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Comment by dboreham | Hacker News Reader

Another rule of thumb is : take the salary you'd get for whatever level of work is required (e.g. $150K) and divide by 1000. That produces the hourly rate you should charge (e.g. $150).

I agree that failure to understand costs is a common cause for undercharging. Same thing with other fields though : construction, remodeling etc.

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A standard working year is 2000 hours (40 hour weeks, 50 weeks a year, 2 weeks for vacation - the pathetic US usual). So dividing by 1000 means double your salary's hourly rate. That is, this amounts to 2x rather than the parent's 4x.

True. It's only a rule of thumb. I guess I'd aim for 3X if I could. 4X seems quite high --- perhaps justified in the context of some business relationships (e.g. client gets to invoke you on short notice, preempting other clients' work).

This is the rule I've been using of late. Perhaps I'm charging too little (as the parent comment suggests), but I'm comfortable with it.

When I must travel for on-site consultation, I soften the blow of travel time by charging the client 50% of my lowest hourly rate for that time.

Travel time seems to get folks worked up so I have never charged for it. However, I generally spend the time on a flight reviewing client documents and so on: billable activity. For some reason I don't like the idea of charging different rates for different kinds of time but I suppose my approach works out roughly the same as yours in the end.

The only instance where I tried to charge for travel time was an engagement where I had to travel to Atlanta to do a very small amount of work for a very big law firm. Since it was going to take me a day to get there and a day to return, to do at best one day's work, I said I needed to charge for my travel time. They informed me that lawyers NEVER charge for travel time (assertion mostly disputed by my lawyer friends, but...whatever) and so they couldn't bill my travel time back to their clients. They said however that they could consider a higher rate for my billed time. This discussion went on for a while with the end result I billed them at something like 3X my regular rate but no travel time. They thought this was just fine.

Together we beat a patent troll so I probably would have done the work for free ;)

I either charge (A) my full rate or (B) nothing for travel time.

A: If I’m doing something for a client that keeps me from working for one of my other clients, I charge them.

B: The exception is when working for a client out of state. Sometimes the hassle of doing state taxes just for a few hours work in the clients state is more hassle than it’s worth (to me). I price into my rate one on-site visit to the client a month.

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