<story><title>The billable hour is a trap into which more and more of us are falling</title><url>https://timharford.com/2022/05/the-billable-hour-is-a-trap-into-which-more-and-more-of-us-are-falling/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tptacek</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve been beating a related drum on HN for years, about billing hours, and I&amp;#x27;ll try not to repeat too much of it:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;hn.algolia.com&amp;#x2F;?dateRange=all&amp;amp;page=0&amp;amp;prefix=false&amp;amp;query=bill%20hourly%20author%3Atptacek&amp;amp;sort=byPopularity&amp;amp;type=comment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;hn.algolia.com&amp;#x2F;?dateRange=all&amp;amp;page=0&amp;amp;prefix=false&amp;amp;qu...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I know this post is mostly not about billing strategy (though that&amp;#x27;s what the thread is now about), but I&amp;#x27;m going to chime in with a simple bit of advice for tech workers that I believe is universally applicable:&lt;p&gt;Bill days, minimum.&lt;p&gt;A lot of the pathologies involved in metered billing, time tracking, and perverse incentives vanish when you bill days instead of hours. People have all sorts of weird excuses to talk themselves out of billing days --- &amp;quot;what if I only have an hour worth of work to do?&amp;quot; Bill a day. See how easy it is?&lt;p&gt;The last consulting company I built had a minimum billing increment of &lt;i&gt;a fiscal quarter&lt;/i&gt;. I co-ran a consulting company for almost 10 years that did minimum-daily billing, for a pretty big and diverse set of clients, and nobody pushed back on the billable day. Bill days (minimum), not hours!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>edanm</author><text>I co-built and ran a successful consulting company that was sold to a client many years ago, am now running another successful consulting. So I&amp;#x27;ve been at this game for many years.&lt;p&gt;And for what it&amp;#x27;s worth, tptacek&amp;#x27;s advice on billing, &lt;i&gt;especially&lt;/i&gt; this advice on billing daily, is one of the foundations of our success in this business. When we were just getting started, a lot of tptacek&amp;#x27;s advice helped us to learn and grow what we are doing, and I don&amp;#x27;t think we would&amp;#x27;ve been anywhere near as successful in growing, or in understanding the business, without it.&lt;p&gt;Billing daily is a no-brainer. Almost every client is absolutely fine with it. This depends somewhat on the exact field and the exact client base you have, but if they&amp;#x27;re not fine with it, it&amp;#x27;s a sign that you&amp;#x27;re targeting &lt;i&gt;bad clients&lt;/i&gt; and should change your aim.</text></comment>
<story><title>The billable hour is a trap into which more and more of us are falling</title><url>https://timharford.com/2022/05/the-billable-hour-is-a-trap-into-which-more-and-more-of-us-are-falling/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tptacek</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve been beating a related drum on HN for years, about billing hours, and I&amp;#x27;ll try not to repeat too much of it:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;hn.algolia.com&amp;#x2F;?dateRange=all&amp;amp;page=0&amp;amp;prefix=false&amp;amp;query=bill%20hourly%20author%3Atptacek&amp;amp;sort=byPopularity&amp;amp;type=comment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;hn.algolia.com&amp;#x2F;?dateRange=all&amp;amp;page=0&amp;amp;prefix=false&amp;amp;qu...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I know this post is mostly not about billing strategy (though that&amp;#x27;s what the thread is now about), but I&amp;#x27;m going to chime in with a simple bit of advice for tech workers that I believe is universally applicable:&lt;p&gt;Bill days, minimum.&lt;p&gt;A lot of the pathologies involved in metered billing, time tracking, and perverse incentives vanish when you bill days instead of hours. People have all sorts of weird excuses to talk themselves out of billing days --- &amp;quot;what if I only have an hour worth of work to do?&amp;quot; Bill a day. See how easy it is?&lt;p&gt;The last consulting company I built had a minimum billing increment of &lt;i&gt;a fiscal quarter&lt;/i&gt;. I co-ran a consulting company for almost 10 years that did minimum-daily billing, for a pretty big and diverse set of clients, and nobody pushed back on the billable day. Bill days (minimum), not hours!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dataflow</author><text>&amp;gt; A lot of the [...] perverse incentives vanish when you bill days instead of hours.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m confused how that&amp;#x27;s supposed to eliminate perverse incentives. Doesn&amp;#x27;t it exacerbate them? Don&amp;#x27;t you now have an incentive to spread out every client&amp;#x27;s work over every day possible? Like doing a few minutes of work for each client every day round-robin?</text></comment>