Dmitry, I just sent you offlist a long set of threads I captured from "The Code, The Client and the PIClist", a thread which ran for a month last fall. You might also search the PIClist archives for keywords like business practice, quoting, and so on. THis is an endlessly fascinating subject for a lot of us, since many of us do consulting or moonlighting. Electronics is generally considered a science, and generaly has right and wrong answers (with exceptions), but business is anything but a scinece. There are pitfalls, bad luck, good luck, bad customers, good customers, people who are wildly successful despite disorganized business skills and people who do everything right and fail. Good business practice will stack the deck in your favor, but it is still a gamble. -- Lawrence Lile Dmitriy Fitisov Sent by: pic microcontroller discussion list 02/28/2004 09:53 AM Please respond to pic microcontroller discussion list To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU cc: Subject: Re: [OT]: How do you quote job? Wow! Thanks, Spehro! Brian, thank you. Ok, I set some digits from the sky which I think may interest me, otherwise, I better skip this job. P.S. [OFF-PRIVATE] I have responded to you, but you mailserver does not allow to pass-through :-( -----Original Message----- From: pic microcontroller discussion list [mailto:PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU]On Behalf Of Spehro Pefhany Sent: February 28, 2004 10:38 AM To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU Subject: Re: [OT]: How do you quote job? At 08:33 AM 2/28/2004 -0500, you wrote: >Hello fellas, > I just got request to quote job, > which I never done before. >How do you quote it? >I suspect it is about a week to work with. >Thanks. >Dmitriy Really difficult to describe in general. How difficult is it for you? Do you have to learn much to do it? Should the customer pay for that learning or should you? Is it a part-time thing or is this "real work" for you? Is there the potential of future work or will getting this job help you get more work in other ways? One rule of thumb for consulting is to charge at least double the gross hourly wage that a full time employee of the required qualifications would be paid. This is fair because the employee actually costs the company a lot more- they are not always working at 100%, sometimes there is no work for them, sometimes they miss work, they must have have benefits and vacation paid by law, and require training and equipment, all of which you are paying for yourself. You might adjust this up or down for short vs. longtime. Of course if there is specialized knowledge that you have that makes you very suitable, factor upwards. Thus, when I do quotes, there is often a different hourly rate for something simple vs. say complex control algorithms and other engineering tasks. I prefer to work out the estimated hours and quote a fixed price if the specifications are well defined. Be careful on this, it can kill you if there is feature creep or if there are a lot of unwritten requirements that pop up just as you think you are done. Your week could turn into three, over 4 or 5 calendar weeks, which means you would be making better money, with less stress, heaving bricks around or something. Add a bit for contingencies too. Things *always* come up. Oh, and make sure the deliverables, IP ownership issue, milestones, payment terms and so on are well understood between you and your customer. There are also myriad tax issues depending on how you present yourself and the facts involved. In the US there are the IRS "20 questions", and Canada is quite similar. Don't worry much about this if you've not done it before, just do a good job and get paid and worry about it 14 months from now. ;-) You might want to pay some attention to liability issues and try to limit your exposure to the amount you are paid, but that's a whole 'nuther subject. Best regards, Spehro Pefhany --"it's the network..." "The Journey is the reward" speff@interlog.com Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com Embedded software/hardware/analog Info for designers: http://www.speff.com -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details. -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details. -- http://www.piclist.com hint: To leave the PICList mailto:piclist-unsubscribe-request@mitvma.mit.edu