书写程序时应遵循的规则

by Benek Lisefski

由Benek Lisefski

您可能在计算自由职业者率时全错了，因此请遵循此策略 (You’re probably calculating freelance rates all wrong — so follow this strategy instead)

如何以价值而非时间来思考。 遵循此定价策略以找到您的真实市场价格。 (How to think in terms of value, not time. Follow this pricing strategy to find your true market rate.)

When you first start freelancing it’s very difficult to determine what to charge. You have no previous context, and colleagues are often tight-lipped about their own financials.

首次开始自由职业时，很难确定收费标准。 您没有以前的背景，而同事经常对自己的财务保持沉默。

I admit I was clueless about pricing when I started. How about you?

我承认，刚开始我对定价一无所知。 你呢？

Many freelancers make the mistake of using an online rate calculator to set their freelance hourly rate. There are heaps of these calculators online, and they all follow the same pattern:

许多自由职业者错误地使用在线费率计算器来设置其自由职业时薪。 这些计算器在线上有很多，它们都遵循相同的模式：

1. You start with your desired annual income.您从期望的年收入开始。
2. You add up the cost of doing business — like office space, internet, hardware and software costs.您将增加营业成本，例如办公空间，互联网，硬件和软件成本。
3. You add up other living costs, such as insurance, self-employment tax.您将其他生活费用加起来，例如保险费，自雇税。
4. You add these things together to get your desired adjusted income.将这些内容加在一起即可获得所需的调整后收入。
5. Then you calculate your billable hours by starting with your maximum working hours per year, and subtract for things like vacations, national holidays, and sick days. You arrive at a realistic number for the number of hours you could work each year.然后，您从每年的最大工作时间开始，计算出您的可计费时间，然后减去假期，国定假日和病假之类的时间。 您得出了每年可以工作的小时数的实际数字。
6. Divide adjusted annual income by billable hours, and that equals your hourly rate.将调整后的年收入除以计费小时数，这等于您的小时费率。

This seems logical, but it’s completely backwards.

这看似合乎逻辑，但完全是倒退。

Let’s ignore the fact that there may be better ways to price yourself than hourly rates. When you first start out, value-based pricing isn’t a realistic option. Most of us will come to terms with the fact that we are trading our time for money by charging by the hour, at least for the first few stages of our careers as consultants.

让我们忽略一个事实，那就是比小时费率更好的定价方式 。 刚开始时， 基于价值的定价不是一个现实的选择。 我们大多数人都会接受这样一个事实，即我们是按小时收费，这至少是在我们作为顾问的职业生涯的前几个阶段中，通过时间来赚钱。

The problem with these popular hourly rate calculators is that they get off on the wrong foot right from the first step. There may be no connection at all between your desired annual salary and your actual value to the market. If you’ve come from being previously employed, it’s easy to think “I’d like to keep making at least as much as I was making at my last job.” But why assume that you’ll retain that same value in the freelance market?

这些流行的小时费率计算器的问题在于，它们从第一步开始就走错了脚。 您期望的年薪和您对市场的实际价值之间可能根本没有任何联系。 如果您以前曾受雇，那么很容易想到“ 我希望至少保持与上一份工作一样多的收入。 “但是，为什么要假设您将在自由职业者市场中保留相同的价值？

If you haven’t been previously employed in a capacity that provides enough reference for this decision, then you’re literally picking a number out of thin air. The alternative is to spend the time to interview colleagues with a similar skill-set and experience level as you, in order to form a baseline as context for this figure. And that assumes you can find enough of these people that will be open and honest about their pricing!

如果您以前没有以能够为该决定提供足够参考的能力受雇，那么您实际上是在凭空挑选一个数字。 另一种方法是花时间去采访具有与您相似的技能和经验水平的同事，以形成一个基线作为此数字的背景。 前提是您可以找到足够多的这些人，他们对他们的价格持开放和诚实态度！

It’s a big ask. No wonder most people take the easy way out and ask a calculator to figure it out for them.

这是一个很大的问题。 难怪大多数人会采取简单的方法，并要求计算器为他们解决问题。

So you end up with a starting figure that rarely has concrete justification in real life, and all other calculations from that are tainted. The resulting hourly rate isn’t backed up by much of anything, and can be way above your actual value. You struggle to find work and think freelancing is too hard.

