Ask HN: Hourly billers, do you bill for only focused work?

In the future, try to be more diligent, both for your customers and for you. In the future you'll be able to fit more clients in, and your customers will get a better price.

Charge for your time. Don't stop the clock for meetings, short breaks, toilet etc. Lunch is debatable. If you go for a short lunch, with your work colleagues, then I'd probably bill. If you like to get out and clear your head and go and hermit somewhere for a full hour, I'd say probably not.

If there are weekly perk-style activities that happen in-hours (Table-tennis, multiplayer games, etc.,) bill them. Otherwise your boss is just making you stay in the office playing vidya for free when you could be going home to your kids. If an after-work activity starts early, e.g. drinks at 4:30 followed by a team dinner at 6:30, I'd probably bill up until when I would have usually worked until (so 5:00 or 5:30).

One time I went and got coffee with some of my teammates in the cafeteria, and we sat around for a while and chatted. Later I was quietly praised by my manager for making that happen. Because his job was to make sure we could actually get along and produce work together.

But ideally you set things up ahead of time by finding a client with a decent sized budget and then charging by the week. The billing increment is one week.

Then just make sure to have regular delivery or discussions as often as possible with the client. They should see the deliverables progressing, even if it's just the architectural details being worked out at first. They should be judging based on useful things obviously happening and being explained or being able to use the next version rather than just looking at hours to try to guess whether they are getting a good deal or something.

For me, we will see how it goes. Right now I have a weekly billing client who I am a bit worried I will have to replace because things in this niche are so dead right now. But there were a few other projects I may be able to pick up. I am definitely going to try to find one that can afford a week or two though because realistically all of the projects have gone on for more than two weeks so far, generally speaking more like 2-8 weeks each.

When it's going to almost certainly take a month to complete a project, trying to get out of an extra hour every day or something is a questionable strategy because it's a significant investment anyway, and the biggest risk really is most projects just not delivering usable software at all, which means all of that money gets wasted.

The 40 hours you see billed regularly is maybe to avoid triggering overtime/excess hours clauses or norms.

Some of this depends on your role and the specific contract/agreement but a couple of general thoughts:

* If you're having short breaks midday where your attention drifts to non-work, do you also have short moments at home where your thoughts drift to work?

* Remember that there is value in you "being available". Even if you have a slow day or less than 100% focused day, you're still working and available if something urgent comes up.

* How is your output and impact? Are you contributing on par with others?

* If you catch yourself thinking "Wow, I haven't done anything for the past hour" maybe that time shouldn't be billed but that's different from a quick HN skim or stretching and grabbing coffee.

Whatever you do, do not drop your rate: you'll just be undervalued by your clients.

Yes, it's fine, you should pad one of them. Either rate or time. Even if you just log in to a 1 hour meeting they host, bill them for 1.25-1.50 hours for context switching/ "prep work" is pretty acceptable. It is going to be client specific, if you find your clients are being overly sensitive to either - you probably want to find another client as it's just going to be a rough relationship when they're counting every minute/dime. Of course, the best practice is to put all of this in a contract but there's a million edge cases. Some general clause may work.

As far as your rate, I always bill as high as I can without pushback. Where is that level? You'll know when your rate is too high. I kept increasing my rate with contracts until clients started to grumble a bit. Then I backed it off 10% and haven't had a problem since. Note this means I am getting paid 30% more than where I originally started. Wouldn't have known that if I didn't attempt to max out my rate.

In the end it's just business. You either make a client happy or you don't. As a business your goal is to maximize your profits without much pushback. That will just take some time and energy to find out what the market will bear.

I do not sign any contracts, which automatically cut my workday to 8h (because they are illegal in my jurisdiction). If I work more than 8h, I sometimes get into trouble with some tight-assed legal department and I then just shift my hours on the timesheet around, until it fits.

You should not under any circumstances reduce your rate, if you feel like the rate reflects your skill. Instead, explain your rate with your achievements, references, etc. and negotiate the gain/speed/performance your client is getting by hiring you with your higher rate instead of a competitor.

I recommend against daily rates if you are able to zone into work and get serious shit done in 12h-shifts, while other days are just "eh" and you go for a jog after 4h. Usually, everyone notices your 4h-days while ignoring your 12h-days.

If you trust your skills and your ability to define the scope of a project well, consider going into milestone-based payment (never for a whole project!). This might be more lucrative for you in the long run.

