When you bill by the hour, what you’re really saying is “I have no idea if what I’m doing will have any value, and I honestly don’t care — all that matters is that I am not exposed to risk for even a single minute of my time working for you. I get paid for every minute.”
Yes, that's the point. As a software freelancer you have no responsibility to take on risk for a client company that you have no ownership in. You'd be a fool to do otherwise.
Every hourly billable contract I've signed has included a detailed scope. Contracts that very clearly delineate responsibilities and compensation. Both parties are agreeing to the value the freelancer is providing. You'd be a fool to hire a freelancer without understanding the value they provide. And as a freelancer you'd be a fool to sign a contract without clearly defined responsibilities.
The author seems to believe the method of compensation determines the value provided. But these things are orthogonal. I've worked with multi-million dollar agencies that bill by the hour. They provided a lot of value, they knew precisely the outcomes they were responsible for, and delivered those outcomes.
Blog posts like this come along every so often, usually when a freelancer discovers that there are circumstances where they can make more money on a fixed cost contract. For instance "This project will take me 40 hours. If I charge $100/hr I'll gross $4000 total. Or I could quote a fixed cost of $5000 total, and net an additional $1000".
The downside is estimating software is hard, mostly because the end product is almost always a moving target. Generally speaking, clients have a good idea of what they want. But "what they want" almost always changes as a project progresses.
The upside for the freelancer is that if the scope can be nailed down, and a client is predictable, a fixed cost model allows the freelancer to capture any additional value/profit from their productivity.
Which is why savvy businesses are fine with paying hourly rates. They want to fully capture the value of the freelancer's productivity.
In my experience, from a freelance point of view, it tends to be a wash. There are many fixed cost projects where you will come out ahead. But there are always projects with tons of scope creep, and cost increases are almost always more difficult to negotiate on fixed cost contracts. But YMMV, and there's no single correct answer.
In this particular case the author is using a controversial headline to drum up attention for his business, which he plugs about 2/3rds of a way through the article. I think web developers in particular are more familiar with SEO and web-based sales and are more likely to write about software in an attempt to funnel eyeballs towards their software business ventures.
Jonathan Grey, a current US intelligence official at the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (Nasic), confirmed the existence of “exotic materials” to the Debrief, adding: “We are not alone.”
...
Grusch said it was dangerous for this “eighty-year arms race” to continue in secrecy because it “further inhibits the world populace to be prepared for an unexpected, non-human intelligence contact scenario.”
“I hope this revelation serves as an ontological shock sociologically and provides a generally uniting issue for nations of the world to re-assess their priorities,” Grusch said.
A conspiracy spanning the better part of century should have more high-level whistleblowers than Grusch and Grey. If their claims are proven out the names Grusch and Grey will be immortalized in history. We still talk about the Gutenberg printing press. Centuries from now people will still talk about Grusch and Grey, and how they kick-started a new era of human knowledge.
Are we to believe that over the course of eighty years, comprising hundreds if not thousands of individuals, many of whom would have access to the same documents and materials, not a single one of these individuals, motivated by either honor or ego, decided to make this world historical disclosure?
The story seems engineered to appeal to the conspiracy theorist. A brave iconoclast bucks the system and exposes a massive coverup - a truth that just happens to confirm all the poorly sourced and speculative claims made by the true believers. Wait, why haven't we seen any miraculous technology derived from alien tech? Ahhh, this tech exists, but it's hoarded by a secretive cabal who may or may not themselves be aliens/reptiles or blood-drinking elites. Etcetera, etcetera.
On the other hand ... it would be apropos if bureaucratic inertia led to a world-shattering disclosure. And the conspiracy theories could be 95% b.s. and 5% truth.
For all those reasons I'm not really convinced. Are Grusch and Grey convinced because the evidence is that overwhelming? Are they seeped in online UFO conspiracy culture, and reading a very slanted interpretation into the intelligence documents they have accessed? Are the analyses the military has run on any recovered materials sufficient to determine an origin in non-human intelligence? Have any experts outside the military examined and tested these materials? Does there exists genuine recovered craft ala Independence Day or are the "craft" large meteors that, if you squint, kind of look like a spacecraft? Have they recovered biological material?
