1148 points by firefoxd 2482 days ago | 441 comments on HN
| Neutral Editorial · v3.7· 2026-02-28 09:12:14· from archive
Summary Labor Rights & Fair Compensation Acknowledges
A personal narrative about contractor billing for workplace inefficiency. The story implicitly engages with labor rights and fair compensation by demonstrating successful assertion of $21,000 payment despite corporate dysfunction. The content exercises and validates freedom of expression through published workplace critique, but adopts a humorous tone rather than systemic advocacy.
Entertaining story - although as advice to anyone reading it, running up the clock without proactively notifying people that you're going way beyond your original estimate is a very good way to make getting paid incredibly difficult.
This is how corporate works. They have budgets for things. The money doesn't come out of the pocket of the person who cuts the cheque. You send in an invoice and it gets paid. If it doesn't, the company is insolvent or they are at risk to lawsuits which will cost them more than your paltry $18000. But they don't even think about the lawsuit part. Bill comes in, cheque goes out.
You should try working in an investment bank as a contractor. You need to find the right team, but a lot of them are massive collections of people doing virtually nothing but getting paid great daily rates. The trick is to look busy and wrap your team/yourself in a perceived sense of enigma and complexity. If you play your cards right, you can end up in a situation where no one will ask questions as long as you fire off an email now and again. You can keep getting paid for doing almost nothing for years.
The adventures of enterprise/corporate payments. They can be annoying, slow, bureaucratic but boy when the time comes, invoice gets paid. One of our smaller business customers recently got acquired by a large corporate so the next $5000 "small enhancement" project had to go through their procurement who then apologized when we demanded the payment immediately. Why ? Because they thought they had not paid on time even though we literally had sent them the invoice a week ago (our smaller business clients will pay "due upon receipt"). This corporate client apologized profusely but when we finally realized it was not 30 days (they pay net 30), we backed off :). Still got a couple of apologies.
I've got similar experiences working for corporate clients, but it was legal work, not tech stuff. It was a bit more complex than the equivalent of a static HTML, but something that anyone with an IQ of > 90 could learn in less than half a year.
There were days when I'd charge clients $15k... for a day's work. This wouldn't have been possible if I worked on-site. But I was essentially completing $15k of contracted work in a single day, which was sold as a fixed-fee in return for a legal report. The type of work that should cost maybe $200 in total.
Corporations get kind of crazy, there's extreme focus on some areas (mainly, those with KPIs and KPI owners attached), and extreme nonchalance on others. They're so big that there's just lots of insane things like this that slip through.
Anyone else think $21k for this much time is too low? That's $156k a year assuming full-time hours which a contractor probably isn't going to get. Plus the guy lives in California. Plus health insurance.
What's a typical rate for this length of contracting work in California?
Had a similar story was a subcontractor to a huge digital agency on an advertising related project for F50 company. Was a small webapp (40h of pure dev time) we were actually on a fixed price contract 15k. Had a bunch of meetings with up to 20 people on the call (copyrighter from digital agency present in every single meeting for an app that had a single button with a single word submit). Eventually we had a meeting with actual VP of the F50 who said he forgot to email that he no longer needed the project and to pay everyone. We got our 15k and digital agency got prob to the tune of 500K.
I'm in midst of a contract that was supposed to take 2-3 weeks - my mate asked for help, they desperately need good developers.
I think it's 6 months now ($60k++), while past 3 were "we are almost there now". It's all typical crap - trying to squish some crap into JIRA, molesting Slack in some weirdest ways, tester reporting bugs in less than 6 sentences... All I can think of is that I didn't ask for a high enough hourly rate and I want this over ASAP.
Great illustration of why hourly billing makes no sense, for either side.
In this case, as usual, the amount of hours "spent" on the project has little to do with actual value provided.
From the contractor's side, he's excited about getting 12x the original quote, instead of realizing he's been severely undercharging for his work and could've been earning 10x or more all this time. I wonder if the author will start charging appropriately for the value he's providing, or if he'll consider this a fluke and continue with $75/hour.
Phrased another way... How many times did you complete a project within the estimated time and get paid $1,500, when actually the company would have been glad to pay $18,000?
