If someone here’s awake, what’s the going rates for consulting in India? Do startups allow you to charge by the hour or do they also tend to haggle?

Been approached to fix a bunch of issues for a small sized startup and want to know how to price this right???

From what I have seen, it completely depends on the subject matter you are consulting on .... For example, I charge by the week (I can charge by the hour if I want, but I don't want to go through the process of tracking the hours etc) and I consult MNCs like Unilever,Linfox Logistics etc on Business Process Re-Engineering & Automation and for that I charge them 1L to 50K per week depending on the project [I audit and document existing processes and systems and estimate how much money and time they can save will improving or retaining the accuracy (or some similar metric)]... so I have to wear multiple hats in the project such as software architect, project manager, developer etc... so in the weeks I have to come up with the design for the system as an architect I charge them 1L and while I develop the system & manage my dev team I charge 50k and if they need some thing simple (like building some macros) , I send one of my developers to work with them and charge them ~25k. And just like normal gigs your expertise and track record has quite a bit of impact on what you can charge them.

@straight-continent-34777 I would second @abundant-jackal-54634 If you are not used to it, avoid by the hour. It is a sure way to get burnt fast. Either try and get a fixed cost or atleast by the day or week. Hour is too much of a hassle. (Fixed cost = estimate the hours it will take you and then multiply by 1.5 or 2) because your estimates will tend to be that off. In the end, charge what you think will make you happy.

By the hour works best when the client won't nag you for the time. It is by far the safest option, if payment is guaranteed and client won't grumble about it. By issue or project is the next best, but expect your estimates to be off by a good margin until you develop a sense for it.

I am reading articles by Benek (https://solowork.co) from last week. The target audience is designers but most articles are generic and apply to most freelancers. For pricing, this article is a good read https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/youre-probably-calculating-freelance-rates-all-wrong-so-follow-this-strategy-instead-a5c738e51f70/ I am currently billing my clients by the hour. And agree with @tall-postman-9284, it is good as long as the client won't nag you for the time. I like the weekly retainer system used by benek and will try it out. It will guarantee a client a certain number of hours per week, in exchange for a flat weekly fee. I have not tried Value-based pricing and agree with issues mentioned here https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/what-to-charge-as-a-freelancer-does-value-based-pricing-live-up-to-the-hype-1af1d4d88ef7/.

@millions-lock-70396 @abundant-jackal-54634 @loud-glass-33663 and @tall-postman-9284 Thanks a lot for the suggestions...

Great stuff above, but I would add that knowing your hourly output and hourly worth is extremely important too in the remote work scenario and especially important in places where requirements and outputs are vague (eg: data analytics, data science) Used hourly pricing with many long term clients and it's always trust based - they get the output and I just add the hours that I worked genuinely. So I would definitely calculate that first and base all prices on it with math.

I want to ask all the front end development experts here. How do you implement interactions like this https://dribbble.com/shots/5708399-Christmas-Collisions ? What are the tools, tech and strategy you use, and what are the challenges you face ?

You need a physics engine, no matter the language. On web there are a bunch of those in js. A very simple one that understands spring forces and object dimensions is probably sufficient. It is nontrivial to implement it. Canvas element on web allows you to draw anything pixel by pixel. On mobile or desktop you have low level display libraries that do the same thing. Rendering engines are libraries that translate high level instructions like line, curve, character, image/icon into pixels. Physics engines let you think and code in terms of objects and laws of interaction, and work with rendering engines.

Tools depend on the platform. An example stack on desktop/mobile might be qt, opengl, and reactphysics3d

✋🏼 I'd like some design/tech help creating a resource called - " 50 questions answered about working remotely in India ". It's basically a collection of the most popular threads that have happened in the slack community. Here's the questions that I have dug out using my slack utility tool 😃 👉🏼 https://www.evernote.com/l/AMGObrkakg1Mq790nnuSrPI9GezighViLIY ⚠️ This doc only is a collection of questions (and not the threads).

Lately, I have been learning about how learning works. I will be going through all of the following resources, summarize them, and recombine everything into a coherent, generic plan for learning ANYthing new: - Barbara Oakley's "Learning How To Learn" course (the MOST popular MOOC ever!) - Ultralearning by Scott H. Young - How People Learn - National Academies Press - The Art of Learning - Joshua Waitzkin - Learning: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford Press) - The First 20 Hours - Josh Kaufman - 4-hour chef: Tim Ferris - Mastery - Robert Greene - Mindstorms - Seymour Papert - Pragmatic Thinking and Learning - Andy Hunt - Classical material about learning by various polymaths like Richard Feynman, Nicky Case, John Denker, Derek Sivers etc - And more I intend to collect the unadulterated summaries of each of these into a book form, and then add a final chapter of my own which puts everything together and gives a template action plan or a flowchart that anyone can use for learning a skill. I will take up a few learning challenges of my own, so that what I learn from all this content is also grounded practically and gets tested in the real world. I hope to turn this into just a single book that one needs to read to get ideas from all of the above masters. Would someone like to join me in co-authoring this project? Expect to spend about 100 hours of effort over next 3 months.

This poll is closed. @calm-grass-85557 has a poll for you!

Anyone has any experience with Rife products? https://www.rifeindia.com/collections/sit-stand-converters-for-existing-desk They seem to be an economical option to Varidesk.

Was good discussing some of the tradeoffs involved in working from where we are. It was also nice to see some new faces in today's call. Thanks everybody for joining 🙌🏼

Hey guys, i am trying my hands on Natural language Processing (NLP), does anyone has any good book recommendation. Generally looking for the fundamentals in NLP. Thanks in advance 🙂

Hi Nimish, I did not implement it myself but I delegated the work. However, I did the research on what library to use. We used scapCy (python). https://spacy.io/ Documentation is pretty neat, implementation is easy and has almost all required features. Go through the documentation once, it is quite comprehensive.

Also, the fundamentals are explained with implementation. One can use it for learning the concepts associated with NLP easily.

Let's produce more than we consume 💪🏼 Have a good week everyone 🙂 https://twitter.com/danielgross/status/1125794651892375553

Guys, any suggestions for a good mic? I need it to record tutorial.

I'd believe that this is highly achievable goal as a remote worker operating out of India. What do you think ? h/t @green-rain-62437 for the tweet https://twitter.com/VikParuchuri/status/1139180876967829506?s=20

Further if you add the cost of living advantage that we have, we might be a very privileged lot.

income percentil is a misleading metric. What should matter is disposable income.

and add to that "capacity for savings"

our problem as indians is the misunderstanding around "disposable" income.

disposable income - income remaining after deduction of taxes and social security charges, available to be spent or saved as one wishes.

Do you mean that social security is a big expense in India ? Because taxes look ok.

india doesn't have social security. So you're on your own for rent and food.

and medical expenses

no one considers medical expenses...