Comments on: the professional hitman

By: Weekly Links: 9/5/9 With a bit of Random Knowledge

Weekly Links: 9/5/9 With a bit of Random Knowledge — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 11:10:42 +0000

[...] Bripblap-The Professional Hitman [...]

By: jeff

jeff — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 20:10:48 +0000

It sounds like a great plan. I'd love to know if you can get it to work. Sometimes, things just make too much sense to NOT do, but ohhhhh, the corporate world.

By: jeff

jeff — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 13:10:48 +0000

It sounds like a great plan. I'd love to know if you can get it to work. Sometimes, things just make too much sense to NOT do, but ohhhhh, the corporate world.

By: Weekly Roundup - Patient Lottery Winner Edition | Frugal Dad

Weekly Roundup - Patient Lottery Winner Edition | Frugal Dad — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 10:02:04 +0000

[...] The Professional Hitman [...]

By: Make Your Own Designer Clothes? The Price of Fashion | Debt, Credit Card & Consolidation Current News Digest

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 05:00:42 +0000

[...] Brip Blap: The Professional Hitman [...]

By: Make Your Own Designer Clothes? The Price of Fashion

Make Your Own Designer Clothes? The Price of Fashion — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 00:50:58 +0000

[...] Brip Blap: The Professional Hitman [...]

By: Steve @ bripblap

Steve @ bripblap — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 00:33:02 +0000

@GP: Right – we pay attorneys flat fees for real estate transactions,
for example. And the traditional billable hour system is just that –
traditional. It's sortof like the insistence on signatures on paper
contracts: resistance to the more sensible digitial signatures remains
strong. It takes a long time for people to change, even when the need
for change is obvious.

By: Steve @ bripblap

Steve @ bripblap — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 22:32:02 +0000

@Bubelah: I would imagine you could find a few different ways to deal
with it. The easiest way would be to have a penalty for late delivery -
$500 per day, or $5000 per week, or whatever. The client could pay half
up front, half on delivery. Etc. But I'd imagine that if you want to
be successful at all with that business model you'd have to deliver on
time, or else you're not going to be very highly recommended in the
future.

It's really the point about the post, though: if I'm paid hourly, I
don't really care about the deadline myself (except as a reputation
issue) and will actually make MORE if I run over the limit. If I have a
flat fee and know that I'll be LOSING money if I miss the deadline I'm
going to be exceptionally motivated. So it seems like the company would
be better off with a flat fee, too.

By: TheWealthSquad

TheWealthSquad — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 15:52:56 +0000

Changing how companies charge or pay is probably one of the toughest areas to overcome.

If you can complete the job in minutes they feel upset because the majority of people think in terms of $/hr. They have a good feel for the wage per hour they are earning even if they are on salary.

I have seen this reaction even when giving free help. I have worked with Excel for years so many tasks only take a few minutes to get done that would frustrate most people for hours.

I had a friend who had been working on getting a spreadsheet set up for several days (spending many hours trying unsuccessfully to get it to work). He mentioned his frustration at lunch one day and i offered to fix it for him. It took me about 20 minutes to get cleaned up the way he wanted it.

The look on his face that is could be done so quickly is the same reaction you get when you complete a job using less effort than they expect you too.

For some reason a lot of people want to see you suffer to earn the money. I much prefer delivering good quality work and making it look effortless. The problem is they want to pay you like it was effortless.

Knowledge is far more valuable than people realize.

By: chadsentientmoney

chadsentientmoney — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 15:21:04 +0000

"The world of audit, finance and accounting is a hidebound profession in many ways. Most of the time these kinds of professions are resistant to growth – but fertile ground for growth once the resistance is broken."

You must have worked for vastly different people than I have in those professions. I have seen successful non-traditional changes killed.

A major issue would be their responsiveness to your requests (documentation, etc.). In my experience this is not done well. Plus, they would have an incentive to not do it well if you monetarily penalized yourself for missing the deadline.