Last week there was a thread about consulting tips. I couldn't believe how many people were arguing for hourly billing. One person was even proud of billing by the minute! I hope those people see this story and realize what they're leaving on the table.
I have similar stories to this, where work got delayed due to issues on client's end. One time, I spent a month doing nothing while the client was dealing with something, which later turned out to be a big acquisition. If I billed by "hours worked" then I'd get nothing, but because I had a monthly retainer I still got paid.
Edit: I'm not advocating "fixed price." I'm advocating monthly retainers.
I don't find this to be beyond belief, but there are a few things the author should have done differently.
1) Notify when hours were exceeded
2) Get written notification that he was still required to come in to the office while waiting for assets or otherwise at a blocker
3) Ask questions to further cement the requirements
4) pick up a phone?
I think that ethically this was not a great move on this persons part, but we live and learn, and hopefully they did learn from the experience.
Large companies have budgets that usually are "use it or lose it", so the ROI doesnt really matter most of the time. Secondly, large companies are less likely have "gate keeper" folks ensuring that there are not wasting hours when the timescale is less than one month. As costs escalate and budgets get blown, that is when they thin out the contractors.
Sometimes I do kinda wish to get back into consulting because of situations like these. In almost all cases the work is never used, but instead of bailing the company out, it's really just bailing some situation out. It's all internal politics.
Back when I was in my 20s during my walks from the light rail to the office I would have constant thoughts about how idiotic programming and office work is. The ONLY reason it all exists is because people can't trust each other. And that maybe trust isn't really necessary in a society that lessens personal ownership and has more of a share-all-but-do-your-part approach.
It's literally so unfair the way we've segmented people into knowledge zones. Bankers know how easy it is to double money without taking risk. Programmers know how to pretend something will take 3 weeks when it will only take 2 days.
Recently I've learned how easy it is to set up solar. I cry every time I hear someone get trapped in some solar contract when they sell their house. It's literally mind warping how fucked up every aspect of this economy is.
The author basically just had a job for a while. They aren't charging 18K for a web page, they're charging 18K to commute/be there for 7 weeks.
A lot of big companies aren't paying for output, they're paying for butts in seats. Why they do this has been discussed somewhat already in these comments.
I used to live with this guy when we were studying. He got himself a job with the largest DIY retailer in the country.It was an office job with a relatively good salary. Eventually I moved out nad only saw him again after half a year or so. I asked how's the job to whoch he replied thst he quit after 3 month.I asked why..He said he used come to the office every day and ask around if he could help with anything.. Everyone was nice but kept saying no help is required.He got bored after 3 month of doing nothing and quit. He now runs his own business...
I love this article. I had a similar thing once. I worked for this deeply, deeply dysfunctional company (salary). My project ended. I asked my boss for something to do, and he said something to the effect--"we're kicking off a new project at the end of the week until then look into XYZ because we'll be using those technologies."
So for political reasons, this new project was delayed and delayed again. I asked my boss for a project, he said, he'd get back to me. This ends up going on for a year. I stopped asking for new projects because I've done my duty frankly by asking several times, and at this time, I'm just reminding him to fire me.
It might sound like fun to get paid to do nothing, but, it's pretty demoralizing. There's a certain amount of paranoia associated with it as well. Eventually, I started taking long lunch breaks and going to the gym.
This went on for a year, then one day... We started a big new project, and I had something to do again. Very weird year, though.
My parents had been running their own tailor shop in the 80's, barely making ends meet, pulling in less than $20K a year.
It wasn't for lack of business, father was a master tailor trained in Italy and capable of elite bespoke craftsmanship. They had as much business as they could handle. The problem was that they were charging what they thought the work was worth rather than what their customers were willing to pay.
At some point, during the Reagan years, my mother had an epiphany and jacked up the prices massively, far beyond what my father thought was remotely reasonable. The result? Even more business, more pressure, more return customers. That put me and my brother through an expensive college.
There's something about high rates that makes customers feel more important, it's a status-thing and it also propels them to take you more seriously even if they have you do low-value stuff.
