

Politically Incorrect: Spec Work - PStamatiou
http://zachinglis.com/2011/politically-incorrect/

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TamDenholm
Nothing against spec work, but theres one thing I dont do, which is discounts.
I'll either charge full price, or work for free, nothing in between.

If you charge full price you're sufficiently motivated to do the work, if you
work for free, you'll do the work if you feel like it and the client its
likely to have no expectations. However if you work for a discount, the client
has the same expectations as if they paid full price and you have less
motivation to get the work done, which can lead to trouble.

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lawnchair_larry
Your motivation for discounted work is that you want them to come back and
continue to give you work, and you want them to recommend you to others.

Forest, trees, etc.

~~~
TamDenholm
Problem is, the discounted work rate is what they'll expect every time they
keep coming back.

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itsnotvalid
Worse still, if you increase your price, they would not come back, which make
the first discount even less useful.

~~~
zachinglis
That's not a problem with spec work. That's a problem with the company. If
they are happy for your work, and not trying to short change you anyway, then
they'll not complain.

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patio11
As Thomas brings up regularly, high end consulting engagements frequently
involve spec work. When I get brought in to work with a company, that rarely
just _happens_. Generally, I do a sales pitch which is _indistinguishable from
the actual work_ , follow it with a written proposal which would otherwise be
a deliverable, and only then get a contract and start the meter. Sometimes
clients decide the free portion was all they needed.

This is, to steal another tptacek quote, "life in the big leagues." (P.S.
Charge more.)

~~~
invalidOrTaken
Question: Given that you presumably charge (significantly) more than those who
have equal skill (I'm assuming SEO?) but don't do free pitches, how do you do
all that client education (free pitch!) quickly? Also, wouldn't it be more
effective to have a portfolio/case studies, and then you could charge more
granularly?

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patio11
Charging granularly is the opposite of what I want to do. It encourages people
to think of what they're paying me per minute I'm talking instead of thinking
of what 5% of the next quarter's sales is relative to my project rate. If you
ever see a startup get acquired, the lawyer says "Whee, the term sheet results
in you making millions" not "You paid a 25 year old $1 per character in this
100 page document."

I do like having things I can point to to demonstate value. This is one reason
I always tell clients "It is probably in your business interests to blog about
this engagement, as that means you get free links and attention for work you
already paid for. Want me to write that post for you?" That said, decreasing
cost of customer acquisition for consulting is not hugely important to me.
(What I could really move the needle by getting better at is doing more
engagements with previous happy customers. Working on it, slowly. It requires
me doing push-sales rather than just pull-sales and I have historically had
comfort issues with that.)

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_delirium
It's interesting how much more positive the reaction overall is to spec-work
_not_ in design, like Kaggle's machine-learning competitions. There's some
negative sentiment towards Kaggle, but much less, and much of it boils down
to, "meh, I don't consider it worth my time, but if others do, that's their
decision". I'm guessing it's mostly a question of economics; ML consultants
don't feel like spec work threatens to seriously affect their pay, while
designers are more worried. Photographers seem to be at the far end, with
photography forums full of all sorts of crazed ranting, some even claiming
that people who CC-license photos and upload them to Wikimedia Commons are
unethical.

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tptacek
Spec work is normal in consulting and law.

The anti-spec crusade is unique to graphic design.

Obviously, in every field, lots of practitioners will refuse to do work on
spec! But only in graphic design is there a marketing effort to depict the
practice as unethical.

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KaeseEs
"I think an often overlooked idea is that spec work is similar to internship.
For little to no pay, you gain experience and a portfolio piece. I definitely
don’t see anyone calling that exploitation. Yet being an intern lasts much
longer."

Is it actually a common thing for design internships to be unpaid or minimum
wage? Programmer internships, following internships in engineering
disciplines, are usually pretty well paid, so this idea is foreign to me.

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russell_h
In fact, I'm pretty sure that an internship where you create something that a
company benefits from, and you are not paid for it is illegal (although by no
means uncommon) under US labor laws.

See: <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/business/03intern.html>

Which references:
[http://wdr.doleta.gov/directives/attach/TEGL/TEGL12-09acc.pd...](http://wdr.doleta.gov/directives/attach/TEGL/TEGL12-09acc.pdf)

~~~
true_religion
I doubt its illegal because I have friends who interned at the department of
labor (and other govt. jobs) doing all the jobs that would be commonly parsed
out to full time employees.

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polymatter
You are assuming that it is always true that the government bureaucracy is
always in complete compliance with the law. I believe this is an unwarranted
assumption.

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dabeeeenster
"I personally have done a few projects of spec work. Both my projects for
Mozilla were spec work for example. I did them for free, in return for the
projects being a portfolio piece."

Having the opportunity of doing some work for Mozilla is MILES AWAY from the
majority of the sort of thing that is requested in your standard spec work.
99% of it will end up lost in a shared drive on some corporate network
somewhere.

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zachinglis
True, but any work counts. Having a logo crowdsourced by Moleskine would be a
great honour. Something which the AntiSpec campaign is up in arms against.

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mikeryan
Ok just to be clear, since the line is getting a bit hazy. Most designers
aren't against doing true spec work (where a potential client asks you to do
work for free, for the possibility of future payment and work). Almost every
designer does it.

The concern most designers have is with crowd sourced spec work such as 99
designs which is a threat to a lot of freelance designers.

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cwilson
Exactly what I came here to post. There is a huge difference between smart
spec work and the 99 designs marketplace spec work.

That said, I really don't see where the problem is in the design ecosystem
right now. Talented designers are not having problems finding really well
paying work, in fact there are probably more opportunities than there are
designers. On the other end you have the 99 designs space. Here there are a
few hundred "designers" rehashing the same concepts, over and over, for
clients you'd NEVER want to work for on anything significant.

You pay for what you get.

~~~
zachinglis
Hit the nail on the head. Exactly a point I am trying to make :)

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splicer
As an engineer, when I hear "spec" I think of specifications. I initially
thought "spec work" was referring to specifying requirements for a client. ;)

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kevinpet
I'm not a designer, but this doesn't fit what I understand as "spec work".
What I think of is "do up a design for us, if we like it, we'll pay". This
isn't the same as "do some free work that will be great publicity for you".
The latter is another kind of thing. He's defending something that's entirely
outside what's usually meant by "spec work".

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notatoad
this whole nospec movement really depresses me, because it seems like a sign
that the blogging community is getting taken over by people who no longer
really love their work.

to me, spec work is good because it's _fun_. there's no boss, there's no
client, and there's no pressure. it's a chance to take some risks and make
something crazy, if the 'client' doesn't like it you haven't lost anything.

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nknight
I'm not an artist/designer, nor have I ever done spec work as a developer, but
it seems to me a lot easier to decide to help a not-for-profit organization
(Mozilla) aimed at general societal benefit for $0 than to do so for a for-
profit company.

~~~
zachinglis
Of course. But if a for-profit company came to me, I would consider doing the
same for them. I may take it. I may not. But my point is that it's not evil.
It's a case-by-case thing and that if a designer wants to work for free, why
are others getting up in arms about it. It DOESN'T affect them.

