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sagemaker
5y

Is it ethical to charge a client for the runtime of a computation? I.e. cpu time?

I usually don't, since it doesn't cost me anything to leave my machine running overnight. But a few of my friends told me that I should.

More context:
I do sometimes freelance work for professors as an RA. At times you need to leave a script running for like +5 hours. During which I just either procrastinate or go to the gym or sleep. The energy cost for computer running is barely a dollar.

I get charged by the hour per work in my timesheet, or sometime for a negotiate price which is also usually computed by the estimated work time it would take.

question

cpu runtime

research

freelance
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Comments
  • 4
    5y
    That’s cloud computing, yes you can charge for CPU (Compute), IO, and RAM. But it better be in the contract as you are going to have a hard time explaining to client that is the data and not poor programming.
  • 2
    5y
    @bkwilliams okay, they know it's the data (and my mid-tier PC). I usually provide them with the results running on a segment of the data with runtime stats, then go on to the rest of the data, so it's actually pretty easy to figure out how long it would take to run in total.
  • 4
    5y
    Infecting people with flu and then selling them medicine would be a bit unethical. You're fine. Charge dem clock coycles mate!
  • 2
    5y
    @python3 if you want to ease them into it, start putting as an itemization line with the time at $0 and a note they have X free hours left and the price will be $Y per hour after that. Bonus points if you can get them to buy a bank of hours per month up front.
  • 3
    5y
    Add 10 minutes to your timesheets, the client won’t bother and your costs are covered.
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