If it were hourly pay, I would be honest and they would re-hire me because they like paying me less. But I would brainstorm ways to use the faster method as leverage. Re-write the contract or re-negotiate your terms for the same amount of time pay that it would take someone else. They're not paying you any more to do it in 3 months than they would pay anyone else to do it in 6, so I don't see why they would be against it. They aren't out in any way and actually benefit.
You don't renegotiate your contract with a billion dollar firm like Oracle or SAP. Big firms just don't work in that way. They have a process and you fit into it. Frankly, thinking about it, this is true for most firms with more than 100 employees. They give you a standard consultancy agreement and you sign it. You're assuming business people think rationally and without emotion. If you lowered your rates, the MOST likely thing they would do is dump you because they would figure you were working for a competitor (and double dipping) or a lunatic or planning to set up your own company. They would be suspicious as to why anyone would lower their rates and anyone doing that would more likely be treated with contempt.
Businesses hire expensive consultants and pay CEOs and senior executives megabucks precisely because their boards and other senior management think "expensive is good", especially where there are not like-for-like comparisons or the deliverable is based on trust and trust is based on reputation. Just like people buy Rolex watches and prestige cars. Aston Martin does not make a cheap runabout for similar reasons. People would not like or trust the DB9
If those avenues are impossible or unsuccessful for whatever reason then I would quote honestly anyway because my honesty isn't between me and my employer, it's between me and God. It would be disappointing that I couldn't leverage the idea for better pay, but in the end I got paid 3 months wage for 3 months work, so I can't really complain. I'm just free 3 months earlier to work on something else.
You'd be free in 3 months anyway. Or, more accuately, you could be doing 2.5 days per week for another client and therefore not have all your income eggs in one basket. No consultancy agreement is going to ban you from working for another firm, provided they are not a competitor.
I would not overquote as a policy. If a person gets so few contracts that they are starving and need to be dishonest with whoever does give them work, just so that can get more money to tide them over other lost contracts, then perhaps it's time for a career change?
The nature of most consultancy or contracting is stopping and starting, feast and famine. If you are engaged all year every year then you are not charging enough. The nature of capitalism is supply and demand. One's time is a limited resource and therefore you charge what the market will bear. The optimum pricing point will give you gaps in your schedule, just as a company lending money does not aim for or wish to get a zero default rate on loans. What it does is OPTIMIZE its default rates with it's acceptance rates to maximize its profits.
What is wrong in principle with some of your clients paying you $70 per hour and other clients paying $100 per hour or even $140? Provided both clients are happy with your output/product/service then why is that dishonest? When you book a flight on a cheap airline and pay $50 for a ticket and the person sitting next to you on the flight has paid $200 have they been ripped off or treated dishonestly? They each agreed to pay the price they paid for a service. Perhaps the flight is more valuable to them. Perhaps $200 is less important.
The economic REALITY is that the $200 passenger is subsidising the cost of the $50 passenger. It costs the airline more than $50 to fly you in jet fuel alone, but as a business they have chosen to use a dynamic pricing model to sell airline travel.
Even if it's so common that it becomes industry standard, it's really nothing more than a fancy way of saying "Everyone else is doing it!" which we know doesn't fly in morality. If they aren't starving but are overquoting out of greed, that answers itself.
Low cost airlines function better as businesses than the way airlines used to price tickets. The innovators changed the pricing model so now "everyone is doing it".
Greed. This is the debatable point. Is it greedy to charge $50, 500, 5000, 50,000 per hour for your time if business are happy to pay that? If it is, then perhaps all Trads who wish to get to heaven
should be smallholding farmers and make a fixed 20% profit margin over input costs to cover for failed crops and the basic costs of living.
By charging $300 dollars per hour the better contractor also gives the junior contractor an opportunity to work for a living wage. If the expensive consultant charged $30 per hour because he did not want to be greedy, while the shareholders of the firm would benefit through higher profits, the junior contractor would never leave his burger flipping job in Mc Donalds.
The Soviet Union had very cheap prices for things. Soviet citizens could go on cheap holidays, buy cheap food, cheap clothes, utilities were peanuts. People always had excess money. Unfortunately there were also a lot of empty shelves because supply and demand were not matched.
Should Catholics ignore the economic paradigm they live in and behave the same regardless, or earn what they are able to and do some good with their excess wealth?
Topic: Being worthy of your hire vs not being exploited (Read 1895 times)