top of my head, I'm sure there's more, there's also the whole Open Compute Project, after all.

[matheusmoreira]

AGPLv3?

[tardedmeme]

They'll find loopholes around that too, in time - they already found some, which led to the SSPL being created.

What you actually want is some kind of noncommercial clause: you can use my free shit as part of your free shit. If you want to make money off my shit, the rules change to "fuck you, pay me"

"But what if a company just wants to try it out?" well they can live within the already existing exception called "not telling me you're breaking my license". If I don't know about it I can't impose any penalties on you. Every good business already knows how and when they can break the law with impunity, and that's one of them.

[matheusmoreira]

What are some good licenses for that? I generally do want fellow programmers to enjoy my work but I don't really want corporations finding ways to make trillions off of it and leaving me with nothing. I've been slapping AGPLv3 on everything I make for that reason. Any "open source" nonsense is just wealth transfer from well meaning developers straight into the pockets of corporations, so I picked the most copyleft license imaginable. I'm open to even stronger AGPLv3 alternatives. Anything that helps individual hackers and gets corporations to pay.

[echelon]

This. It's that simple.

Companies shouldn't get your labor for free. Especially the big ones.

Trillion dollar companies don't deserve hand outs.

We should have figured this out twenty years ago.

[bigstrat2003]

When I make open source software, it's a gift to the commons for the enrichment of all mankind. It doesn't cost me, or humanity, one bit if a big tech company benefits from it. The idea that companies shouldn't be able to benefit from contributions to the commons is not really justifiable.

[matheusmoreira]

https://zedshaw.com/blog/2022-02-05-the-beggar-barons/

> No, this begging is particularly different because it capitalizes on the good will of open source developers. Microsoft, Apple, and Google are standing on the internet in their trillion dollar business suits with a sign that reads "Starving and homeless. Any free labor will help." They aren't holding people up at gun point. Rather they hold out their Rolex encrusted hand and beg, plead, and shame open source developers until they get free labor.

> Once they get this free labor they rarely give credit. They're ungrateful beggars that take their donated work hours, jump in their Teslas, and ride off to make more trillions proclaiming, "Haha! That open source idiot just gave me 10 hours of free labor. What a loser."

[tardedmeme]

Humanity benefits more if poor people can use it for free and big companies have to pay for it, than if both can use it for free. Companies having to pay for stuff is the only reason they don't have 100% of the money, which would be bad.

[sersi]

That was my experience. When I first started consulting 20 years ago I stupidly charged $40/hour because I was young and dumb I stupidly discounted the time it took to find clients (and things like health insurance, etc...). I quickly adjusted and started charging $120/hour. I got much better clients and the projects I worked on became that much more interesting.

In my experience charging too little is one of the biggest mistake to do when starting.

[jimbokun]

It’s about the price subconsciously influencing the client’s evaluation of your competence.

[somenameforme]

I don't think it's subconscious at all. If, for instance, you contract something on fiverr for $5, you expect $5 of work. If you contract something for $1000 you expect $1000 of work. And the former's probably going to take a lot more feedback to get to where you want than the latter.

Basically, you get what you pay for. That's not always true, but it holds pretty reliably.