因此，您最终得到的起始数字在现实生活中很少有具体的依据，而由此得出的所有其他计算也受到污染。 所得的小时费率并没有得到太多支持，并且可能远高于您的实际价值。 您很难找到工作，并认为自由职业太难了。

This is all a misunderstanding of what rates mean. Let’s look at some pitfalls of the rate calculator system that amplify this confusion.

这都是对利率的误解。 让我们看一下速率计算器系统的一些陷阱，这些陷阱会加剧这种混乱。

陷阱 (Pitfalls)

计费时间从未像您想象的那样多 (Billable hours are never as many as you think)

Let’s say you did manage to get some solid context for the determination of your desired annual income. You went through the calculation to come up with an hourly rate. You paid close attention to detail on all the expenses to ensure you didn’t short-change yourself.

假设您确实获得了确定所需年收入的可靠依据。 您经过计算得出了一个小时费率。 您密切关注了所有费用的细节，以确保您不会改变自己。

You’re still going to land short of your goal, because your billable hours are a fantasy.

您仍然无法达到目标，因为您的可计费时间是一个幻想。

When you’re a freelancer, you are also running a business. You are doing everything: admin, marketing, accounting, proposals, quoting, networking. If you used to be an employee, you either didn’t have to do those things, or you got paid to do them.

当您是自由职业者时，您也在经营业务。 您正在做的一切：管理员，市场营销，会计，提案，报价，网络。 如果您曾经是一名员工，那么您要么不必做这些事情，要么就可以得到报酬。

As a freelancer, you have to wear all those hats and you don’t get paid for most of it. The amount of time you have for actual focused work is 75% or less of the time you’re “working”. That means a standard eight-hour day might only have six billable hours.

作为自由职业者，您必须戴上所有这些帽子，而您大部分都没有得到薪水。 您进行实际重点工作的时间是“工作”时间的75％ 或更少 。 这意味着标准的八小时工作日可能只有六个计费时间。

If you start with the false assumption that you can bill for 40 productive hours per week, you’ll be quickly disappointed, unless you’re willing to work a lot more daily hours to make up for the admin time. But most of us get into freelancing because we want a more flexible schedule, more time for family, more time for leisure. Working a lot more is not part of the freelance dream.

如果您错误地假设您可以每周收取40个生产小时的费用，那么除非您愿意每天增加工作时间来弥补管理时间，否则您很快就会感到失望。 但是我们大多数人都开始自由职业，因为我们想要一个更灵活的时间表，更多的家庭时间，更多的休闲时间。 多做工作不是自由职业者梦想的一部分 。

I run a really efficient freelance business, with admin and marketing time cut down to a bare minimum, and I still average no more than six billable hours per day.

我经营一家非常有效的自由职业者，将管理和营销时间减少到最低限度，但我每天平均仍不超过6个计费小时。

你不会一直在工作 (You won’t have work all the time)

Don’t forget that you may not have a continuous stream of work to fill all potential billable hours. In fact, if you’re new to freelancing, you’ll almost certainly not have consistent work until you build up a reputation and a larger client base. Even very successful, in-demand freelancers like myself will have bits of downtime — maybe a week or two between projects when schedules can’t align perfectly, or a slow patch around the holidays— that can eat into expected earnings.

不要忘记，您可能没有连续的工作来填补所有潜在的可计费时间。 实际上，如果您不熟悉自由职业，那么几乎可以肯定地说，只有在建立声誉和扩大客户群之前，您的工作才能始终如一。 即使像我这样非常成功，需求旺盛的自由职业者，也会有少量的停机时间-可能无法在时间表之间完美匹配的情况下在项目之间间隔一两个星期，或者在假期前后打补丁，这会吞噬预期的收入。

Your definition of billable hours needs to account not only for the extra admin tasks required to run a freelance business, but also for the uncertainty of work in your pipeline.

您对计费时间的定义不仅要考虑开展自由职业所需的额外管理任务，还要考虑管道中工作的不确定性。

不切实际的收费率猖ramp (Unrealistic charging rates run rampant)

The result of all this faulty rate calculating is that you’re told to charge more than you’re actually worth, if you want to meet you annual earning goals. The reality might be that your current level of value can only earn you half of what you expect. You’re not yet valuable enough to make full-time freelancing work for you. More on this later.

