Charging What You’re Worth
This morning I saw this on Daring Fireball, and it reminded me of the recent conversation I've had with a guy that contracted me to do some work for a Bank and said that it'd be worth $25k to him. So I did it. It took me about 2 weeks, but it was a lot of fun getting back into OS X coding that I didn't mind the time.
I actually made it more flexible than he/they needed. I could sync up and down data between multiple devices and it always makes sure to send minimal packets of information. It's not Rocket Science, but it's nice, and I'm really proud of it. I put it up on a private repo on GitHub and let him see it.
He wanted to use it for something else, and when he asked how much that was worth, I said: "$25k".
"What? You said it'd only take a weekend to make the customizations I asked for."
"Yes, but that's not the point… it's the value the code represents."
I just wish I'd had this quote from Picasso to reference him. I have it now.
"Five thousand dollars," the artist replied.
"B-b-but, what?" the woman sputtered. "How could you want so much money for this picture? It only took you a second to draw it!"
To which Picasso responded, "Madame, it took me my entire life."