A valuable lesson I learned at a young age from one of my first 'customers' when doing computer repair jobs for friends and neighbours was is that you don't get paid for what you can or do but for the value you add or time (money) you save someone.
Most of the time the problems I had to solve where easy ones. Install printer, update software, remove toolbars, email settings, etc. All 5 minute work jobs, seldom totalling to more than an hour or 2 an evening. Not even worth asking money for in my opinion, because it was so easy en quick for me to do. But my neighbour always insisted I accept his money. Because for him, having to solve these issues himself would cost him multiple evenings. So the money he was giving me, which felt like too much to me, was stil a bargain for him.
Also in his words it was easy for me because I had spend years in training to acquire this knowledge, or as others might call it: wasting your time behind that computer playing video games.
It was my impression that that's what he did. Of course the whole situation still could've made it difficult to get paid, but I don't think there's anything else he could've done.
It sounds believable to me. I've had some interactions with big companies and you have to readjust what you think is a reasonable price for something.
I work with hardware and you'd be amazed how much people will spend without batting an eyelid (eg tens of thousands on a single instrument). In some cases they'll even remark at how inexpensive what you've offered is.
For example, the thermal cameras I work with are now consumer available for $5k. A decade ago you'd easily spend an order of magnitude more for the same sort of performance. And companies would happily fork out for it.
Bear in mind this company just lost a developer. The overheads for that member of staff alone, for two months, probably exceed $20k in the US.
During the early days of "intranets", I worked at a very large company akin to a government organization. I thought we could save paper by putting our reports on the intranet instead of printing it out. There was one particularly important report that had needed to be printed every week, and it seemed like a good candidate.
I called the person who needed the report, but they said they didn't need it, and passed me to the person who requested it from them. I called the next person, and they passed me onto another person. I followed this about 5 people deep until I found one person who told me that they didn't need that report at all.
Can you give my boss the 101? He has me methodically checking invoices against tenders. I would actually argue the other way. As our consultants rely on our return business, they would quickly solve any problem with the invoice even if not to the letter correct. We have bargaining power and they don't want to bite the hand that feeds them.
$18000 is the kind of petty cash that a lot of departments have lying around in their budgets at the end of a quarter. Especially if the budgeting process is of the use-it-or-lose-it variety, there can be a push to buy things that are unnecessary at the end of quarters or fiscal years.
I've been involved in more than one project where a company bought a largish subscription license for a product, and never got anybody lined up to actually deploy it before the licensing ran out - I assume whoever was in charge of that initiative got laid off or took a new job and it fell through the cracks.
I don't know how it is in big corporations in America. But working as a consultant in Western Europe, I have been more than once in a situation where I'm starting on a project and I have to wait more than 3-4 months for things like accounts, access/permissions, laptop. Its pretty pathetic at the dailies, to report every day that I'm still waiting for these things.
Big companies (rather, people at big companies) WANT to spend money on this kind of stuff for all sorts of reasons.
-A team might have use-it-or-lose-it budget, so they have to spend it on something, and a contractor might be the lucky recipient!
-Tax purposes!
-Spending a lot on a contractor gives them someone to "fire" when they need to explain why something wasn't getting done or something went poorly!
The list goes on!
All that being said, as a consultant myself, I consider those types of projects windfall, as they tend to be the ones that end abruptly. It's kind of a scary feeling getting paid without actual work to do. I have found I 100% prefer the projects where there are clear tasks, goals, and results to report, if for nothing else than my own sanity.
This describes >80% of engineering departments at past large firms where I've worked. Ironically, these people are 'architects' and get paid handsomely.
Happens all the time. We can hire only at certain times when budgets open, so you go ahead and hire but you have no time to deal with the person. It’s better to have the person sit around until you have time because the alternative is losing the contractor and not being able to hire when you really need someone.
Stupid but very real. I always find it funny that wasting 100k this way is perfectly fine but a 5k raise is almost impossible.
Hourly billing is how you protect yourself against a sloppy client like this, especially with unpredictability. I have seen fixed price blow up so much I would never ever do it personally - I would have to add so much it would be astonishing to be worth it.
These types of gigs are more about who you know rather than the work that gets done. I'm guessing that you didn't just cold interview for this work, right?