Ultimately we won't be able to make a true determination until we get some actual evidence. First, reviewing any documents that supposedly contain these extraordinary claims. Second, interviews with other intelligence officials who have spoken with Grusch and have had access to the materials. Third, getting these materials into the hands of relevant experts, to determine if non-human intelligence is the most likely source.
> I see this argument pop-up frequently when taking to design leaders or developers. I call bullshit on this excuse. You absolutely have the choice to avoid implementing bad designs - that's your job! Either you're not fighting hard enough against those pushing for it, or you're just trying to build a "pretty" portfolio.
sigh I'm so tired of this absolutist, ranty way of thinking. Its indicative of Twitter-brain or social media outrage brain. Design is almost always a collaborative process. You literally have no controlling choice on the outcome, because the choice itself is being made by multiple stakeholders, be it your customers, your coworkers, your clients, etc.
Also, the author lists himself as the "UX Designer & Front-End Engineer @ Donorbox." Their web site at https://donorbox.org appears to be using a hamburger menu on mobile. I hope he isn't beating himself up over it.
It's hard to move away from established UI patterns like a hamburger menu because stakeholders expect it, and I suspect users look for that little hamburger icon as well.
OP is working in a dysfunctional workplace and has conflated that with "developer estimates are bad":
> 1. Give a very wide estimate with a lot of padding
> 2. Get pressured to be more accurate and to bring the estimate down
> 3. Get pressured to work unpaid overtime to meet that estimate
> 4. Watch management get congratulated by upper management for running a tight ship
Imagine I had plumber at my house and he gave an estimate of 3 to 4 hours to replace a rusted pipe. And I responded with "I think it should only take you 1 hour". He would look at me like I was crazy. That's because trying to substitute my layman's estimate for a professional estimate is crazy.
OP is providing estimates - that's a reasonable ask. The problem is management is ignoring the professional estimate and using their position to substitute in their preferred estimate. OP is being used to launder management's expectations. So of course they're patting themselves on the back. If the plumber ignored his own professional experience and only charged me for 1 hour of labor I would think of highly of myself as well, even though in reality I had no idea what I was talking about.
The solution is to set estimates that you can explain and justify. If management ignores your professional opinion you need to make it clear it's their decision and not yours. If you don't respect your own opinion no one else will.
The Big Bounce[1] hypothesis is a model that "suggests that we could be living at any point in an infinite sequence of universes". So while our current universe may not be infinite there may be some yet undiscovered infinite/eternal natural process that gives rise to universes.
Olber's Paradox[2] and the inability to reconcile it with our current astronomical observations seems to disprove that our current universe is itself infinite.
DoIT estimates the project will take at least 5 years to make the necessary changes resulting in a total state general fund cost of approximately $1.47 Billion .... Total Annual Cost $293,894,620
The Department states historically the cost of implementing a new application, whether replacing an existing application or implementing applications where none existed before, is three to seven times the cost of purchasing the software licenses. [1]
Do the people of New Hampshire believe so strongly in using non-proprietary software that they're willing to take on this extra cost? Is there widespread support and understanding of free or libre software amongst the population?
My experience has been that people have a transactional relationship to software, not a values-based one. Which is the main reason the various free software movements have yet to gain wide spread traction. People don't seem to care about how software is created and how it is licensed but whether it meets a particular need. (I need to file my taxes. I want to listen to music. I want to book a reservation, etc.) The challenge is not necessarily to "make software free" but to first get people to view software through a holistic, non-transactional lens.
The hurdle for this legislation will be convincing legislators to spend $1.47bn on a software replacement that doesn't add any additional features. I mean, are citizens really going to care that the web-based interface they use to file their taxes is no longer using proprietary software under the hood? If they're viewing software through the transactional lens then this plan will seem wasteful and non-productive.
It's possible the complaint is using a trivial example to illustrate the type of argument plaintiffs want to make during any trial. A 200-line example is too unwieldy for non-programmers to digest, especially given the formatting constraints of a legal brief.
