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by dynjo 3987 days ago
You can plug in your own rates at the bottom :-) just click "Show Details"

Man hours will be changed to something much more gender non-specific once traffic calms a bit, good spot. We have many female developers and none pointed it out! :-)

4 comments

"Man hours" is a great sounding phrase. It sounds way better than "person hours". "Person hours" just doesn't flow as well. People aren't going to write song lyrics with the phrase "person hours" in them.

How about an acronym, like "thips", totals hours in persons. Throw a poet a bone.

I consider "man hour" a terminus technicus and wouldn't change it personally. It's only an estimation tool and fine due to that but the term is problematic due to other reasons (mystical man month). If you feel like you offend someone I think "billable hours" is what fits best (might sound too much like a lawyer though). Person hour et al. sound pretty strange.
I know you are joking, but the last thing this world needs in another acronym? If I was made a dictator in a fantasy world, all future suggested acronyms(related to computing) would have to be vetted by 12 well paid, top notch, Programmers. And only very few acronyms would be approved yearly--even the one that save time. I guess I'm just tired of so many acronyms? Or, maybe I'm just tired?
How about work hours, programming hours, developer hours, or perhaps even just simply hours?

Could in theory be done by a really talented member of anothery species.

> Could in theory be done by a really talented member of anothery species

Not sure we'll reach the point of highly intelligent, tool making chimps and New Caledonian crows writing their own applications. "Murderable" (of crows) hours would lead to some humorous situations though.

Obviously not programming, but perhaps the visual design [1] ;)

[1] http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/photos/12-artsy-ani...

"Hours" implies that it's all linear; that one task can't go until the previous is done. "Man Hours" indicates that it's the amount of time needed to complete the task, but isn't solely dependent on linear ordering
> You can plug in your own rates at the bottom :-) just click "Show Details" Didn't see that and it helps.

Still i think the parent comment is important. If what you selling is just UI design and coding hours then you are not selling a completed app. Working with the client to go from a napkin sketch or idea to a shipped product involves a lot more work. Perhaps you could update the footnote at the bottom of the page about hosting costs etc to also mention the costs of requirements gathering and shipping. Nearly all of my past clients assume these costs are marginal at most if they think of them at all. Some of the more naive ones have assumed that ongoing support and training was somehow magicly included for free.

Yep, see your point, though the more detail you add the less accessible the tool is to at least give rough ideas of cost. Some people have crazy ideas of how much it costs to build apps. We had a customer this week who wanted a Kickstarter clone in 3 weeks! :-)
Plugging in rates would seem to be more applicable to me (a professional in the field) than to the target audience (people who don't know about app development.)

Maybe for the audience I think you're targeting: a few big buttons with labels such as "Thailand", "USA", "Western Europe", "Russia", "San Franspesive" and so on?

I can totally see a potential client pointing to this site when they hear my quote, except they've put the hourly rate at like $10.
If it's changed, won't you have to convert all the numbers too?