I'm curious what this has to do with anything...?

Lets pretend job "A"s programming is priced at T&M, and takes 20hrs.

Times change over the years and margins on equipment shrink.

Job "B" comes along and is for all intensive purposes the same as job "A". However the job is a quoted price. You'd use the the model of job "A" to develop your quote for programming, correct? If so, has not the cilent been hosed..? I would think that the developed code for job "A" would be just retooled for job "B"....yes/no? Therefore the cilent has overpaid your actual labour costs for programming.

What I'm getting at is, how do you claim that the cilent hasn't paid full price because he didn't pay for the hours you spent on a another job doing module R&D. You're not going to say that you never reuse modules on different job are you.?

Do programmers and auto mechanics use the same methodology for job based quotes.? The mechanic does a strut job on a car and the book says it takes 5 hrs. However the mechanic knows enough to cheat with torches and hoists to get the job done without tearing apart the front end, but still charges the book hourly value. Whereas the programmer sees X devices, Y controllers, and Z access points. From scratch it would take 20hrs, but he has all the base code and can do it in 8. However feels that the job didn't get paid in full because only 10hrs were billed..?