

Ask HN: Question on situation - tboxer854

I was hoping to get your thoughts on a situation...<p>So recently I hired a well known, but small, web design firm.  I specifically hired this firm because all of their websites carry a very unique style.  They were more expensive then most freelancers I had worked with in the past, but it was worth it to me to obtain this style.<p>I figured that the head designer and founder, wouldn't take the project as it was smaller. But one of his other 4 designers would do it.<p>A few days after we paid the deposit, we got an email to join the basecamp project to start things off.  In the basecamp was our project manager and a women, who I assumed worked with for this company.  When I clicked on her name thought, it was apparent by her email address that she was not  part of their company, but rather an outside freelancer.<p>So, rather pissed at this point, I told my project manager that this wasn't going to work.  He tried to claim she was doing a majority of the work for them, but couldn't show me any projects she had done for them.  They ended up refunding my money, but wouldn't admit that they were doing anything wrong.<p>Do you think they were wrong in not disclosing that they were going to farm the work out? Or did I overreact?
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brk
I don't really think they are obligated to describe to you how they make the
sausage.

As long as the end result is what you paid for, does it really matter if they
employ trained professionals, or monkeys with notepad.exe?

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teej
It's definitely important to know what kind of talent is behind your design
project. If I'm paying $30/hr for a small project, I would expect it to be
handled by a junior person. But if I'm shelling out $175/hr to the same firm
for a larger project, I sure as hell better have their best creative minds on
it. Setting explicitly clear expectations is an important part of client work.

~~~
brk
Depends on which talent you're REALLY hiring and concerned with. Are you
hiring the director/producer, or the staff.

Provided that the project got proper oversight and herding by the creative
director, it does not really matter, IMO, who writes the HTML and diddles the
Photoshop buttons.

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tptacek
I've worked with 1-person shops and with large, well known firms, and this
notion that creative directors are calling the shots on projects doesn't
square with my experience. The person who's performance you care about is the
one giving you comps and taking your feedback on them; in firms with
"directors", that person is almost never the director.

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tdavis
I don't think they were wrong or that you overreacted.

The thing about design firms that have a very distinctive look is that they
have probably taken the time to refine and largely automate the design process
(Photoshop actions, etc.) Take for example Metalab (which I would guess is who
you hired, as they immediately came to mind as fitting this mold): all their
work looks nearly exactly the same; I can spot one of their sites on first
glance. When you have as refined a style and spec as they do, you can probably
get freelancers to make you designs which conform to the spec pretty well.

The bottom line is that companies like them (not saying they do this because I
don't know, but it's as good an example as any) don't make money by doing
crappy work; they make it by sticking to a token style. If they can get
somebody to duplicate that style using their tools and guidance for cheaper
than they pay employees, why wouldn't they? You get what you wanted and they
make more money -- everybody wins.

You're entitled to react however you like, obviously. If you wanted a staff
member and would feel unsafe about using a freelancer, that's your
prerogative. My point is simply that the company probably arranges it such
that it doesn't matter in the long run (except to their profit margin).

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tptacek
Yes. Fire them.

When you do contracts next time, include a clause that says subcontractors
aren't allowed without prior approval. That's standard in the industry I work
in, and subcontractors are a fact of life here.

Meanwhile, it doesn't matter who's right and who's wrong. It is a sensible
business decision to work with firms who will staff projects predictably and,
preferably, with their own people. There are enough good web design firms in
the world that you shouldn't be compromising.

In some cases, you might benefit from being staffed with a sub; maybe the sub
was a former partner, or a rock star they're actively trying to recruit onto
the team. In those cases, that benefit should have been sold to you at project
start. The fact that you didn't even know who would be working on the project
until it kicked off tells me you could find a better firm to work with.

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roedog88
I don't think you overreacted. I would find it difficult to trust a consultant
who pulled a bait-and-switch on me.

An alternative to firing them might have been to re-negotiate their fees based
on the less known designer, or to defer payment until the job was finished to
your satisfaction.

But given the breach of trust, I don't think canceling the contract was out of
line. Especially if staying with them would require extra oversight and
heartburn.

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gte910h
He didn't hire a consultant. He hired a consulting company. BIG difference.