所有这些错误的费率计算结果是，如果您想实现自己的年度收入目标，就会被告知要收取比实际价值更多的费用。 现实情况可能是，您当前的价值水平只能为您带来期望值的一半。 您的价值还不足以为您提供全职自由职业。 以后再说 。

At best, these online rate calculators can be a useful tool to help you learn about your costs of doing business, and to budget a baseline rate you’ll need to make ends meet. That can form a good reference point to fall back on when you determine your rate.

这些在线费率计算器充其量是一个有用的工具，可以帮助您了解自己的经商成本，并为维持收入所需的基准费率进行预算。 当您确定费率时，可以作为参考。

But it should not be mistaken for a real-world rate. Those calculators don’t take into account almost everything that’s really important about determining the right rate for you.

但这不应被误认为是真实的汇率。 这些计算器没有考虑到几乎所有对您确定正确利率至关重要的因素。

考虑定价的更好方法 (A better way to think about pricing)

Time to get back to reality. Forget your preferred salary or even your baseline living wage. Your hourly rate should have very little to do with how much you think you’d like — or need — to earn. What really determines your rate is how much value you offer your clients.

是时候回到现实了。 忘记您的首选工资，甚至忘记您的基本生活工资。 您的小时费率应该与您认为自己想要或需要赚多少钱无关。 真正决定您的费率的是您为客户提供多少价值。

I’m not a gung-ho capitalism lover who thinks “the market” will solve everything. But you can only command a rate that clients are willing to pay. They have to perceive enough value in you to justify that rate, otherwise you’ll get no work. And no work at a high rate is worse than some work at a fair market rate. The amount of money you think you need to make doesn’t enter into that equation.

我不是认为“市场”能解决所有问题的资本主义爱好者。 但您只能命令客户愿意支付的费率。 他们必须察觉到您有足够的价值来证明这个比率，否则您将一事无成。 而且， 没有高效率的工作比某些以公平市场价格进行的工作更糟糕。 您认为需要赚到的钱不会计入该等式中。

将您的心态转向价值，而不是时间 (Change your frame of mind towards value, not time)

We need to stop thinking about this backwards. Stop framing the decision about rates around what you need to earn and how much time you can work. Instead, start thinking in terms of value on offer. Your rate is a reflection of your value to your clients — compared to the value of your competitors — and nothing else.

我们需要停止倒退思考。 停止围绕有关您需要赚取的收入和可以工作多少时间的费率制定决策。 相反，开始考虑所提供的价值。 与竞争对手的价值相比，您的价格反映了您对客户的价值， 仅此而已 。

With this frame of mind, we can see that rate calculators — based on expected earnings divided by time — don’t account for the value you provide your clients. The only assumption is that more time equals more value.

有了这种思路，我们可以看到，基于预期收益除以时间得出的费率计算器无法说明您为客户提供的价值。 唯一的假设是，更多的时间等于更多的价值。

But we know from experience that this is rarely the case.

但是我们从经验中知道，这种情况很少发生。

If you have five more years and experience and heaps of new skills along the way, but your cost of living has stayed the same, should your rate be higher? A rate calculator would say no. But of course the answer is yes. Rate calculators don’t take into account skill, experience, professionalism, or effort, when in fact those things are the largest contributors to the rate you can command.

如果您还有五年以上的工作经验，并且在此过程中积累了许多新技能，但是您的生活成本保持不变，那么您的比率会更高吗？ 费率计算器会拒绝。 但是，当然答案是肯定的。 费率计算器不考虑技能，经验，专业性或努力，而实际上，这些因素是您可以命令的费率的最大贡献者。

If you’ve learned new techniques that allow you to do the same work twice as fast as you could before, you want to be compensated for that by doubling your rates. Rate calculators don’t take into account the speed at which you work or the quality of work performed.

如果您已经学到了新技术，可以让您以两倍于以前的速度完成相同的工作，那么您希望通过倍增费率来获得补偿。 费率计算器不考虑您的工作速度或工作质量。

Think of rates in terms of abilities such as experience, speed, skill-set, location, project management capacity, communication skills, and reliability. These are the metrics you should be judging yourself by.

