Quote:
Originally Posted by will76
That is very rare, and really cool. A programmer that lets you see what is going on real time, his progress and how much it is costing you. What a novel idea, but yet so few do it.
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Thanks, yeah I added that quite a while ago as everyone wins - I don't get lost in time allocation and cost across multiple clients/projects, the client sees when I'm actually working on their stuff (and on what exactly as it's always logged based on category) and at the end of a project (or month) can see for themselves actually how long a given project takes - when one coder says 1 week's work, then is it one week's solid graft or 1 week of a bit-here-a-bit-there. More often than not it's like 20 hrs work when hands-on time is logged to the minute. So why not pay for 20 hours, rather than 1 week - I know my rate for 20 hours of work is a shit lot less than 1 week's work.
And for those that want to pay up-front for a project, or pays monthly for a monthly-commit, then it is still the same - the time is still logged (but at ?0/hr), so the client still sees what is being worked on (because monthly commits often involve multiple projects), when it is being worked on and for how long each session. That way, monthly commit people know they are getting a month's work, and per-project people know I'm not doing like 5hrs/week on their stuff and pushing them down the pile of priorities.
I see someone mentioned above that this situation is amateurish, but hey, they're just getting into adult, and believe me I think this is the best situation for adult (my clients anyway) - whether it's a $50 script or $10k project, everything is up front. If I don't work on your stuff, you see I'm not working on your stuff, and you aren't paying for me to not work on your stuff.
And above all, it helps me track shit so I know what I'm doing!!
Everybody wins.