Hourly billing kills love.
I saw it happen again and again at implementation partners. Everything starts fun… and then it slowly burns down.
- Year 1: honeymoon phase. Everyone smiles. Coffee tastes better.
- Year 2: customers start tracking hours like it’s a crime scene.
- Budget fights begin. Trust goes down.
- Micro-managing goes up.
- And the relationship? Toast.
And every time I thought: - The real bug here is hourly billing. - It destroys trust. - It kills momentum. - And it slowly turns good partnerships into angry audit logs.
I’ve lived it. I’ve coded through it. I’ve watched it ruin great teams.
So I stopped doing hourly work. My projects are fixed-price or subscription now. Simple. Predictable. Zero time tracking. And clients actually relax again.
Do you see the same pattern in our industry too?