~~~
tptacek
It shouldn't be. Plenty of up-and-up companies subcontract, but they tell you
that sooner than the day the project kicks off.

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tbgvi
You'd be surprised how common that is.

The same thing has happened to me and I didn't know until after the project
was over. In the end, as long as your happy with the design it shouldn't
matter who worked on it. That being said, stopping the project is def. within
your rights since you're the client :)

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mechanical_fish
Yep, you're within your rights to panic and flee.

And, yep, you may have overreacted. Companies subcontract work. That's what
they do. Among other things, this is how firms train and audition new people
-- by hiring them as subcontractors.

If you pay Company X for the work, you get work with Company X's name on it.
If something goes wrong, you get to blame the whole company -- they don't get
to dodge the blame by passing it on to their subcontractor. But, in return,
you shouldn't expect the right to micromanage the internal affairs of the
company.

Of course, it's also possible that you dodged a bullet. Who knows? If the
contractor couldn't convince you to stay on as a client, using arguments like
the ones above, that might be a sign that you weren't likely to get along well
together. Client-contractor relationships are a tricky business. Often you are
required to make gut-level decisions.

~~~
gte910h
I cannot upvote this hard enough.

It is _purely_ a tax decision on how this person is hired. If they worked
there as a w-2 employee, would the OP be similarly hand wringing?

Contract to Hire is a very normal way to hire. Subcontracting at least SOME of
the work is actually a sign of specialization, and can create much better work
then just doing everything in house.

The OP has no idea how the style he likes so much was actually created. It
could have been created by a Slovakian national working on an internship for
all he knows

If you want quality signoff agreements, then make those. Don't get all scared
the first time you find one part of the project is not 100% done by staff
that's been there for decades. It's a company. It hires people. That's what
makes a company different than a freelancer.

~~~
tptacek
It's _not_ purely a tax decision. Staff gets fired when they screw up.
Contractors just don't get re-upped. Staff have a 1:1 relationship with the
company. Contractors have a 1:N relationship. When they don't get re-upped,
they take more hours elsewhere.

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timr
This is really common in the design world, especially in this crappy economy.
Design firms don't have steady demand right now, and a lot of them have laid
off former full-time designers, only to pull them back in on contract when
work comes through the door. I have friends who are/were in exactly this
situation.

I think you probably overreacted. Why don't you trust the professional
designers to choose their employees? What does the employee's tax status have
to do with the designs they deliver?

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gte910h
You overreacted.

If you want quality guarantees, make those.

If you want a certain style, specify that.

Otherwise, calm down, breath easy, and be aware that companies sometimes hire
people. Actually, that's pretty much the definitive factor between hiring a
company and hiring a freelancer: The company is made up of multiple people,
some of which you may not know.

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huangm
You hire a design firm because you like their portfolio work. As a client, you
shouldn't have to ask if the same people responsible for the portfolio work
are going to work on your project. My guess is that this is an assumption that
most clients will make (I certainly would), so it certainly seems that their
actions are a bit disingenuous.

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gte910h
I don't think the OP has any idea what amount of work the non-outsourced
people in the project would be doing. For all he knows, the style he's talking
about is the only thing the non-outsourced people ever do, and the rest are
all code monkeys who do all the grunt work.

If you hire a company, and like their output, you're very likely overreacting
if you find out they outsource regularly after signing on the dotted line. I
mean, you know that 1/2 the stuff you get in a restaurant is created in
factories, frozen then shipped there, right? Or is that fraud because
everything wasn't created on premises.

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tboxer854
In addition - this design firm put out a ad the day before my project started
looking for a new designer. If this person was so good, why didn't they just
fill that job?

