15 hours ago, slayemin said:I think a part of it stems from ignorance about software development and the creative process, another part may be arrogance, and the last part may be expectation management. The ignorance part can be remedied with a bit of education, depending on the context of the situation. Arrogance may be unfixable. Expectation management may also fall under the education umbrella. But, when you charge high prices which happen to be the going industry rate and the costs of a project are a function of the project scope, that too turns into a quick education on the actual costs of development.
What's always been interesting to me is that a plumber can charge you $150/hour to fix pipes, plus a fee for traveling, plus a fee for materials, etc. and nobody seems to blink twice when they get the plumbing bill. When your pipes burst and there's water spraying all over the place and your basement is flooding, do you start calling every plumber in the area and trying to find one on craigslist who works for $40/hour and haggling them down to $20/hour? Suppose you do... would you want a plumber who charges $20/hour to fix your pipes, cuts corners, and does shoddy work? Or do you want to hire an experienced professional? It's gonna cost you, but it's worth it. Why would anyone expect software development be any different? Especially for software which gets built to help run a business? A burst pipe may flood your basement and cause water damage, which costs much more than just the plumbing repair itself. You don't want to cut corners on a repair only to repeat the same problem a few days/weeks/months later. In software development, all it takes is a fatal bug which crashes your mission critical business operations to bring your whole business to a grinding halt. Every hour employees who depend on the software can't work, is like water spilling out of a burst pipe -- you're hemorrhaging money instead of water. If you're lucky, you only pay for the lost productivity time. If you're *really* unlucky, you have a data security breach which compromises personal data and could potentially cost millions and damage a company reputation, if not put the whole company out of business all together. Anyone heard of or remember Knight Capital Group? A multi-billion dollar company went completely bankrupt in 45 minutes, losing billions, due to a software glitch. Gimme a burst pipe any day flooding a basement, that's a far smaller and manageable disaster.
Of course, I don't ever ask for a plumber, I do my own plumbing, but I can easily translate your example to that of an electrician which, in my book, requires an expert (if you screw up, well you can die basically).
And I agree, there's much to be said of code architecture: a lot of prospect clients come to me with 'almost finished games' and I end up telling them:
5k to fix it, 3k to start from scratch and finish it. Your pick 
And they don't get it.
Anyway, didn't want to come across as someone that don't enjoy my work or my clients, it's just the rev-share guys (the arrogant ones specifically, as the others are easy to discuss with, even though I still don't get why they'd reply to me knowing I'm not into rev-share...)
