Comment by mcv

The moment you do the work on-site with the client, with their resources, their equipment, on their laptop that you first need to configure and install, with their environment and everything, dealing with their bureaucracy, work time goes way up.

Had you done this from home on your own machine after they quickly mailed you the necessary resources, you'd have been done within those 20 hours, but frankly, large corporations don't really care. $18,000 is still pocket money for them, and they apparently prefer if you do everything their way instead of your own.

You didn't just deliver a static html page, you delivered a static html page as part of their process.

Let them pay. You earned it. They wasted your time, you didn't waste theirs. It's not the most fulfilling way of working, but it pays the bills.

I do almost entirely projects for large clients like that, and it's not unusual that just getting started takes a week. I used to get frustrated about that, but it's their choice, and now I just go along with it.

It does underscore how unbelievably inefficient large companies really are.