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Comment by jere | Hacker News Reader

>This price is $125,000. I think that's a steal for what you get... If you were to hire me or anyone else to make Cheddar for you, it would be much more expensive.

Not to be a jerk. I really wish you well. But I'm curious: it would cost over $100k to make a todo list app? I would think that would be one of the simplest apps you could possibly make. Am I missing something?

[hmm... didn't see that your rate was $1000/hour. That answers part of my question.]

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I don't mind him charging that price to

- Lawyers

- Dentists

- Doctors

- Notarys

But charging $1000/h for making trivial things is making the rest of us look bad. Especially when people do projects with 10000000 times the difficulty... for free.

If people are actually paying him $1000/hr regularly then it is making us look bad, but only because we are allowing ourselves to be so woefully underpaid. However, I suspect (but don't know) that he isn't being paid $1000/hr regularly (let's say for more than 3 hrs a week on average, which would be regular enough for most folks at that rate).

Especially when people do projects with 10000000 times the difficulty... for free.

Thats imho the wrong way to look at compensation. People are not being paid by the difficulty of their projects but by the value of the problems they solve. Being a construction worker is certainly a lot more physically demanding than an office job. Still they are (usually) paid a lot less because they are easier replaceable, less training, etc.

Then you or they shouldn't do this for free. Put a price up front and treat the relationship as a business. Otherwise people will take advantage of you for free. But people will pay if there's a great need for the product or service

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