
Ask HN: Is it possible to transition from corporate job to self contractor? - jxm262
Hi all,<p>I&#x27;m a Full-Stack web developer with 5+ years experience and am trying to transition into contract&#x2F;consulting work.  I&#x27;ve read alot of posts on this topic (and _all_ of patio11&#x27;s blog) but am still struggling to come up with ways to find clients.  My dilemma is that I don&#x27;t want to price myself too low (I can find lots of projects for 20&#x2F;hr or less), but I&#x27;m not sure how to get the larger jobs without doing this full-time.<p>Has anyone ever transitioned from the enterprise world into contracting successfully?  Is it possible to do it over a period of time? (keep current job and moonlight freelance gigs).  What did you do to get your initial clients?
======
dustingetz
I price quite high as a freelance react specialist. I worked at a javashop
building enterprise pharma apps. I made frontend technology decisions and bet
on /early adopted React when it first came out in 2013, open sourced some
stuff to fill in holes in the ecosystem since it was still immature, spoke at
a couple conferences, gave a few workshops. With this portfolio it is really
easy to land clients at high rates from the HN whoishiring threads. I have had
zero successful leads from linkedin and recruiters, it always falls apart when
we talk about rates. I've learned that your common recruiter and linkedin
manager cant differentiate between okay talent and high end talent. CTOs read
HN whoshiring threads and those are the people who can tell the difference.
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/dustingetz](https://www.linkedin.com/in/dustingetz)

TLDR: make predictions about the future, specialize, be right.

Edit: I post in the HN whoshiring freelancer threads and potential clients
reach out to me, for example
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9998249](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9998249)

Edit: I have a friend who does wordpress freelance for local small businesses,
her business is extremely different than mine as is her story, there are many
approaches that can work, the key is to understand your market

~~~
swah
Great to hear! I'd like to fill a similar role in my country, which is always
delayed a few years in relation to US: Rails is strong here now!

Related: do you lose sleep worrying if you're going to have to transition to
mobile development or something? I suffer from that all the time - the cure is
probably Real Clients Paying Money...

~~~
dustingetz
No, I have time/money to re-skill if/when I mis-predict the future, I worry
more about getting older

------
kohanz
It all depends on how unique and in-demand your skillset is. I did it over a
year ago, but had the benefit of working at a company which was basically a
consulting firm itself. When I had already decided I was leaving, one of the
clients I had worked for expressed an interest in retaining my services. With
the blessing of my former employer, they became my first client. After that,
my former employer realized how difficult it was to replace my skillset and I
essentially became a subcontractor for them. This may not sound great, but I
set my own hours, worked from home when I wanted, and was payed about 1.75x
what I made as a FT'er. I've able to spend more time with my wife and infant
son, work less, and make more money than I did as a 9-5 'er.

However (and I say this not to brag, but as an important piece of
information), I only believe this was possible because I was in the top X %
(where X is maybe 5? 10?) with respect to my peers. I've seen other people
attempt this and fail and it is because they were more replaceable than I was.
So a lot of it comes down to where you are located (e.g. supply) and how many
prospects there are around (demand).

Over a 1.5 years now I've had about 5 clients (not many), but they all knew me
personally beforehand. Your personal/professional network is your biggest
asset. Use it.

~~~
jxm262
Yeah, everyone is telling me to rely on personal/professional network. The
problem is that most of them are fellow "enterprise" type programmers without
any actual work to give (ie. not hiring managers). Also.. the big issue I have
now is finding evening and weekend/part-time jobs. It seems pretty easy to
find a decent contract at a company if I transition, to say, full-time for 6
months or whatever they offer.

When you say you were top X% , was that in a specific tech stack or niche
industry? I'm really good at certain tech stacks (JavaScript world -
Node+React+AWS, or Java/Scala world - Spring, Play, etc..). How do you
actually find work that will help you "level" up, per se. And more
importantly, show others that you're an expert in the field? I can do
_awesome_ work for some people but it might not be broadcasted to the rest of
the world if it's just known internally.

~~~
kohanz
Starting on evening and weekends is tough. I know one of my clients is alright
with that, because our relationship is more casual, but I don't think the rest
would be comfortable with me operating so casually for their business (they
want me to be available for calls, e-mails, etc. during the business day). The
thing is, the kind of service I provide is not just "let me go away and
program something for you", it walks them through the process from conception
all the way to deployment. I'm in a niche field (medical), but the people I'm
dealing with are generally non-software folk. To them, I am a product guy,
project manager, developer, architect, etc. all in one.

