I’m not sure if I qualify as generalist, but this should still be relevant:
It depends. Did I go through an agency, or find the client myself? Do they need _me_ or a butt in a seat? Will the work be fun, or awful, or is there any on-call expectation (which is worse than awful and probably a hard no)? Discounts for bulk and prepayment.
Also, hourly rates are the worst. Value pricing is a hard leap; a much easier thing you can do today is at least bump to a flat day rate, or a weekly one of the shape of your clients makes it seamless. Just do it; it’ll make you a happier, saner person and immediately mitigate a terrible incentive misalignment.
I think incentives are misaligned either way. You have to match the structure to the situation.
I have a friend, a great sydadmin/devops/infrastructure person. He never takes full-time jobs; his deal is always for 32 hours/week. His reasoning? 32 hours is 32 hours, but full time is all the time. He leads a much happier life than most ops-ish people I know.
Maybe you have the sort of clients where day/weekly rates work. But for the sort of client that has crunch mode or deadline rushes, there is no way in the world I'd give them a weekly rate. If I'm going to do an 80-hour week to get something out in time, I'm going to get paid for every bit of it, and I want them to feel the pain when they see the bills.
> If I'm going to do an 80-hour week to get something out in time, I'm going to get paid for every bit of it, and I want them to feel the pain when they see the bills.
That's a great point, maybe a way to mitigate that is a combination in your contract of a weekly rate + hours cap, and then just really good communication on time you're spending. But I must admit, that ruins one of the incentives for weekly billing for me, and that is not having to atomically track time and nickle and dime every little task.
It definitely depends on the client. If the team is crunching to hit a deadline and I'm saying, "Sorry, I'm at my weekly cap, so I'm leaving early today and won't be joining you this weekend; see you on Monday" then I'd be surprised to be invited back for the next project. I certainly wouldn't expect to be given any important work.
But I also feel you on time tracking, so I think a weekly rate is great if the client's culture is such that there's a natural cap and it's a good match for the work.
It depends. Did I go through an agency, or find the client myself? Do they need _me_ or a butt in a seat? Will the work be fun, or awful, or is there any on-call expectation (which is worse than awful and probably a hard no)? Discounts for bulk and prepayment.
Also, hourly rates are the worst. Value pricing is a hard leap; a much easier thing you can do today is at least bump to a flat day rate, or a weekly one of the shape of your clients makes it seamless. Just do it; it’ll make you a happier, saner person and immediately mitigate a terrible incentive misalignment.