alt Hacker NewsIIUC, if that company had just let him be remote, and not demanded exclusivity, they could've gotten the same output, delivered at the same time, for less than 1/10th the cost.
One of the 'mistakes' (conscious at the time) I made when doing technical consulting remotely was only billing for productive, focused hours when I'd be actively typing and mousing on the problem.
Someone suggested that, if I wanted to go for a walk to think about a problem (which is something I did), I should bill that. I decided that was a slippery slope.
Had I been working on-site, which consumed all my time without flexibility, then I'd bill for every hour on-site, and maybe for travel time.
But since we were doing remote (this was before Covid), with hours that I set -- and my clients were serious people, working on serious stuff -- I wanted to be serious too.
Thinking back to my time as a contractor, this makes me wary.
In the UK at least, you would need to be careful that by allowing people to waste your time (and them paying for it) you would be breaking the dreaded IR35 tax rules by appearing as a “disguised employee”.
HMRC won’t tell you the exact rules but one of big tests is do you retain control of your time or not.
You need to be upfront with clients about what they are paying for or you could both be in for a nasty surprise.