Why are so many programmers paid by the hour?

Question

Fintech

After all, a programmer is a creative job in many respects. Well, this is not some plumber who came for an hour, fixed the pipe and left.
Or give the artist 3 hours and demand a masterpiece from him.
Maybe I'll pick my nose for two hours and wait until my muse comes. Or he got up on the wrong foot and poked at the monitor all day without giving birth to anything.
They also ask me to remember my shortcomings and revisions. But I didn't do it either way.
How to be.

Answer 1

You have in the title of the question about hourly pay, and in the text - about a fixed time to complete the work. These are completely different things.
Programmers are paid by the hour and by the fact , because very often it is impossible to determine the cost of work in advance. And even if the programmer sets some amount in advance, he puts a large number of risks into it (unless, of course, he started working yesterday), therefore, it is often more profitable for the customer and the contractor to pay by the hour after the fact (not all customers understand this, to unfortunately, many just think that the programmer will play for time and pick his nose).

Answer 2

After all, a programmer is a creative job in many respects.

This is a craft. The comparison with a plumber is appropriate.
Creativity is when there is no understanding of which tool or method is most suitable for solving a problem, and therefore it seems that there is a choice. With experience, all this " creativity ", fortunately, passes.

Or give the artist 3 hours and demand a masterpiece from him.

By the way, artists also get paid by the hour. They evaluate the project, agree on a list of requirements, and implement.
Anyone who does not know how to value their time is usually an amateur.

Maybe I'll pick my nose for two hours and wait until my muse comes. Or he got up on the wrong foot and poked at the monitor all day without giving birth to anything.

You can. As a result, they will say goodbye to you, expelling you for lack of professionalism.

How to be.

This job is probably not for you. Try yourself in another field, for example, become a sommelier.

Answer 3

we are paid only for projects. Therefore, whether you do your job in an hour or three hours, it is already in your interests. And my brother, indeed, is paid by the hour. At their work, they even installed a program like this irs.ua/content/big-brother-sistema-kontrolya-dostu... to know what time the boys come to work and what time they go home.

Answer 4

Most tasks can be thought out and evaluated. And if you do not know how long it will take you to change the color of the button or, for example, write an API for authorization, then this indicates that you are not a professional. No one asks to evaluate the time to a tee. But you need to at least feel the difference between tasks for an hour / day / week.
But there are also tasks that are really difficult to evaluate, for example, writing some new distributed database with the implementation of a new distributed transaction mechanism that has certain properties. In such tasks, it is often necessary to review many options in order to choose the right one and it is not known in advance where this will lead you. It may be that this problem has not yet been solved at all.

Answer 5

From the point of view of the client: you do not have a short project, there are tasks and will appear along the way. It is difficult to immediately estimate the amount of work. So hourly pay.
Ps On Elance, for projects with hourly pay, it was necessary to install their utility, which took screenshots every X minutes, and compiled a report for the client from them. Some guarantee of the absence of long meditation on an empty document and minesweeper.

Answer 6

because in fact a person of any profession can only sell watches from himself.

Answer 7

Because you have to pay somehow.
They pay an hourly rate only when this money is fie-penny to the customer.