Billing Time

Most people whom I've met in the computer field are not dumb. They're not genius-level, but they're not dumb. So why is it that no matter how they decide to bill for their time, there's a reason why it isn't quite right?

If they bill by the hour, there are tasks that take a significant amount of time and benefit multiple customers -- so who gets billed? If they bill by the task, how do you decide how much to charge when the task is easy for one customer and hard for another? If they bill by resources used, how do you allocate the tasks that take few computer resources but many mantime resources versus the reverse?

And then there's the customer who says that they're so big and so important, be damned to you and how you want to bill them, this is how you're gonna bill them. And here's the stuff, incidentally, that'll be free from now on. Including things that they want that they just thought up. And your management.... caves. Because their management caves.

To me, it comes down to the question about 'why do accountants use LIFO and FIFO, anyway?' Because one size doesn't necessarily fit all.