When I say top X%, I don't mean in a pure technical sense. I mean in the sense
of, from management's perspective, if they had a project that they valued
highly and knew they wanted to deliver on, who would they pick as the
technical lead for that project. Which technical person would they put in
front of the customer? Who would they want to be alongside them during the
hiring process to find more technical folk? Those are the ways in which I've
found I've been valued. I feel like I am a good programmer (who doesn't?), but
I'm not the best programmer in the room. It's a more rounded skill-set and a
willingness to do valuable non-programming things. A perfect example is a guy
I used to work with - excellent programmer and very well-versed in computer
science (whereas my background is engineering). In terms of speaking about
best practices, patterns, development philosophies, etc. - he was very good,
better than me (truthfully some of that stuff bores me). However, in terms of
getting a project done in a high quality way, with predictability (estimation,
scheduling, etc.), those are the things he didn't really care for, but I paid
attention to. He's a great programmer and a good asset to any organization
with a team, but I don't think he's do well on his own. Make sure you are
confident in your estimation skills before going it alone.

~~~
UK-AL
I don't think I've worked with an organisation, or a PM that could actually
estimate well in software without using padding.

I think the prevalence of story points, and probability based
estimates(markov), proves that hard deadline estimates just don't work. I
don't trust anyone who says they can actually do it on large projects, because
they're either padding or lying.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Padding is not a bad thing if done right. The group I worked most recently
with had an estimation target of +/\- 20% and we were usually much better than
that.

It takes a lot of discipline and detailed time recording to get to the point
of being able to accurately estimate a task. Padding becomes useful when you
know that you always estimate 15% low. Then after you finish your "real"
estimate, add 15% and you will be close to the actual value.

I like to think of the estimation process as being analogous to Feedback
Control theory. It requires good input data and negative feedback to stay on
track.

~~~
UK-AL
How you can predict the future estimates based on recording now?

What makes software estimation so difficult is that it's like maze. How long
will take you to complete a maze?

You don't know what's coming up in a maze, and you cant give an exact
estimate. And trying to work out details to work out what is coming up, takes
almost as long actually programming it.

This is why I promote the idea that variation should be inbuilt into
methodology. Remove the assumption software can be accurately estimated, build
methodology around the fact it's hard to predict.

I use guestimates of 'effort', but I don't hold people to it.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Prediction only works for what you know. Seems obvious, but people have a way
of "forgetting" that. So you estimate within the parameters of what you know
about. If what you know changes, then your predictions have to change.

There are various points on the predictability curve. I used to work in an
environment that was extremely predictable: projects with well-defined scope
that took years to complete and changes were tightly managed. If scope
changed, the stakeholders understood the cost to the schedule. An environment
like that is perfect for using past time estimates vs. actual time taken to
estimate future similar or dissimilar-but-related tasks.

In other environments I worked in, it's more chaotic. Things change
frequently, so estimates change frequently. Often you your long term vision is
compromised by firefighting, so that vision has to be adjusted constantly. If
you have a deadline, then tasks need to shift to meet the deadline.

------
devonkim
I know through how my former contracting employers have hired me out at vastly
different rates that almost everything is up to three things in the end: 1\.
Your target customers' pocketbook 2\. Their belief that you can solve their
problems 3\. The business value those problems have

It does you no good to try to find mom and pop shops that need a small
brochure website for their little restaurant with a budget of about $100 for
the website... unless you find several of them at a time and can build up a
lot of work that way. Customers will pay more if their budget simply allows
for it. I've priced myself out of even enterprise contracts / FTE jobs at
rates that most people in the Bay Area would balk at, and those are generally
pretty bad contracts to be on. For example, I know of a enterprise companies
budgeted such that they can't even afford to pay $75 / hr for someone with a
highly sought after skillset in a critical leadership role but are willing to
shell out $500k+ / yr to vendors for random software? Waste of time almost
always if you want to grow with those kinds of penny pinchers.

