
Destroying the reputation of Freelancers everywhere - lesliebarry
http://www.lesliebarry.com/blog/destroying-reputation-freelancers-everywhere/
======
gexla
Great example of the type of client who has no understanding of the web
development business model. I can't blame him though, it's not on the client
to understand, it's on the service provider to educate as needed. The client
did nothing wrong in this case, but that he thought these things were positive
is what shows his lack of understanding. To me, these things show a lack of
experience and professionalism on the part of the provider.

> The platform is built on Ruby on Rails running on MySQL and the fantastic
> Elastic Beanstalk from Amazon Web Services. Not too complex, but enough to
> challenge the average freelancer.

So, here he assumes that freelancer is on the low end of the scale of
technical ability? Perhaps this is true for the freelancers he has picked up.
If your freelance developer is challenged by a Rails projects which is "not
too complex" then perhaps you should keep looking. A freelancer should be an
expert at the services provided. Hourly rate in this case is often irrelevant,
see also "10x" developer.

> Late nights spent debugging issues, 30 minute response times day or night,
> challenging questions about some of our design or dev decisions, a constant
> awareness of us being in startup mode with suggestions on affordable options
> to deploy various bits of tech and then two unforgettable incidents.

This isn't a freelancer, this is an employee. But it's not really an employee
either, because this person doesn't get any of the perks of being an employee.
Not that it really matters, I think those perks are largely imaginary anyways.
Nobody really has job security.

A good freelancer has other clients and a life. Work which encroaches on that
life (and elevates priority over my other client work) had better make it
worth my while in terms of payments. Clearly, from the rest of this article,
this isn't something the author is thinking about. For me, the squeaky wheel
doesn't get the grease. The money wheel gets the grease and the squeaky wheel
gets dropped.

> The first time I knew this was going to be a great relationship was when 'N'
> dialed in for our usual Monday evening call and started the conversation
> with "I was thinking over the weekend that a good way to optimise the user
> experience would be xx which would positively impact YY in the business".

See the above items about other clients and a life.

> 'N' said: "I've been thinking that the right thing to do here is give you
> 50% off my last bill (around $700 USD discount) given the situation. I value
> our relationship and I'm choosing the right thing vs the right business
> decision. I'm sure we'll work together again and believe in what GetViable
> is trying to do."

As a client, this would be a red flag. This would be the sort of thing which
would make me do a face-palm. What would Steve Jobs do? ;)

Here are some bullet points to help supplement my above points.

\- I'm not a freelancer, I'm a business providing a service.

\- As a business owner, my job is to maximize the money coming into the door.
I don't give discounts and I seek the maximum rates I feel the market can
bear. If I left money on the table, I screwed up.

\- If I don't own part of your business, then I'm not your partner. Reaching
your expectations that we both laid out is important, beyond that, the success
of your business is none of my concern. I do wish you the best of luck though.

\- Don't judge me on my willingness to slave myself to your business. Judge me
on the strength of my own business. If I'm successful, it's because I'm more
effective than my competition. Jones and Brothers plumbing service which has
been in business 40 years has been in business that long because it's run
well. Joe Blow freelancer who has been in business for a year and is making
the above business mistakes probably won't be around for long. Or eventually
will learn from those mistakes.

\- It's important to understand that my business model is different from
yours. If I'm a solo developer then the money I can bring in the door for my
development services is limited by the number of hours that I can work in one
day. I can't scale beyond those hours. I can hire another developer, but that
developer is bound by the same constraints. I have to maximize every hour that
I'm working. Your business model is different. It can scale beyond the
available working hours in your day. Don't expect me to discount my rates at
the detriment of my business so that you can more easily bootstrap yours.

\- You need to be paying your freelancers well. Money is the lifeblood of any
business, even if a freelancer is acting more like a sort of plug-in employee
rather than a business owner. If that lifeblood isn't flowing well, then the
business is going to run into problems and ultimately that's going to affect
your project.

