For me, the key take-away from this story is right at the end, where he contemplates whether he short-changed himself. If you look at it on a per-hour basis, he got paid decently ($100 for a few hours work in the 80s? Incredible!). However, if you look at it from the perspective of the business value he delivered to Jim in that transaction, it was a bargain for Jim ($100 once-off to fix a problem taht was costing many multiples of that each month? Hell yes!).
And therein lies a fantastic reminder that if you can frame tthe cost of your work in terms of the value you will provide to your customer, rather than a flat labour rate for your time, you stand to earn a lot more.
On the other hand, I'm not sure the author would have been offered a job had he named a higher price, so that could be seen as some kind of investment too!
And therein lies a fantastic reminder that if you can frame tthe cost of your work in terms of the value you will provide to your customer, rather than a flat labour rate for your time, you stand to earn a lot more.