Most recruiters on LinkedIn I've seen in my subgraph are talking about really
poor contracting rates for gigs that I know typically go to consulting
companies at about $130+ / hr but these spammed contracts are for $40 / hr
people that know VMware (with VCP!), OpenStack, Chef / Puppet, 2+ scripting
languages, have actual experience in production environments, be the helpdesk
for everything, and are willing to do on-call with this stuff. What kind of
companies are these that think they can find someone like that?

I did hear a recruiter near my desk once that he had a position for a TS/SCI
cleared sysadmin job with RH certs and CISSP in the DC metro area for... $45k
/ yr in 2013. What the hell, I think janitors with TS/SCI get paid more than
that and it's starting to skirt close to what background investigators get and
they're among the lowest paid high-clearance individuals ever.

------
tptacek
Yes. That's how I got started.

Find an acquaintance who already runs a consultancy, and arrange to
subcontract for them for odd-jobs, or take a 2-week vacation and spend it on
one of their projects.

~~~
jxm262
That's actually what I had in mind. Read this on one of the blogs and it
seemed like probably the best option. The main obstacle (for me anyway) is
getting "acquainted" with others who run a consultancy :) I guess i'll try to
go to more meetups and be more social, reach out to friends to see if they
know people, etc...

Do you think it's frowned upon to cold-email people that you're only vaguely
acquainted with? Say for instance, I make a very politely and concisely worded
email, asking them if they have any extra work that they could off-load.

~~~
tptacek
It's not frowned on, but a higher-yield strategy is to meet as many people as
you can for coffee and advice getting started consulting.

~~~
jxm262
I actually hadn't thought of that :) Thanks for the tip!

~~~
zzalpha
Don't forget local industry groups/communities.

Consulting is all about networking... odds are very good you'll get far more
work via referrals than through bidding or similar processes.

The quicker you can build up that network, the quicker you can start building
up that queue of projects, and in the meantime, it's a good way to find
someone to sub for while you get yourself started.

------
cannikin
I was strictly a full-time corporate guy until about 2 years ago. I got an
email out of the blue from a tech recruiter guy, asking if I was interested in
freelance. I hadn't given it much thought at the time, but figured I'd at
least ask what the rate was.

$100/hour.

My eyes bulged out my skull. My highest fulltime salary to that point had been
$120k/year (about $58/hour). My wife has benefits so it seemed like a fairly
small risk to jump out of the fulltime pool and try my hand at contracting.

I've since been freelance-only, getting as much as $180/hour for a 6-month
commitment. I haven't been unemployed at all during that time. It's just been
word-of-mouth. In one instance an ex-fulltime employer needed someone to come
in and work on some code. In another a previous co-worker at a fulltime gig
recommended me to just consult on the codebase and that led to my current gig.

All positions have been work-from-home except for the first one, that was
about a 30-min drive 2 days a week.

I'm a full-stack dev, Ruby on the backend (almost 10 years experience with
Rails). I'm not too shabby a designer, either, so I'm lucky that I can kind of
fit in with any dev team or become a company's sole development resource if
needed (which is my role at my current gig).

My advice would be to hit up several recruiters and get them looking for jobs
for you. At one point I had 3 separate ones hitting me up for positions on a
daily basis. They only get paid if they get people hired so they're very
motivated to find you a job ASAP. I always figured that becoming freelance
meant you had to spend your days marketing yourself, schmoozing people on
LinkedIn, etc (all stuff I hate). It's turned out to be nothing like that.
When you're a month or so from the end of a contract let the recruiters know
you're available and the offers come rolling in. In my experience, at least.

~~~
tyingo
>>$100/hour...My eyes bulged out my skull...My highest >>fulltime salary to
that point had been $120k ($58/hour).

Not sure if that $100/hour was a 1099 type rate or a W2 type rate.

Either way, it does still likely beat your $120k/year salary, but perhaps not
by as much as you think.

Either way (1099 or W2), you aren't getting the benefit of any company paid
medical, 401k, paid vacation, sick days, etc.

If it happens to be 1099, you also have to account for the self employment
taxes you'll have to pay.

Using a spreadsheet I keep around for this purpose, assuming $120k salary with
$600/month worth of company offset health insurance, a 100%-up to 6% salary
401k, 3 weeks vacation, and 10 paid holidays...the 1099 equivalent to
$120k/year would be $80.90 per hour.

Or in short, for anyone considering making the move, don't forget to calculate
the benefits that come with full time employment before you set your rate.

