Per Diem FAQ

Futuristically Answered Questions about the Day Jobbing Service ...

• What do you mean by 'Per Diem Jobbing'?

  Per Diem jobs are task focused project work which is purchased a single day at a time.

• How many hours are in a standard professional day?

  Zero, 24, however many task performance takes, whatever way you want to look at it. If it was an hourly rate it would be given as such.

• How much is it?

  See Payments for current general telecommute day rate, online resume cover page for others. Note that my hourly rates are denominated in Euros, but the day rate in US Dollars.

• What guarantees come with this?

  That depends on the structures supporting development/production for the work undertaken. If there are essentially no such structures then there are no guarantees and as is well known, project outcome depends on worker heroics. If you are developing within my framework then you have guarantees which involve full refund of any fees within specified periods.

• Does a professional day correspond to a biz day in some region?

  Yes and no. The primary performance period for the day is the associated calendar GMT biz day contracted, by default wherever I am, typically the Niagara region of North America. Performance may span a longer period however as I normally provide period of follow on e-mail support. I can also accomodate the biz day and timezone of any region of the earth on a case by case basis.
  
  In performance, I do not observe state or religious holidays, but do fairly strictly observe the regional biz day, by default, that of New York state.

• What is your personal availability? Can we see/hear you live?

  On-site in-person time is billed at the current all-inclusive hourly rate so that is inapplicable here. I do have a deskcam which can be best viewed with my IM of choice Yahoo. The day rate does not normally include voice support other than at during first contact or during a teleconference, e.g with gotomeeting. My real-time availability can be seen in my google calendar accessible from the online resume cover page.

• What is 'gotomeeting' ?

  It is a service offering of Citrix which allows a teleconference where the participants can exchange control of one or more desktops. The client software is free and the organizer of the meeting (me in this case) pays the fees for use of the service. You can download the client for the service for your desktop here . Get the free trial version which you can use as long as you like as a participant (it will try to sell an account at the end of each use).
  
  The voice component is a conference call which will be a toll call to a US number. The video portion if any would be supplied seperately as noted above.
  
  I use VNC and the windows native remote desktop as well and most targeted unix servers are controlled via sshd command line access so use of the citric is just an option but a superior one i many cases.

• What is the primary cause of buyer satisfaction or its opposite?

  Buyers expectations are sometimes radically at odds with the realities of the tasks they intend, are flakily changed during execution of a deal undertaken without rigorous specification but at fixed cost, etc. When these sorts of extra-technical problems are manifest, which they often are, managing the interaction to a sucessful outcome is challenging and can become problematic. Conversely, when buyers present the opposite sort of profile, as noted above under 'guarantee' sucessful outcome probability becomes equivalent to a technical issue.

• Can I get a refund?

  Yes, but only if you accept the offer for same when it is proferred pro forma. I will normally do this early in the first task on the first project. Thereafter if you abort a work order begun there are no complete refunds, none guaranteed in general, though I may refund a prorated amount if appropriate.

• Will you sign our NDA, non-compete agreement, give references, etc.?

  There are two cases. If you are a non-IT biz then the answer is a straightforward yes. I normally sign such documents in Adobe and return immediately as PDF so you get the best print quality. I don't use fax.
  
  The other case is an IT biz with clients. In this case if you limit your purchase under this service to development work that you will rework and resell to any of your (undisclosed) clients then such agreements are generally unnecessary.
  
  In general, I neither give, nor ask current or former to give references. Exceptions can be made, especially if your policy on providing references after sucessfully completed projects are clear.
  
  You should understand that I develop my own open source (but not free) software which is generic in purpose and not specific to any enterprise. In nearly 30 years of contract work I don't ever remember seeing an attempt to limit my ability to develop such so for this and other reasons I normally don't have a problem with such side contracts but wish to avoid them where they are unnecessary.

• What about Plesk, CPanel, Webadmin, etc.?

  These admin interfaces may be appropriate for non technical personnel but unless they are used via SSL they constitute a serious security breach and can interfere with some of the services they manage. I normally remove them from any servers under my control.