If you've signed a contact for a fixed period, demand that they raise your rate at each renewal. Don't give them the entire benefit of your flexibility without some concession on their end. If they want you month-to-month, your rate changes month-to-month.
> $15k of contracted work in a single day, which was sold as a fixed-fee in return for a legal report. The type of work that should cost maybe $200 in total.
GK, I remember your presence on that thread. For those who were not there, it's under comment history. You spoke to the point of people needing your help (and not just anybody), which is kind of ridiculous in this case and the case from last week. You're opining value-driven fixed rate wisdom on a thread about a simple HTML page. If you dictate the pace of a specialty, of course you can charge whatever you want and call it "value-driven." For the other 99% of consultants out there, supply and demand bring pricing to an equilibrium. Retainers need not apply here nor in 90% of first-time client engagements.
Consultants who win the job will always leave money on the table. That's how you get the gig to begin with. Value is relative, and it takes at least two to tango come contract time until cost (what the client sees) and value (what you see) intersect.
Billing hourly brings pricing transparency clients want while protecting you from true under-utilization. If you're not being utilized because of red tape that was unassumed at contract time, a change order is the logical next step to account for scope remaining/additional scope.
There was a time during the golden dotcom era when my manager scheduled a monthly management meeting across the Atlantic, which required me and 2 colleagues flying all the way over for a meeting that lasted about 4 hours.
Business class plane tickets, 2 nights in a nice hotel, rental car, dinner at very fancy restaurant.
Meanwhile, that same 100k+ employee company wasn't able to set up email fast enough for new employees, so some new hires had to use hotmail(!) for weeks before they were in the system.
I mean they were pretty clear they didn't care about the money. Emailing daily to check in on progress is good enough. I've been in a similar situation. The manager isn't really concerned about the money. They just need someone to justify their expenses.
> We need your full undivided attention to complete this project. For the duration of the contract, you will work exclusively with us to deliver result in a timely manner. We plan to compensate you for the trouble.
The George Costanza way of doing business. The more I grow less young (I’m close to 40 now) the more I realize that the Costanza character is one of the closest approximations of daily life in a society like ours. Dilbert or “The Office” TV series are also very good fits but George Costanza is in a world of his own.
One of the first web systems I ever put into production (still in use other than modernization I went 5 years without a bug report which still astounds me) after I jumped from desktop to web I charged £1500 for (it was about 20 hours actual work the rest was spent learning the right way to do things), did the job over 6 weeks.
Client let slip they'd been quoted £11,000 for it and 3mths.
Next job they asked me to do was £5,000 and I said 3mths (it took less than a month and I was working full time).
I learnt that lesson fast, don't charge what it's worth to you, charge what its worth to them.
Or as an ex-boss pithily put it "serious people charge serious money".
I've lived this. Myself and a very expensive team of EY kids were waiting eagerly every day for anyone in corp management to throw us any kind of tasks.
On the rare occasion that we were given a task, we would all descend upon one computer like vultures, group-solving the problem typically in 60minutes or less. Then it was back to doing nothing.
Diplomacy (the game) became our primary activity. It was fun, but such a terrible waste of time, talent, and money.
At my company, AP matches every invoice against a PO, and project managers/department heads are also responsible for approving invoices to be paid, so there are two chances to catch fake invoices or wrong amounts, etc.
The early winners of the UK Apprentice were awarded £100k jobs as a prize, which didn't actually entail doing anything, because the only reason they had been created was as a prize for winning a TV competition. One of them sued for 'constructive dismissal' on the basis she felt that not creating any work for her was an attempt to force her to quit. She lost, presumably on the basis that most people given nothing to do on 3x average salary would either find something to do or consider themselves extremely lucky...
I'm gonna disagree that hourly billing makes no sense for the contractor. He clearly just didn't charge enough per hour; $75/hour is way too low for contract work, and his $21k could have been $56k at $200/hour.
What if the project was billed at a fixed cost, he negotiated $21k, but the project took a year to complete because the company moved so slowly? That'd be a terrible salary. He'd have to quit and somehow bill even with no deliverables. How hairy would a contract covering that be to defend when you sue?