~~~
cannikin
1099 here. My wife has great health insurance through her employer so I was
okay. If I had to purchase our insurance I'm not sure I would have been as
quick to make the leap.

------
zrail
Read this book:
[http://doubleyourfreelancing.com/rate/](http://doubleyourfreelancing.com/rate/)

Brennan's book is mind-expanding, especially for someone who doesn't have any
clients at all.

For the record, I just finished my first 12 months of independent work and
it's been amazing. It's definitely possible.

~~~
vijayr
_it 's been amazing_

Could you please share more? What kind of work, how many hours a week do you
work and the like?

~~~
zrail
Sure! I generally take on Ruby on Rails work, sometimes with a Stripe-specific
or email-specific bent. I have two major clients. One is a large Rails app
where I do general maintenance and feature development two days a week. The
other is as a part-time CTO for another consultant and his businesses,
probably 2-3 days a month on average. They both pay me on a regular monthly
retainer.

Over the year I've also taken on Django and PHP projects as they come up, but
going forward I'll probably stick with Rails.

I actually wrote a book about how to handle the business side of freelancing,
but that's not super relevant to what the OP is asking. Here's the link if
you're interested anyway: [https://www.petekeen.net/handle-your-
business](https://www.petekeen.net/handle-your-business)

~~~
vijayr
Thank you for answering. How did you find the first two clients?

~~~
zrail
Networking :) I was invited to join a tiny community of product bootstrappers
a few years ago, which led to me helping them out with various things, and
them in turn helping me out quite a bit with my own stuff. This led to some
paid engagements, which then led to the retainers.

------
karmajunkie
I've been in and out of consulting work for a couple of decades now, and at
times have worked for consultancies/contracting shops. What has been by far
the most successful strategy for me:

* work for free, or work for a lot, but DO NOT WORK FOR CHEAP. What is meant by this is that your rates should reflect not only your value but should force your client to respect what you do. They very easily dismiss what they don't have to pay much for as a commodity. (I've seen this idea from many people in different forums, but I don't remember who/where I read the phrasing above.) If you work for free, ensure your "client" understands you're doing them a favor. In my work, what I mostly do "for free" is take a meeting or provide some advice. I almost never do actual work for free.

* your network does all the heavy lifting for bizdev. Go to your meetups. Write a lot. Become an expert at something, even if its a kind of niche area (even better if it is, actually) because the people in that niche will become your most reliable source of referrals. The meetings you take and advice you give for free will lead to work over time.

* Have a cushion in your bank account. Calibrate your working week to about half what you think is reasonable (e.g. plan on working 15-20 hours a week and set your rates accordingly.) all that extra time is great if you can bill it, but things come up.

* Don't take bad work. The first thing I do when I meet a (potential) client for the first time is hear the 10k-foot view of their idea. Then I tell them what it is I do, and that primarily is talk clients out of hiring me (or anyone else) because their project is A) just plain bad. or B) not ready for development. (I usually look for a tactful way to say those things!) Sometimes I'll work with them to shift the idea into something I think could work, but those are almost always conversations that end with "call me when you're ready." They usually appreciate the honesty and me not taking their money. I appreciate not wasting my time with a client who isn't going to end up having money to pay me with.

* Do your best to help potential clients get their needs met, even if that means referring the work somewhere else. If the job is too big for you, don't try to bite it off. If its too small to waste your time with, don't take it. But do try to find someone who can help them if its not you.

This is what worked for me—lots of other people have had a lot of success with
other paths.

------
ef4
> Is it possible to do it over a period of time? (keep current job and
> moonlight freelance gigs)

Yes, but you may need to pick a different job as an intermediate step: find a
job that will let you interact meaningfully with wider open source
communities.

The recipe is deceptively simple: (1) build things, (2) tell people about it,
(3) repeat. You need a job that lets you do step 2.

I will also add that projects around "20/hr or less" are not just
quantitatively too low-paying, they are qualitatively the wrong kind of
projects. A $300/hr consultant is not just a more expensive version of a
$20/hr web developer -- it's an entirely different job.

The actual technology layer involved in either case might be the same, but the
"interface" between you and your clients is different. The high-priced
consultant exposes a much higher-level interface that is closer to the
business problem domain.

~~~
sportanova
How is a $300/hr consultant a different job? I'd love to learn more about what
people do to get those kinds of rates / contracts. Do you know of any links /
good blogs?

