[OFFTOPIC] Finding the next lucrative niche (was: Re: Goodbye, Lingnu)

[Etzion Bar-Noy]

It doesn't matter. Because a customer needs a method of estimating a work,
does not make you his bitch(tm). You can estimate your work, but you seldom
work in a vacuum. You are working on his servers, on his setups, his
storage devices, around his network equipment. Under most cases, when I get
delayed, it's because of the customer, and not me.

Example. One of the newer cellular suppliers has demanded that I install a
large system in their new server farm (16 blades and a storage). I have
prepared the system, and on the delivery day (which was very time-pressed
due to the customer), I have discovered that they had not installed 220v AC
there yet. Can't do anything with the servers. The funny thing is that
during that time, two or three weeks since, the system is just sitting
there, when the server room is being "built" around it.

Ez

On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 4:33 PM, Nadav Har'El <nyh at math.technion.ac.il>wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 14, 2011, geoffrey mendelson wrote about "Re: [OFFTOPIC]
> Finding the next lucrative niche (was: Re: Goodbye, Lingnu)":
> > Long ago I got out of the PC repair/support business when the 50 NIS
> > an hour people took over.
>
> Am I the only one bothered by all this "per hour" talk?
>
> What prevents a 50-NIS-per-hour consultant from telling you he worked
> for 4 hours on your problem, which it actually took him just one hour in
> his lab?
> Or a 200-NIS-per-hour consultant from finding your problem in 10
> minutes, because he solved exactly this problem a week ago or wrote the
> necessary code already?
>
> So how is the "price per hour" a meaningful variable when comparing two
> consultants?
>
> --
> Nadav Har'El                        |                    Monday, Nov 14
> 2011,
> nyh at math.technion.ac.il
> |-----------------------------------------
> Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |Cats aren't clean, they're just
> covered
> http://nadav.harel.org.il           |with cat spit.
>
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