
Ask HN: How to do freelance work that is reclaimable? - leowoo91
Most of the projects I see, their coding depends on the outsourced company it started. I would like go into consultancy business but when things go side ways and it comes time to leave my customer, I would want them to remain happy.<p>Here, I wonder if how other companies are willing to take over the existing code? What should I do best to make transition easier for the project itself for encouragement of new team taking over?<p>Thank you for thoughts.
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gregjor
Write clean, simple code. Don’t over-engineer. Use version control. Document
design decisions, dependencies that aren’t obvious, and installation/build
instructions, and keep those current. Did I mention USE VERSION CONTROL?

My freelance business is taking over legacy software when the original
developers quit, get fired, stop answering emails.

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leowoo91
I like your points, I assume I will do all. "Document design decisions" is new
for me, I will look for standards for that.

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axelrosen
I think to some degree you have to accept the disposable nature of consulting.
If you want to be responsible for satisfaction years down the road, you could
do a product-consulting hybrid, where you do quite a lot of customer-specific
dev upfront but as part of a bigger product.

Otherwise you really need to make sure the customer cares about it as much as
you do. And many simply don't.