~~~
ef4
patio11's stuff is pretty much spot on.

You need to solve business problems that people don't necessarily know how to
solve by themselves. Generally you do this by applying your technology
expertise, but that is not what matters to the client.

Don't model your business on the freelancers at oDesk. Model it on McKinsey,
Accenture, Bain, etc. Look at how those companies describe themselves. You
will necessarily be operating at a smaller scale than them. But that still
leaves an awful lot of room.

One key point is that the client does not hand you a spec to implement. The
client only has a problem, they don't know how to solve it, or are unsure of
how to decide. You come in and teach them what's possible and then help them
do it.

I find my clients through networking. Mostly it starts through people who know
my open source work and appreciate that I've been helpful to them already, but
also some random meetings with entrepreneurs who were looking for technology
advice. From there, one project leads to another as people talk to each other
or change jobs.

~~~
jxm262
>Don't model your business on the freelancers at oDesk. Model it on McKinsey,
Accenture, Bain, etc. Look at how those companies describe themselves. You
will necessarily be operating at a smaller scale than them. But that still
leaves an awful lot of room.

Thanks for mentioning this comment. I didn't think to do this, but I'll start
reading a bit on these companies and try to model myself a bit more like them.

------
BorisMelnik
When you say full stack, what exactly is your stack?

I know a lot of full stack engineers that are IIS > ASP > HTML and cant find
anything, while other friends that are Linux > PHP > > JS >HTML/CSS are
drowning in proposals right now.

Finding a steady stream of consulting work is never easy. Some consultants
rely strictly on referrals, while others take the paid route and drive leads
via PPC or email marketing. There are obviously other routes such as forums
and job boards.

One router I see a lot of consultants taking right now is blogging. Blog about
the projects you are working on and turn them into a live portfolio. Market
your github profile.

With 5 years of experience if you truly are a full stack programmer (with
decent communication skills) you should have no problem at all finding work.
Good luck!

~~~
jxm262
I have about 3 years Java world (Tomcat/Webstorm + JEE + Oracle/PLSQL, and
Spring, Hibernate all that jazz). And about 2 years in Node + Angular/React +
AWS. My question was more how to get good rates and still do it as a part-time
side gig since I work full time. I've already had offers for full time work :)
Yeah, after talking with a bunch of people from this thread I _will_ be
blogging/marketing my github profile/give lightning talks. For the moment, I'm
trying to network as much as possible without sounding needy and putting in as
much time as I can into open source to get experience, have something to show
the world. My goal now is to become the expert of 1 or 2 domains in my local
area so people are basically forced to notice me.

------
sarciszewski
In this topic: A lot of people humblebragging about their success and not a
lot of "simple actionable steps to take". (Not all of the answers, but the top
comments were like that.)

I don't think OP cares about your success. Focus on the answer please. Signal,
noise, etc.

Patrick started to answer this on his Twitter feed if OP is interested:

[https://twitter.com/patio11/status/661998764119363584](https://twitter.com/patio11/status/661998764119363584)

I for one will not be disclosing my personal success story.

------
hedgehog
The work you do as a contractor/consultant will be different from what most
FTE developers do in that you're likely to have more autonomy and
responsibility for setting the direction of your work. Your clients will hire
you because they believe you can solve some kind of problem for them. In a
roundabout way this provides an answer to how to find clients: Meet as many
people as you can and see if you can find ways to give them useful advice from
your experience. Don't worry about selling, instead focus on understanding how
your skills relate to problems that other people have and what kinds of people
you might want to work with. In my experience once you get that figured out
the paying work will present itself and you'll be able to figure out what to
charge. On moonlighting: My advice is don't do it even if your employment
contract permits it, it's hard to do your best work on a side job and your
best work will be more satisfying for you and pay dividends in the future.
Finally, remember that being a FTE saves you from a fair amount of the time
overhead that comes with managing a business. Feel free to e-mail me if you
have more questions.

------
fecak
If you can't find clients, you can always try and have clients find you.
Recruiters are all over LinkedIn looking for candidates. Update your profile
to say you are seeking contract assignments, and give some detail on what you
are qualified for / interested in/ locations, etc.

