Scaling price according to your responsibility.

I would like to discuss with you one often an uncomfortable topic for engineers and creative people - scaling price according to urgency and responsibility. We tend to have absolutely unnecessary “humility” about our skills and time, frequently afraid of asking more, because we “know” how much effort we are putting into a job. (And almost always underestimating this - but that is a topic for another article). Let me give you an example:

What will happen if your local electricity worker messes up your home wiring? Best case scenario - you will have a power outage while he fixes the mistake. Worst case - it will cause a local fire. How many people will be affected by his mistake? Well, one household. Maybe a little bit more.

And what will happen if say the engineer, who constructed town power facility messes up? The power outage will not only affect citizens, it will also affect businesses, factories, medical and governmental structures. The losses of the city can crank up in mere seconds and even possibly cost human lives.

So the responsibility in this cases is obvious. Just as the fact that along the higher skill the engineer will have a higher paycheck than the local electric worker.

But when we come to more “subtle” cases people all of the sudden tend to forget about scaling up the paycheck for responsibility.

In my own practice I several times made a mistake, equaling my skill level to a certain paycheck, forgetting to add extra for urgency or more responsibility. And want to tell you about one situation which left me with unbelievable fury.

When I was working as a broadcast engineer I was tasked with creating and maintaining systems for small studio broadcast of cybersport events. After doing it for a while, my employer decided to amp up and take a country-wise competition.

I accepted the job, but never discussed any “extra” in terms of payment. It was sorta implied that after the completion the whole team will get bonuses.

The bonus I got was slightly more than 1/10 of my salary. After working for 20 hours a day for almost half a month on a very important job for my employer,(living on the stage at some point) without any day-offs, I got that joke of a compensation. And when I confronted my senior manager on the issue he was surprised to learn that I'm not happy.

Needless to say, I quit the job after that.

Also needless to say that it was a hard pill to swallow.

After that I worked on several different projects of the same magnitude and one bigger but this time as a freelancer. And on each and every one of them I cranked up the price not only according to my skill or potential effort but also according to the urgency and responsibility. And ever since I earned triple my salary as an engineer.

It didn't come naturally though. When my clients saw the price tag they tried to argue about it. And I answered them very simply - who will lose more in terms of reputation and potential opportunities - you or me? You are hiring an expensive high skill specialist with the definitive portfolio in order to minimize the risk of messing up. And the cost compared to potential losses is actually tiny. Sure you can find someone who will be cheaper. But I know the market. And they're not very many specialists out there who can accomplish what I do or who even has the same portfolio as I have. So whats your choice?