Hourly billing hates seniors.
Agencies don’t hate us. But the math definitely does. - Seniors cost more. - Hourly margins get thin. - Juniors become the “profit heroes.”
It’s like this weird industry bug. The more experience you have… …the less profitable you become.
Junior: “Look, I made €50/hour profit!” Senior: “Look, I made… 1x coffee/hour?” Agency: “Let’s staff the junior.”
Hourly billing rewards cheap, not good. It’s the technical debt of pricing models. Everyone knows it’s broken. Nobody wants to refactor it.
And one day we’ll all wake up thinking: “Wow… we really nerfed our senior devs, didn’t we?”
How long do we pretend hourly billing still works?