This might be a bit more difficult as a moonlighter if you don't want your
current employer to know you are moonlighting, but recruiters and agencies
will find you.

Once you get a few projects under your belt, you should start making
connections to get work referred to you - other contractors who aren't
available will refer people to you if they know you do good work.

I know lots of contractors who pass off work to others and rarely (if ever)
have to approach people to find work. They turn down more work than they can
handle.

------
100k
Former contractor here.

At some point you have to commit to what you want to do and do it. There's
some good suggestions in this thread for finding your first full-time gig.

One thing that I want to point out is that before you make the leap, you
should save at least 3 months of living expenses. Most contracting gigs I had
were billed at the end of the month with net 30 terms. That means from the day
you start, it will be 60 days before you get paid (and net 45 terms are not
unheard of, which is even worse). The key to successfully transitioning to
contracting is to be able to make up that 2+ month gap in income.

Having savings is also important because you will rarely find yourself 100%
utilized, so you need to be able to survive the lean times between contracts.

~~~
sportanova
Why would you take those terms (unless you had no choice, but you probably do
if you have 3 months living expenses)? Seems like a crazy risk where you could
end up working for 2 months and not getting paid. What about installments?

~~~
100k
Sometimes you can get better terms but where and when I was contracting they
were pretty standard.

------
fffrad
This something I did and so far has been working pretty well for me.

Look for companies that have contracts with others for short amount of times.
The more they send you on jobs, the more website you work on, and the richer
your portfolio becomes.

Once you have a good chunk, it is much easier to get consulting work.
Sometimes companies I have worked for a month or two contact me directly for
more work and a higher rate.

The more items you have on your portfolio, the more people will accept your
rates.

------
gmcerveny
I went from agency/dotcom work to independent contractor. I worked mostly on-
site contracts anywhere from 3 to 18 months. Some jobs were through
recruiters, some friends/network. All gigs paid significantly better than full
time positions. I did this with an outdated stack, ColdFusion, from
~2005-2010.

------
Mz
_My dilemma is that I don 't want to price myself too low (I can find lots of
projects for 20/hr or less), but I'm not sure how to get the larger jobs
without doing this full-time._

Consider doing some of the "low paying" but readily available work to get
started. This looks to me like a problem you are inventing -- the work is
available, you just don't want to take a "paycut" to get your foot in the
door, even though it would actually be extra money since you are still working
full time.

~~~
msellout
I expect the "low paying" offers are a signal of a bad project. It's likely
that your customer will never be satisfied with what you deliver. Even if they
are, it likely won't achieve their expectations.

~~~
Mz
That may well be true. But from what I have read and seen in life, people with
secure, well paid jobs who don't actually need the money very frequently put
up all kinds of self imposed barriers between themselves and making something
entrepreneurial happen successfully. They turn their noses up at work they
could be doing or avenues for making money that are, in fact, currently open
to them, while waiting for something better that fits their narrow parameters
of what is _acceptable._ Sometimes nothing better ever does show up. They are
sometimes turning their noses up at the only avenue that will ever start them
down the path they state they wish to take. When nothing shows up that meets
their picky standards, they often then complain about how baffled and
frustrated they are that they just can't seem to make it work.

There is nothing wrong with saying "I only want to make this transition if it
meets thus and such conditions because I am basically happy where I am at, so
it needs to flat out be an improvement of my current situation or I am not
interested at all." But that isn't usually the position these people take.
They usually express extreme bafflement and frustration at how impossible it
is while actively throttling any hope of success because their expectations
are simply too high.

All I am saying is "Well, you actually _can_ start doing side work _right now_
and are choosing not to. First, recognize that it is a _choice._ "

The OP can make that choice if they so desire, but people are usually happier
with their lives and also more effective when they recognize that, no, really,
they are _making a choice._ Doors aren't actually barred and locked to them.
They just don't happen to want to go through the ones that are currently open
and do not feel compelled to because they are pretty comfortable.

Not everyone is that comfortable. Sometimes, people who are comfortable fail
to recognize that is the actual problem. They have no perspective. I am just
offering perspective.

"Duke Nukem Forever" comes to mind. The company was fat and happy. They didn't
really need the money. So they dicked around and dicked around and dicked
around _forever,_ until it became a running joke in some circles.

------
igorgue
Yes.

