Fixed-fee vs hourly, a four-quadrant view.

No. The post argues it's really about who absorbs the risk and what the contract incentivizes, not the headline price. Those two questions, who bears the risk when estimates go wrong and what the contract rewards, are the axes that shape the entire structure of a billing agreement.

The horizontal axis represents what the contract incentivizes, and the vertical axis represents who bears the risk when estimates go awry. The post uses these two questions to map billing models and argues they determine project behavior far more than the nominal rate does.

The post gives three reasons: the meter rewards duration, so a slower pace benefits the vendor as an arithmetic outcome; the overrun lands on the client, who pays even though they didn't make the estimate; and nobody is paid to finish, since the only incentive to close a task is to stop earning.

Silicon Prime does. The post explains that by setting a fixed price upfront, they take on the risk of incorrect estimates. That single shift realigns incentives toward fewer revisions, a tighter scope, and a clean finish, because the vendor, not the client, pays for any overrun.

Because fixed-fee is presented as the only stable corner: absorbing the overrun forces honest estimates, being paid for completed outcomes makes delays costly for Silicon Prime rather than the client, and disagreements get resolved before work begins, minimizing cost. The model aligns the vendor's incentives with finishing well.

The post's framing is the opposite: because Silicon Prime is paid for completed outcomes and absorbs overruns, it's motivated toward fewer revisions and a clean finish, with scope and disagreements settled before work begins. The risk of a sloppy deliverable falls on the vendor, not the client.

The post says disagreements are resolved before work begins, which minimizes cost. Because the price is set upfront and the vendor absorbs estimate risk, both sides are pushed to nail down a tight scope at the start rather than discovering and litigating it mid-project on the client's dime.