根据能力来考虑比率，例如经验，速度，技能，位置，项目管理能力，沟通技巧和可靠性。 这些是您应该自己判断的指标。

您如何提高费率？ (How do you increase your rates?)

Simply increase your value. Gain more experience. Learn new skills. Refine your soft skills. Beat everyone on effort. Be ultra-professional.

只需增加您的价值即可。 获得更多经验。 学习新技能。 完善您的软技能。 努力击败所有人。 要超专业 。

Do you work faster or offer better quality work than a competitor? Charge more than they do.

您是否比竞争对手更快地工作或提供更高质量的工作？ 收取比他们更多的费用。

Are you more professional and reliable than your colleague. Charge more than they do.

您比同事更专业，更可靠吗？ 收取比他们更多的费用。

Do your extra years of experience allow you to come up with the right solutions more economically? Raise your rates — because your experience is directly contributing to a better outcome for your clients, and your efficiency is saving them money.

您多年的经验是否可以使您更经济地提出正确的解决方案？ 提高费率-因为您的经验直接为客户带来了更好的结果，而您的效率正在为他们省钱。

您的价值决定了自由职业者的正确时机 (Your value determines the right time to go freelance)

If you’re not yet valuable enough to earn a living at the freelance rate your market dictates, it could mean full-time freelancing isn’t right for you yet.

如果你还没有足够的有价值谋生的自由职业者的速度你的市场使然，这可能意味着全职自由职业者是不适合你呢 。

Consider getting employed for a few years to up-skill and increase the value of your craft, while freelancing in evenings and weekends to practice the skills of running a business. Then when you have the experience and confidence to command a higher rate, ease into full-time freelancing.

考虑雇用几年来提高技能并增加手Craft.io的价值 ，同时在晚上和周末自由活动以练习经营业务的技能 。 然后，如果您有足够的经验和信心来要求更高的税率，则可以轻松地从事全职工作 。

You learn faster where you have collaboration and mentoring. Freelancers who don’t have the same resources are disadvantaged. I went straight into freelancing after I graduated university. Looking back I would have been better off finding employment at a design agency for a few years or, at the very least, a business/design mentor to learn those early lessons twice as fast, and increase my market value quicker. Then I could have transitioned into freelancing at a point when the value I offered better correlated with the amount of money I hoped to earn.

在有协作和指导的地方，您学得更快。 没有相同资源的自由职业者处于不利地位。 大学毕业后，我直接从事自由职业。 回顾过去，我会更好地在一家设计机构找到工作，或者至少是一名商业/设计导师，以两倍的速度学习早期课程，并更快地提高我的市场价值。 然后，当我提供的价值与我希望赚取的钱数更好地相关时，我可能会转变为自由职业者。

I was fortunate enough to have a low cost of living at the time, which allowed me to gradually build up full-time work and respectable rates over a transition period of 6–12 months. But not everyone has that luxury.

我很幸运，当时的生活成本很低，这使我能够在6到12个月的过渡期内逐步建立起全职工作和可观的薪资水平。 但是，并不是每个人都那么奢侈。

If you need to make full-time freelancing pay the bills from day one, don’t make the leap until your market value/rate is adequate to support your earning goals. Until then, find a career path that emphasizes increasing your value over all else.

如果您需要从第一天开始就全职自由职业者支付账单，请不要飞跃，直到您的市场价值/利率足以支持您的收入目标。 在此之前，找到一条强调增加您的价值的职业道路。

基于价值的定价的门户 (A gateway to value-based pricing)

The added benefit of basing your rate on value — rather than expected earnings divided by time — is that it’s easier to start thinking about value-based pricing methods and transitioning away from trading time for money.

将利率基于价值(而不是预期收益除以时间)所带来的附加好处是，开始考虑基于价值的定价方法并从交易时间转变为货币交易变得更容易。

Value-based pricing requires a huge shift in mind-set. Even if you’re thinking about your hourly rate as a reflection of value, it’s still tied to time. Decoupling your earning entirely from time spent on the job is another massive mental hurdle. To be perfectly honest, after 17 years of freelancing I’m still coming to terms with it and wrapping my head around the unique challenges of value-based pricing.

