What you pay a senior builder for

For most of my career, a big part of what a client paid for was typing. Somebody had to write all that code, and it took weeks.

That part is nearly free now. An AI writes in an afternoon what used to take me a week. So it is a fair question: if the machine does the typing, what are you paying a person for?

Here is my honest answer. It is also how I decide what goes on an invoice.

The typing is the cheap part

I'll say it plainly. Most of the code I ship is written by AI.

That is why I charge $90 an hour, and why a project takes fewer of those hours than it used to. My low prices reflect the efficiency with which I operate AI. I am not going to bill you for a week of keystrokes a machine did while I got coffee.

What is left on the bill is everything the machine can't do.

Deciding what not to build

The most expensive code is the code you didn't need.

An AI will build anything you ask for, right away, with enthusiasm. It will never tell you the feature is a bad idea, that a customer won't use it, or that there is a boring way to get the same result by Friday.

A senior builder says no a lot. No, you don't need your own login system. No, that can wait until you have ten customers. That one word can save more money than any amount of fast typing.

Knowing when the AI is wrong

This is the big one.

The AI sounds exactly as sure of itself when it is wrong as when it is right. It told me every test passed, and I found about fourteen bugs by using the thing like a customer. It told me a billing rule existed that didn't. It told me it had only changed what I asked, and it had slipped in wording nobody approved.

Each of those takes experience to catch, because none of them looks like an error. They look like finished work. You are paying for somebody who has seen enough finished-looking work to be suspicious of it.

Reading every change

Somebody has to read what the AI wrote. All of it, not the summary.

This is slow, unglamorous work, and it is where the bugs get caught. It is also the first thing to go when a project is in a hurry, which is how you end up with a product nobody on Earth has actually read.

Putting a name on it

When your product breaks at a bad moment, you need a person to call. A person who can tell you what happened, why it was built that way, and what they are doing about it.

An AI can't be that. It doesn't remember your project tomorrow. It has no reputation to lose. Nothing ships from me until I can defend it, and my name is on the work.

Building it for the next owner

I built the product at two companies that were later bought: OwnAmerica, acquired by Renters Warehouse in 2019, and 64 Analytics, acquired by Rule42 in October 2026.

So I build with a second reader in mind: the engineer who shows up someday to decide what your product is worth, or the one you hire to take it over. They need code they can read, notes that explain the decisions, and accounts that are in your name. I wrote about that in What a buyer opens first.

Not holding you hostage

Plenty of developers build things only they can maintain. It is good for their income and bad for you.

I do the opposite. You own everything from the first day. When you are ready to take my fees off your overhead, I'll hand you the keys and teach your team the workflow that runs it. Every project I take on becomes my baby, so I stick around after that if you want me to. Whether I do is your call.

What the bill looks like

Short and boring, on purpose.

• One rate. $90 an hour, the same for everybody, published on the homepage.
• Itemized. You see the hours and what they went to.
• A free first half hour. We talk, and I tell you whether I can help.
• A small way to start. Ten hours, $900, on one real problem. If I am not worth it, you find out cheaply.

How to tell a senior builder from somebody with a chat window

Anybody can say they build with AI now. A few questions sort people quickly.

1. "Tell me about a time the AI was wrong and you caught it." A real builder has a dozen of these and enjoys telling them. A blank look is your answer.
2. "Who reads the code before it ships?" The right answer is a name.
3. "How will I know it works?" Listen for more than "the tests pass."
4. "Whose accounts will this live in?" Yours. Any other answer is a problem later.
5. "What happens when I stop paying you?" You should end up with everything you need to carry on without them.
6. "What would you not build?" Somebody who says yes to everything is selling typing.

Ask me all six. Book the free half hour.