Yeah. Hourly rates helps keep things in perspective. But hourly rates also worsens the douchiness where people start feeling that the number of hours it takes is disproportionate to the amount of work being done.
But in that case, I try to first politely explain them that estimates do go wrong, especially in the cases where I am doing things I haven't done before. I recently setup a xmpp based web chat for the first time. I communicated beforehand that I am not familiar with xmpp web clients and whether I would be able to just use a xmpp web client or I will have to code something from scratch using strophe.js or convere.js, or if it can be done at all. The task is basically "it will be done when it will be done" but I will be able to at least tell you if it can be done at all in a week.
Reasonable explanations mostly work with people who start getting restless when things take longer than expected, mainly because I too vet my clients. But the thing with hourly billing is, if the stakeholders are being unreasonable, I ask them to go eat shit and cut my losses(if any) and I don't have to deal with unreasonable expectations that comes with a fixed price bucket.
Sure, "Engineer's Savings Time" is a common imaginary time scale, which has led to a rule of thumb for engineers to triple their instinctive time estimates for tasks by default.
But in that case, I try to first politely explain them that estimates do go wrong, especially in the cases where I am doing things I haven't done before. I recently setup a xmpp based web chat for the first time. I communicated beforehand that I am not familiar with xmpp web clients and whether I would be able to just use a xmpp web client or I will have to code something from scratch using strophe.js or convere.js, or if it can be done at all. The task is basically "it will be done when it will be done" but I will be able to at least tell you if it can be done at all in a week.
Reasonable explanations mostly work with people who start getting restless when things take longer than expected, mainly because I too vet my clients. But the thing with hourly billing is, if the stakeholders are being unreasonable, I ask them to go eat shit and cut my losses(if any) and I don't have to deal with unreasonable expectations that comes with a fixed price bucket.