基于价值的定价需要观念上的巨大转变。 即使您将小时费率视为价值的反映，它仍然与时间相关。 将您的收入与工作时间完全脱钩是另一个巨大的心理障碍。 坦白地说，经过17年的自由职业之后，我仍然对此感到满意，并将自己的头颅围绕着基于价值的定价所面临的独特挑战 。

This is a huge shift for your clients as well. They need to buy into the concept of value-based pricing as much as you do, because it requires complete transparency and trust to help you define a project’s true value.

对于您的客户来说，这也是一个巨大的转变。 他们需要和您一样多地接受基于价值的定价概念，因为它需要完全的透明度和信任来帮助您定义项目的真实价值。

尝试每周计费，而不是每小时计费 (Try weekly, instead of hourly, billing)

One way to ease this transition is to start pricing your time in larger, more abstract chunks. I often price based on a weekly retainer system, where my work is charged by the week, instead of by the hour or day. I still define minimum and maximum numbers of hours that will be worked during each week. But it’s perceived by clients as a weekly fee, rather than an hourly rate. If the scope changes and we need to extend the project, no problem. Simply add on an extra week.

简化此过渡的一种方法是开始以更大，更抽象的块为您的时间定价。 我经常根据每周的固定系统进行定价，在该系统中，我的工作按周计费，而不是按小时或天计费。 我仍然定义每周将要工作的最小和最大小时数。 但是客户将其视为每周费用，而不是每小时费用。 如果范围改变了，我们需要扩展项目，那就没问题了。 只需增加一个星期。

It’s a pricing system that retains most of the flexibility of hourly billing, and all the same ease of understanding and fairness. Yet, because the unit of time measurement is larger, the perception is that my rate is less connected to the number of hours I work. That forces clients into thinking more about the value I’ll be supplying during that week, rather than just how many hours.

它是一种定价系统，保留了按小时计费的大部分灵活性，并且易于理解和公平。 但是，由于时间计量单位较大，因此可以认为我的工作率与工作时间的联系较少。 这迫使客户更多地考虑那一周我将提供的价值，而不是几个小时。

It’s a subtle difference. But that could be all it takes to tip the balance towards value-based pricing. If you get clients comfortable with a week-based pricing arrangement, they’re one step closer to embracing the abstraction of true value-based pricing.

这是一个微妙的区别。 但这仅是将平衡推向基于价值的定价所需要的。 如果您使客户对基于周的定价安排感到满意，那么他们将拥抱基于真实价值的定价的抽象又迈了一步。

每小时定价将保持不变 (Hourly pricing is here to stay)

Whether we like it or not! It remains the default method of pricing creative work. So — like many of us — if you’re stuck with hourly pricing, the least you can do is do it right.

无论我们喜欢与否！ 它仍然是对创意作品进行定价的默认方法。 因此-与我们许多人一样-如果您坚持按小时定价，那么您至少可以做的就是正确地做。

Do everything you can to make sure your rate is in context of your industry and location, and is justified by your skills and experience.

竭尽所能，确保您的费率与您所在的行业和地理位置相关，并由您的技能和经验证明是合理的。

Shift the way you present your pricing to clients so that you’re perceived as being more about value and less about time.

改变向客户展示定价的方式，使您被视为更多地关注价值而减少时间。

When you do so, you’ll find you never get questioned about your rate. You never get called too expensive or too risky. Because your clients fall in love with the value you’ll offer them, and finding the right person to trust is invaluable.

当您这样做时，您会发现自己永远不会受到费用的质疑。 您永远不会被称为太贵或太冒险。 因为您的客户爱上了您将为他们提供的价值，因此找到合适的信任人非常宝贵。

Please ? clap if you found this valuable, and ? follow me for more writing like this, as I unfold 17 years of freelance business knowledge ?

请 ？ c 圈，如果您觉得这很有价值，并且？ 当我展现了17年的自由职业知识时， 可否像我这样写或多写？

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This story can also be found on solowork.co

这个故事也可以在solowork.co上找到

翻译自: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/youre-probably-calculating-freelance-rates-all-wrong-so-follow-this-strategy-instead-a5c738e51f70/

书写程序时应遵循的规则