Look at paragraphs 90 and 91 on page 27 of the complaint[1]:
"90. GitHub concedes that in ordinary use, Copilot will reproduce passages of code verbatim: “Our latest internal research shows that about 1% of the time, a suggestion [Output] may contain some code snippets longer than ~150 characters that matches” code from the training data. This standard is more limited than is necessary for copyright infringement. But even using GitHub’s own metric and the most conservative possible criteria, Copilot has violated the DMCA at least tens of thousands of times."
Does distributing licensed code without attribution on a mass scale count as fair use?
If Copilot is inadvertently providing a programmer with copyrighted code, is that programmer and/or their employer responsible for copyright infringement?
There's a lot of interesting legal complications I think the courts will want to adjudicate.
But ... the examples on the right are short, concise, and effectively communicate the problem. The left examples contain no actionable information, wasting the time and attention of everyone in the channel/thread.
Maybe working in an adversarial or dysfunctional work environment is what leads to misinterpreting a detailed message as hostile.
Or the team needs to learn to use communication tools effectively. Slack messages should be concise. But a bug report doesn't always fit neatly into a few lines of text. Use an issue tracker for detailed reporting and Slack/email for informal conversations.
Either way the point of the blog post stands - everyone needs to communicate clearly and avoid ambiguous language. If I send an ambiguous message to 10 people, I've just increased their mental overhead and frustration, ultimately distracting the team and slowing them down. Instead, I should take a moment and try to look at it from their point of view and try to communicate what they need to hear and not what I want to say.
Email is hard across time. Meaning yes, I can setup a mail server, and yes I can configure DKIM+SPF, and yes I can initially get good delivery to all the major providers. But that's just the beginning. Email is an ongoing maintenance responsibility. And problems with mail delivery are almost always an emergency for yourself or your clients.
Nothing quite matches the gut punch of being on time for a deadline then having to push it back to troubleshoot mail problems. Or losing a weekend because while you know enough to get started your experience isn't deep enough to fix deliverability problems in a timely manner.
> I work on an opensource SMTP server. I build both opensource and proprietary solutions related to mail. I will likely open a commercial mail service next year.
Translation:
"I am an intelligent guy who works hard. My entire professional career is devoted to designing and maintaining mail systems. I work full time to achieve mastery of my craft. Yet I can't understand why people outside my specialization might find it difficult to do my job."
Email _is_ hard. That's why I'm very happy to outsource mail to experts like OP.
Instead of getting notifications and getting pulled into the app I can visit the site when I have downtime, or have something I actually want to accomplish on FB.
Yes, that's the point. As a software freelancer you have no responsibility to take on risk for a client company that you have no ownership in. You'd be a fool to do otherwise.
Every hourly billable contract I've signed has included a detailed scope. Contracts that very clearly delineate responsibilities and compensation. Both parties are agreeing to the value the freelancer is providing. You'd be a fool to hire a freelancer without understanding the value they provide. And as a freelancer you'd be a fool to sign a contract without clearly defined responsibilities.
The author seems to believe the method of compensation determines the value provided. But these things are orthogonal. I've worked with multi-million dollar agencies that bill by the hour. They provided a lot of value, they knew precisely the outcomes they were responsible for, and delivered those outcomes.
Blog posts like this come along every so often, usually when a freelancer discovers that there are circumstances where they can make more money on a fixed cost contract. For instance "This project will take me 40 hours. If I charge $100/hr I'll gross $4000 total. Or I could quote a fixed cost of $5000 total, and net an additional $1000".
The downside is estimating software is hard, mostly because the end product is almost always a moving target. Generally speaking, clients have a good idea of what they want. But "what they want" almost always changes as a project progresses.
The upside for the freelancer is that if the scope can be nailed down, and a client is predictable, a fixed cost model allows the freelancer to capture any additional value/profit from their productivity.
Which is why savvy businesses are fine with paying hourly rates. They want to fully capture the value of the freelancer's productivity.
In my experience, from a freelance point of view, it tends to be a wash. There are many fixed cost projects where you will come out ahead. But there are always projects with tons of scope creep, and cost increases are almost always more difficult to negotiate on fixed cost contracts. But YMMV, and there's no single correct answer.