
Ask HN: Negotiating a consulting contract with large company - dimitri-gnidash
I am thinking of doing a contract with a largish startup (500) as the project is interesting and they are in the environmental space.<p>I have run into issues during the contract negotiation where there seems to be no flexibility at all: start date fixed (in 2 weeks), hourly rate non-negotiable, termination clauses non-negotiable (they have immediate termination and I have no termination for convenience). The rest of the agreement is also one-sided to the extreme.<p>The process is off-putting, but I am not sure if this is just the big company processes and power establishment or reflective of the value they have placed on me (and that I perhaps did not convey properly).<p>I have other projects and they are better paid, but this one is interesting.
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bryanrasmussen
consulting, where consulting is often just freelancing, is pretty inflexible
about termination - the rule should be that you make at least 2X your normal
monthly wage - but adjust for small times (increase, decrease slightly for
longer times).

Generally with a 3 month project I do exactly 2 times my normal monthly wage,
if I do a direct negotiation with company 2.5 times.

Generally termination is instantaneous because they are paying lots more for
me than if I were a normal employee. But sometimes I have managed to get
termination for a week or two, never more than that.

500 is not really a large company, although it is for a startup. In my
experience smaller companies tend to be more jerks, because to them the money
they are paying for a consultant is just WHOAAA. They want you to be
productive day 1 and not mess anything up ever. Really big companies think
productive in a couple weeks please, and if you do significantly better than
that they are pleased. I like consulting for big companies because I get my
money, they like to renew me, they don't care about what they pay they just
want to get the results. I hate consulting for small companies, and will
pretty much only do it anymore if project really interesting or I have friends
there.

on edit: fixed typo.

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gus_massa
Do you know what happened to the previous developer?

When are they going to give you their first check? What happens if they are
"late"?