There were mentioned studies in the book "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" that mirrored what your parents experienced.
Long story short, a jeweler was trying to move some turquoise and told an assistant to sell them at half price while she was gone. The assistant accidentally doubled the price, but the stones still sold immediately.
Turns out there's a phenomenon where humans automatically associate price to quality. So getting charged more means we think we're getting better quality, regardless of the actual quality
Author exercises freedom of expression by publishing candid critique of corporate culture and workplace dysfunction on personal blog without censorship.
FW Ratio: 50%
Observable Facts
Article published on personal blog with critical workplace narrative showing no censorship.
Comments section enabled with active reader participation and dialogue.
Author signs article by name: Ibrahim Diallo, providing transparent authorship.
Inferences
Publishing workplace critique demonstrates active exercise of Article 19 rights to free expression.
Site features (comments, sharing) structurally support reader expression and engagement.
Use of humor and narrative to critique corporate dynamics shows sophisticated deployment of expressive freedom.
Narrative directly engages with right to work and fair wages. Author negotiates compensation, works as contractor, and successfully asserts right to payment for labor and time.
FW Ratio: 50%
Observable Facts
Author negotiates hourly rate and initial estimate: 'After negotiating a decent rate, I received an email with the instructions.'
Calculates compensation: 'my original quote was for $1,500... it was $5.35 an hour.'
Final $21,000 payment validates assertion of right to compensation for presence and labor.
Inferences
Narrative frames successful wage negotiation and payment as positive outcome, affirming right to fair compensation.
Story validates that workers deserve payment for their time, even when work delayed by employer.
Author's persistence in invoicing and collecting demonstrates assertion of economic rights.
Narrative validates right to property and fair compensation for labor. Author successfully asserts payment for time and presence, receiving $21,000.
FW Ratio: 50%
Observable Facts
Author invoiced for 7 weeks and received $21,000 payment: 'Please confirm the readjusted hours so accounting can write you a check. I quickly confirmed these hours.'
Company manager recalculated and increased total to $21,000 based on hourly rate.
Inferences
The narrative frames successful assertion of payment rights as positive, validating right to fair compensation.
Story's resolution (full payment) demonstrates and affirms right to property for labor.
Right to rest and leisure implicitly affirmed through author's enjoyment of lunches, idle time, and breaks within workday.
FW Ratio: 50%
Observable Facts
Author describes company lunches: 'the next day, I spent those remaining 4 hours in a company sponsored lunch where I ate very well and mingled with other employees.'
Daily leisure practices: 'I'd come to work, spend some time online reading and watching videos... Then I'd go get lunch and hangout.'
Inferences
Narrative implicitly celebrates value of rest and leisure within the work day.
Positive framing of leisure time suggests implicit support for Article 24 rights to rest.
Author describes exclusive contract requiring full undivided attention for 7 weeks with extended idle time. Characterizes restrictive labor arrangement with humorous acceptance rather than critique.
FW Ratio: 50%
Observable Facts
Company requested: 'We need your full undivided attention to complete this project. For the duration of the contract, you will work exclusively with us.'
Author spent 7 weeks on-site with significant idle time awaiting work materials.
Inferences
The humorous framing of extensive employer control may implicitly normalize restrictive labor arrangements.
Presenting paid idle time as beneficial could minimize concerns about labor autonomy.
Author describes lack of recognition and professional acknowledgment within corporate setting, feeling like an impostor and being ignored in meetings.
FW Ratio: 50%
Observable Facts
Author states: 'You can imagine the level of impostor syndrome I felt every time I remembered that my only task was to build a single static HTML page.'
In team meeting: 'all they ever said about the project was: Person 1: Hey is anyone working on that sponsored page? Person 2: Yeah, I think it's done. Person 1: Great, I'll merge it tonight.'
Inferences
The narrative implicitly critiques the contractor's lack of recognition and professional personhood.
Repeated invisibility and non-introduction suggests experienced denial of acknowledgment within hierarchy.
build 1ad9551+j7zs · deployed 2026-03-02 09:09 UTC · evaluated 2026-03-02 10:41:39 UTC
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