If you choose this, think about a timespan you're willing to work without payment and half that timespan - that's the number of days between milestones you'll define. Should you hit a bad client, you'll stop working if payment hasn't gone through for the past milestone for whatever reason and when you're reaching the second milestone - never accept apologies, process delays, "those pesky policies"; you work for payment, everything else is the clients' problem, not yours.

Nor should you be taken advantage of: I have friends in other industries where "day rate" is the standard, and it's a high rate but it sure does involve crazy hours when the project is in full swing. Ask a film editor about "work hours" and they will either laugh, or cry. Let's not normalize the 18-hour day!

Second, you should feel good about even worrying about this: it means you've got some ethics. But you shouldn't feel like you owe "flow state" for every hour you bill. Do you need to take a walk to clear your head and better concentrate on the problem? That's work. Lunch isn't that much harder: is it a working lunch? Bill it. Are you having a nice long lunch in order to not think about work, or maybe meeting friends? Don't bill it. (Day/etc. Rate obviates this problem.)

Third, socializing with the staff is a little complicated if you're billing hourly, or sometimes even daily. I would be pretty happy if a contractor went out for social food/drinks with my employees, but I would much prefer to pay for that in good will than in actual billed hours. On the other hand, if you're at one of those places with ping-pong tables and the SRE peeps really want you to play with them: bill it!

In terms of negotiating a rate that makes you competitive, your idea could work, yes. The danger is that (IME) clients who were that budget conscious were also generally worse clients in general: less organized, less of a vision, less willing to do things like pay for user testing and support, generally more stressful to work with. Often their projects were less interesting, too.

At a certain point, my company just raised everybody's rates significantly, across the board, and rather than going out of business, we ended up getting better projects as a result. In that case, I was shocked to realize that software contracting can act like a Veblen good, though in an economic climate like this one, I'm not sure it would work that way.

Every once in a while I also do short term contracts with very limited scope. For those I would just do a lump sum payable in stages or just initial deposit and then pay balance at the end.

There are many layers of relationship, and your relationship will truly define the nuances of your billing process.

However regarding your question, there are a few considerations which determine when you are being “flexible” and when billing becomes corrupt (if you are not objectively providing value you are stealing.)

Are you in the office? On call? Devoting exclusive attention? Or otherwise billing for full days (with hours as increments?) If you’re in the office or real time “available” then it’s a billable hour even if you check HN or eat at your desk or wander around wondering what everyone else is up to (some call it insight.)

If you’re really billing hourly and your not working, you shouldn’t bill for those hours you are not working (like playing hooky.)

Fifteen minute increments are the floor for technical work (more common once you’re over $100/hr)

It’s okay to round up (or down) one total hour if you do not want to split hairs on an invoice (sic. 45 minutes of hand holding.) put a foot note on the invoice (total hours round up) if you want to be transparent.

You should be billing for all one off tasks. Talking about the project. Doodling about the project in your notes. Fastidiously rolling up and double checking your work/time spent. Email. Chat. Learning something new that evaluates into what you are doing can often be included (if not abused.)

I usually budget in 25% of project hours for one off tasks.

If you have a full time relationship (40 actual hours), you should fill the time with something, even if doodling in your journal about observations.

Hourly is a great way to build if your a “lone ranger” contractor.

Usually I like to only bill 15 hours a week! True liberation.

You shouldn’t lower your rate (unless you must.) Work fewer hours! That’s the real dream. Independent and gainful.

1. Never lower your rate, bringing it back up will be way harder then you might think.

2. Breaks etc. are billable. I even bill for walks that may be a long an hour, as long as I think about work. If I stop doing that I stop the clock too. Like others said, code is just the end result. I will usually produce better if I take a breather. Thinking things through will almost always let you find ways to write less code, resulting in a more stable and maintainable solution. Nothing suggests you think better while seated infront of your screen.

3. Always round up to the next hour.

When my client roster is heavy, I bill about 32-36 hours a week. The other 4-8 hours is mentor, team building, personal development, networking, etc.

I only bill 40 hours when I'm overbooked or I have a big dedicated project and I can drop a lot of the other activities because I don't need to be branching out and maintaining awareness so much of various projects.

I have colleagues who bill 40 hours almost every week. I believe most of these people are being honest and they're working nmore hours and pushing their non-project work into their personal lives/time. I'm pretty strict about containing my work schedule so I bill less. It has never been a problem at my work.

Now I'm paid a fixed price each month (fairly high for where I'm living). So, wages are not something I think about. But when I try to negotiate other project, I either go fixed, or billed by the day at the smallest. My usual hours for work range from 10am to 5pm, so I bill this amount if the client really wants hourly invoicing.