Exactly why I charge $999/hour for my software consulting. To the doubters, laugh all you want, but I've been doing this for literal decades, and will absolutely slaughter LLM generated code in terms of code reliability and maintainability amortized over 5 years.

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Nextgrid 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Won't be giving exact figures but that's my business model as well - I charge a premium because my job for clients is to make myself obsolete. If I "deliver" something that needs my constant presence then I haven't actually delivered. Of course, my price is high upfront because I'm budgeting in the fact that I strive to be out of there as soon as feasible instead of trying to stick around.

Some clients are ok with it, some don't; this is normal and what a competitive market should look like. I tell clients openly when my premium service is not the right fit for their current requirements or budget, and there are cases where cheaper labor or LLMs are absolutely a better fit (and they should come back once when/if they outgrow the cheaper, lower-quality product).

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captain_coffee 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

How do you get clients on that rate? Genuinely curious

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Nextgrid 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Hourly rates are inherently risky for clients - you're asking them to part with money with no guaranteed outcome, so there's a natural ceiling where the financial risk becomes untenable regardless of your expertise and reputation.

Clients don't buy hours though, they buy solutions. They have problems costing them money or preventing revenue and they'll pay a percentage of that value to solve it. When you price based on solution value rather than time, your effective hourly rate merely becomes a function of your efficiency and expertise delivering said solution.

They key to achieving such a rate comes down to your sales and business skills: understanding what to sell, how to structure it to maximize your earnings and make it palatable for the client.

For example I generally avoid hourly billing except as a filter for time-wasters. Instead, consultancy becomes a loss leader for the real business: deeply understanding client problems and delivering high-value solutions. Clients happily pay premium rates when they see the price as a fraction of the solution's worth to them.

I only resort to quoting (quite high) hourly rates where it's clear the client just wants consultancy/advice (basically a glorified IT/business support) as a way to make it worth my time and gently encouraging them to bounce (I openly suggest more cost-effective options and refer them there).

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captain_coffee 5 hours ago | parent [-]

OK so in this case how do you set the price? Based on the final solution to be delivered? Can you give one (or a few) concrete examples by any chance?

I am not sure if I fully understood what you meant exactly with your (detailed) reply.

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Nextgrid 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You judge how valuable the solution is to your customer and then structure your pricing to maximize your profits while still being palatable to your client.

Let's say your client has a problem that will bring them 1k/hr of revenue when fixed. You think you can fix it in an hour.

You could quote them 5k/hour, because you think you can fix it in one hour and you estimate it'll take them at least 5 hours to find and talk to someone else who could fix it. This is a big gamble for the client, what if you don't fix it or take longer? The client balks.

Now let's say you offer a "reasonable" hourly rate like 150/hr. Your client is happy to take the gamble because 150 is peanuts compared to the value they get if you do fix it. Client takes the deal, you fix the problem, but you got paid peanuts.

Now let's say you offer them a no-fix-no-fee rate of 5k. The client is happy to take it because once the problem is solved it takes them just 5 hours to go back in profit, and they risk nothing if you end up not solving the problem. They take the deal, you fix it in an hour, the client happily pays you 5k, netting an hourly rate of 5k/hour.

Same hourly rate as the first scenario, yet the first scenario will cause everyone to balk while the second one is a steal for the client (in reality, you can actually charge more than 5k, how much more depends on your reputation and sales skills).

	▲	captain_coffee 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Very well explained - thank you!

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shermantanktop 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I read it as:

“This is the price for me to do work I don’t want to do, but will do, if you make it impossible for me to say no.”

It’s not about justifying the rate, that’s the wrong way to think of it.

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apt-apt-apt-apt 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

"You make $100, you pay me $20, I make pho you"

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refulgentis 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'd love to do this and have a quite marketable resume, but it is extremely, extremely, unclear to me how you build a clientele or where you'd even start.

Only road I can imagine is highly specialized industry, with money, that often has time-sensitive needs, and smart management that knows how to recognize value or trusts their tech management. And even then I think you'd have to start in the coal-mines version of it, $50K/year flat salary, and building a reputation without management taking credit for your successes, somehow.

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Nextgrid 6 hours ago | parent [-]

The hard part is to get the client on the phone.

Once you have them on the phone, you can not only better understand their problem but also demonstrate your skill and credibility in a way no resume or branding could.

At that point it's just a sales game - generally you'd avoid hourly rates and sell them a solution (see my other comment) which will maximize your effective hourly rate while being structured in a way that's very good value for the client. Hourly should be a last resort, at which point generally you'd rather have the client bounce, so you quote a high rate.

	▲	publicdebates 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That last part is exactly why I charge $999/hour. I'll offer a specific solution that takes me a week of full time work (14 hours each day -- I'm focused) for about $10k, which is roughly $150/hour if you want to calculate it that way, or another specific solution that takes me 3 weeks of 10 hour days for $15k which amounts to $100/hour. And like any good consultant, I'll eat the cost if I'm wrong. Other times I'll charge $40k when I know it will take a few months of dedicated work and I have to really lock in. In practice, I never actually charge hourly. So the $999/hour is really Schrodinger's rate.

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yieldcrv 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Have you tried Claude Opus 4.5 within Claude Code?

it's only been released for two months but its changed the calculus entirely

if its been over two months since you've tried any LLM generated code solution, or are still occasionally copy pasting code requirements into a browser chat session as if its still 2023, then I can't put any weight into the opinion

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input_sh 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I've read this same comment for every model since GPT-3.

	▲	yieldcrv 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		so have I and this time I wrote it, this broken clock only has to be right once, forever its beneficial to check it