Call for comments: Rev as a Second Language

[Brian Yennie]

Dave,

FWIW and hopefully this helps a little. As an independent developer, I  
will often bill for work in increments as small as $100, depending on  
the job and the client. If I were working for a consultancy, my time  
would probably never be billed out in increments less than $1000.

Here is a recent example that happened to me. A couple of weeks ago a  
consultancy I work with for Flash development quoted me $1200 to  
integrate some new 3rd party code. I felt that it was a < 1 hour job,  
whereas $1200 represented their daily rate for one developer. I did it  
myself and it took about 2 hours -- which just reinforced my original  
time estimate as I made several mistakes due to my inexperience with  
Flash. My budget is limited so it was frustrating to know that I  
couldn't get small things done for me. But, for them this is the only  
sane way to operate.

In my limited experience, this is just the difference between dealing  
with a consultancy and an independent developer (or something else).  
For a company like RunRev, they simply can't afford to operate  
differently - they only have a few developers and the overheard of  
maintaining a consultant business for small tasks adds up fast.  
Multiple people get involved, they need to warrant their work, etc.

FWIW.

> However, according to the recent mails from Heather (nothing was  
> said at the time) they thought it would take longer but I really  
> can't see it, however, if it would take longer then I thought, I  
> expected some technical reasons why it would take that much effort,  
> e.g. some justification as to the cost.
>
> I get asked for quotes for work all the time, whether it be in  
> monetary terns or how long it will take to do something. If I were  
> to just say it will cost £1000.00 or take one week without  
> justifying why, I don't think I'd get much work.