The client isn't paying me for lines of code added (I would often lose money if that were the case!), but they are clearly looking for me to add some sort of value. Otherwise I could just show up every day, give out some fist bumps, and go home while billing my daily rate.
Since directly measuring value added for the sake of compensation is not so straightforward, freelancers use rates (for better or worse). My argument is, the more <measurement of time> I work, the more likely I will add the value the client is looking for. Since I like a lot of flexibility in my schedule and want to still bill fairly (for both the client and myself), I use hours as my <measurement of time>.
Don't be smug and insinuate I am screwing myself. I am also not against daily or weekly rates. I think they are great. But so is hourly.
Working in a development role, the amount of time I put in on a project is highly correlated with the amount of value I add to a project. If I work every day for a year on a project, I will likely provide more value than if I worked a month. If I work every day for a month, I will likely provide more value than if I worked a week. And so on.
The amount of value added for the sake of compensation gets really tricky, but that's why freelancers have a best guess hourly/daily/weekly rate.
Therefore, over a period of time for a given client, I find it silly to assume a day where I show up, change a line of code, and go home is of the same value where I put in a full 8 hours of work. Equally silly would be a client suddenly finding themselves in a tough spot and needing some extra hours put in and me going uncompensated for the extra value added.
A daily rate works great when all days are relatively equal in productivity/time or your necessary threshold for showing up for a client is much higher than an hour or two of work. Mine is not. And it's not because the client is screwing me or I'm accidentally leaving money on the table, but because sometimes I just want to go home and not work a full day. A client should not pay for that.
If I am regularly working onsite at a client, and I leave early on my own accord, I am not going to bill a full day. How would that be fair to the client? Sure, billing for a full day is optimal for my business, but I don't see how it's optimal for the client.
I do not use hourly increments because my clients are awful or because I am low on the food chain. I choose hourly because it's the most straightforward way for me to provide my clients a hired hand while retaining flexibility on any given work day.
"No client worth having cares what your work structure looks like if you're capable of producing"
That is very easy to say when you are an established freelancer with work being thrown at you. Just starting out though, there is a fine balance between what's ideal and staying afloat.
Hourly billing gives a freelancer a lot more flexibility on their day. What if the number of hours you work for a client on any given day (or week) is highly variable? For example, you work off hours when you can. Or you are splitting time between clients. Or the amount of work a client has on-site wanes and spikes unpredictably. Or you feel like leaving at noon every Thursday and Friday. I am still newish to freelancing, but I do not feel comfortable billing an full 8 hour day for just showing up in any of the above scenarios. And I certainly would not want to give me time away for free if I did not hit some minimum.
Thanks for the essay. It's unfortunate Rand and Objectivism are so uncompromising. I guess that leaves the debating and exploration of ideas to us laymen, and we all know that won't go anywhere productive or intelligent :)
Her characters are certainly often exaggerated and unrealistic, but they are so in her crafted fictional world setup to convey her philosophy while a telling a good story. However, the dialogue and surrounding thoughts of her characters still provide incredible insight (at least to me). Maybe I am an ignorant jerk needing to read more sophisticated philosophy (likely on both accounts), but she introduced to me, through her characters, a compelling way to think and live
And even if you hate her characters and her philosophies, with exchanges like the below, she is a least interesting to dissect and deserves more than dismissing her writings to fourteen year olds.
"Do you believe in God, Andrei?"
"No."
"Neither do I. But that's a favorite question of mine. An
upside-down question, you know."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, if I asked people whether they believed in life,
they'd never understand what I meant. It's a bad question. It means nothing. It can mean so much that it really means nothing. So I ask them if they believe in God. And if they say they do--then, I know they don't believe in life."
"Why?"
"Because, you see, God--whatever anyone chooses to call God--is his highest conception of the highest possible. And whoever places his highest conception over his own possibility thinks very little of himself and his life. It's a rare gift, you know, to feel reverence for your life and to want the best, the very greatest, the highest possible, here, now, for your very own. To imagine a heaven and then not to dream of it, but to demand it."
As written in her books, following her moral can often lead to the unfair perception of being a jerk. Many people briefly exposed or misunderstanding Rand choose to remember (and spread) the jerk self interest part without laying out her moral framework.
Those kinds of condescending and trite dismissals are just not interesting. Rand draws more than her fair share of them and I don't think an honest debate can be held over her (good) philosophies because of their prevalence.
It is completely unfair to dismiss Rand for any one thing she says or believes. Like any philosophy, the good come with the bad, and Rand has some very thought provoking, if not indisputable, good.
And objective reality is not so unintelligent or undebatable to be dismissed at the whim of one sentance.
Despite Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead being amongst my favorite books, Ayn Rand always has me so polarized. Her moral philosophies and ability to write characters earns my unmatched admiration. But her blinding hatred for socialism (as conveyed from her very first book) keep her economic views from ever being realistic or even interesting. For the same reason communism fails, her free market would fail, because it only takes one (inevitable) company to ruin the party for everybody. Man is too easily corrupted to live at the economic extremes of communism or completely free markets.
I always like to think Ayn Rand's selfish desires and socialism could work together. Just think of taxes going to reasonable causes (such as infrastructure or health care) as forced self-interest :)
Why? Everything available to Facebook, I voluntarily put there. Just as anything I say in a comment in their widget will be voluntarily contributed. As a Facebook consumer, a single identity across all my comments tied to a service I already enjoy makes Facebook that much more useful to me. Let them do with the data I gave them as they please.
Hell, I am far more concerned with how much credit agencies seem to know about me, and I never like giving my information to them =p.
I found the post ridiculously condescending. Insinuating we are idiots and then stating 'For fuck's sake people - get a clue.' and then attacking specific small startups unprovoked does not seem like a very proper way to spread the word for your company or SEO in general. Unfortunately, I'm sure the post has garnered the desired attention by 'dropping the F bomb for the first time'.
I would hope search optimization is really important to SEOmoz given it's their entire concentration as a company. But, I work in a startup as well. Our concentration is not in the field of search optimization. When we have a spare moment or the resources to tackle SEO, I am sure we will. In the meantime, I would refrain from calling me and those in similar positions idiots.
Since directly measuring value added for the sake of compensation is not so straightforward, freelancers use rates (for better or worse). My argument is, the more <measurement of time> I work, the more likely I will add the value the client is looking for. Since I like a lot of flexibility in my schedule and want to still bill fairly (for both the client and myself), I use hours as my <measurement of time>.