The End Of Billable Hours?

15 Jun 2026 · 0 min

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In this segment of the YouTube video "The End Of Billable Hours?" Feras Alhlou explains why major consulting firms are abandoning traditional hourly billing. He argues that historically junior consultants performed extensive research that took 40 hours, which firms billed to clients. With AI, the same work can be completed in roughly 4 hours, even after accounting for prompt engineering and iteration. Because clients will not pay for inflated hours when AI can deliver the same outcomes much faster, firms are compelled to shift away from hourly rates toward more value‑based or outcome‑based pricing structures.

Why are these big companies moving away from billing hourly? Because in the past they would have the junior consultants do all this work, all this research. It might take them 40 hours. They would bill for 40 hours. If you can do that same work in 4 hours, if AI can do that in 4 hours, even with the back and forth prompting and tweaking, then it doesn't make sense to bill for 40 hours. Clients are not going to pay you for 40 hours for something that can be done with AI in 4 hours.