On February 1, 2009 at 03:21, smokinghot said...
I'm curious what this has to do with anything...?
Lets pretend job "A"s programming is priced at T&M, and
takes 20hrs.
That is a world of pretend.. Where did Alan ever say the first job was T&M? Programming these systems is rarely 20hrs. The typical scenario is that you estimate that the programming of the job will take 65 hours. The usual outcome is that the programming takes twice as long due to issues with equipment, installation, clients whims of asking for minor changes and so on. As Alan said the client rarely ever pays for the actual time that has been put into the programming of their system.
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.
Now you are throwing in the quoted price thing when it would have been a quoted price on the first job, however that wouldn't support your argument so that is inconvenient so we will just imagine that it is the case anyway.
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 reality is that I do base my AMX quotes on past projects I have done to get a feel for the amount of time I expect yet on almost every job I get screwed by something like Xperinet or the flaky network the installing company has installed and end up eating hours of time dealing with crap.
I'm tired of people saying that my programming that I have developed over the years that allows me to provide a very reasonable price to the people I program for is worth nothing and that every ass hat competitor that can't program anything other than an IR controlled device should have access to my code at anyone's whim. I provide a high level of service and continue to progress my programming knowledge, skill and proficiency on a monthly basis. Each time I use my own modules I make them even better than the last which allows me to produce a consistent product in an extremely timely manner. It is not fair to me to have some guy fresh out of training with a company that has just picked up AMX walk into an existing home that someone has just purchased and have access to what is unarguably my intellectual property.
All of that being said, so far I have made my code available to the clients that ask for it, so far the only people that have asked for the code are the systems that I have reprogrammed because the previous company never got the system working in the first place and is now out of business.
That also being said I have been back to 2 of the 4 people that have asked for a disc to make updates and when I ask them for the disc so I can write the updated files to it they can't remember what they did to it..
All of my programs have a large statement in the header of the code stating that the code is to only be used between myself and the address where the system is installed. Hopefully in the future if I do have an issue with someone else getting a hold of my code one way or another I have a legal avenue to persue..
