Posted by Sanders Kaufman on 09/19/07 00:27

So now, these PHP recruiters are calling out of the blue and from
everywhere. My phone ain't rung like this since the Clinton years.

And there's this one job - sounds tasty. It's like a temp service for
doctors. Right now, they mail in their billing hours in crayola and on
cocktail napkins... or something like that.

They want a simple little web-based hours-tracking utility - well,
simple before they start in with the creepy features... and you KNOW
there's gonna be feature creep, because it was an agency recruiter that
called me - and they bill by the hour, rather than the project, right?

So I figure I'll setup something named "DocBilling.int" or somesuch and
use my current working framework to let them login and log their time,
and for the doc's bean-counters to be able to view a couple of reports.

Here's the situation:

I think they expect to hire me for an hourly rate, and expect the
project to be finished sometime in January.

*The problem is that I can build the damn thing in a weekend, but I
don't want to miss out on all that extra cash.*

Let's say I'm getting $10/hr - and man, it's sooo much more than that! -
but let's say. If I do it the way they expect it to be done, I can milk
the contract for what - 8x40hr weeks - that's $3k plus. But if I do it
in a 16 hr weekend - I don't even get $200.

I was thinking that, when I talk to them next, I should suggest a
project-based, rather than hourly-based, rate - and estimate at the high
end. But I've never done that before through a recruiter, and I don't
know how it'll go over. I just know I've *always* had problems with
hourly recruiter jobs.

Any suggs?

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