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From: Jerry Avins on 19 May 2010 11:35
On 5/19/2010 10:56 AM, Clay wrote:
> On May 19, 10:48 am, Eric Jacobsen<eric.jacob...(a)ieee.org> wrote:
>> On 5/18/2010 5:52 PM, Vladimir Vassilevsky wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> Rick Lyons wrote:
>>
>>>> Hi Guys,
>>>> here's a thought for those of you who are consultants, or work for
>>>> small companies doing consulting work.
>>>> The next time your potential customer comments in a negative way about
>>>> your consulting fee, consider saying the following to your customer:
>>
>>>> "Yes, professionals are expensive. However, try doing the job with
>>>> amateurs."
>>
>>> I'd say something is not right if it comes down to that kind of whoring.
>>> Normally, they don't negotiate with doctors, lawyers or consultants.
>>> Either the price is set way over reasonable, or the prospect has no
>>> realistic idea how much is the cost for this kind of work.
>>
>>> Vladimir Vassilevsky
>>> DSP and Mixed Signal Design Consultant
>>> http://www.abvolt.com
>>
>> Actually, it's not unusual or unheard of to negotiate prices with
>> doctors, lawyers, and consultants. Especially these days.
>>
>> One of the more disappointing things I see, unfortunately regularly, is
>> when we get turned down for being "too expensive" and then get called
>> back in later (or not) to fix some money-and-time-sucking disaster that
>> was attempted to be done with less cost. You can't ever really say, "I
>> told you so", but it makes me cringe to see 3x the money thrown at
>> something over 3x the time it should have taken on a job we lost because
>> we were "too expensive".
>>
>> --
>> Eric Jacobsen
>> Minister of Algorithms
>> Abineau Communicationshttp://www.abineau.com- Hide quoted text -
>>
>> - Show quoted text -
>
> I was discussing with a friend just last night about a contract where
> he estimated a year. The client said they don't have that long and
> went away. Now they come back to him after screwing around their own
> for 6 months and want him to fix it in the remaining 6 months of his
> original estimate. What Fun!

Sometimes it's the other way around. Back before GUIs made it out od
PARC, a businessman wanted me to write an interactive program that his
clients could use for self assessment. He did a creditable job of
describing how he wanted it to work, but without a firm spec it was
still arm waving. I told him that I couldn't estimate the job without a
contractual way to know when it was finished and I'd earned my fee.

When he said that he hadn't the time to write a detailed requirements
document, I asked if he intended to write the instruction manual
himself. When he said that the manual was his job, I suggested that he
write it first and I would turn it into reality. When my program
implemented the manual, I got paid. Any changes after that were
negotiable extras. He said he's think about it, but I heard nothing for
several months.

Then I got a modest check in the mail. When I called his office to say
that there had been a mistake, his secretary told me that she sure there
was none, and that The Boss was out of town. She agreed that he's call
me when he returned.

He explained that he didn't want to be embarrassed by writing up things
that couldn't be done, so he coded little snippets as he wrote pieces of
the manual. He coded more to convince (or dissuade) himself that a
particular approach made sense. By the time the manual was finished,
most of the code (in BASIC yet!) was too. He thanked me for the
discipline that writing the manual provided, and said that doing it had
made him realize just how nebulous his ideas had been when we talked. He
said that he was paying me not as a programmer, but as a consultant.

Jerry
--
"I view the progress of science as ... the slow erosion of the tendency
to dichotomize." --Barbara Smuts, U. Mich.
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