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That's when you are running a team, right? But it's not the norm to walk into any corp in London as a devops/dev/whatever contractor and work like this. There i

That's when you are running a team, right? But it's not the norm to walk into any corp in London as a devops/dev/whatever contractor and work like this. There is no reason why you couldn't run a team that way in Berlin or anywhere else in the world.

cyberpunk 10y ago
Depends on your attitude really. If you rock up to a client and immediately let them set any kind of requirements on your life instead of having a "this is our goal, make it so!" relationship then a subtle kind of power relationship has been created, where they'll think it's acceptible to mandate employee rules on you like this. If you're a contractor, then the corp you're whoring out to is NOT your employer and you must not let them act as such (this makes it worse for all of us, not just you). They're paying your buisness to do something for theirs, how you do that is your business and yours alone. There's no need to be a total weirdo about the whole thing and go off on one because they want you at a meeting at 10 some day or whatever -- you have to be diplomatic and be mindful of the way you're being percieved by the perm staff -- but generally I will not tolerate requests from clients w/r/t anything like attendance outside of meetings, dress code, general sobriety or whatever else which isn't impacting the deliberables we're providing, and wouldn't attempt to push them on my staff either (contract or not). I've walked away from several really lucrative contracts because of this sort of client behaviour and I don't regret that at all. Your clients aren't, and never will be in control of you, you're there because they need you and they should treat you with the respect an engineer with your day rate has earned.. shrug Generally, this sort of attitude has been accepted in every contract I've had in london in the last 5 years or so.. The secret is to get this point across very soon after, or even before, starting the gig. Absolute confidence is probably rq too tho... edit: butterfingers
- passiveincomelg 10y ago
  Makes perfect sense, thanks. I think the situation here is very similar. Telling a contractor when and where to work can get the client in legal trouble ("Scheinselbstständigkeit", one of those lovely german words ;). How that works out in practice probably depends on the company. If you work a gig at Siemens it might be different than at a startup (that is funded well enough to afford freelancers). I only have experience with two big corps so far (keep coming back to the second one ;), but I've seen quite a few contractors at both and some of them were just plain flaky. That of course makes it worse for all of us as well, wrt to clients tolerance for things like remote work, etc.
  - cyberpunk 10y ago
    Hmm. I'll be in Berlin next week (I missed Nikolaus and I have some belated shoes to fill; failing that though definately again around silvester) If you're up for a beer or sixteen on me, I'd really find the insider scoop useful on a more personal medium; I'm sure we could probably both get something from it, at least the worst would be a lot of free beer! You can find me on freenode as 'cyb3rpunk' (inside a shiny new irssi in some tmux somewhere so might take me a while to respond) if you're up for it -- otherwise, prost!
    - passiveincomelg 10y ago
      Totally up for it! Will ping you on irc.

cyberpunk 10y ago

Depends on your attitude really. If you rock up to a client and immediately let them set any kind of requirements on your life instead of having a "this is our goal, make it so!" relationship then a subtle kind of power relationship has been created, where they'll think it's acceptible to mandate employee rules on you like this. If you're a contractor, then the corp you're whoring out to is NOT your employer and you must not let them act as such (this makes it worse for all of us, not just you). They're paying your buisness to do something for theirs, how you do that is your business and yours alone. There's no need to be a total weirdo about the whole thing and go off on one because they want you at a meeting at 10 some day or whatever -- you have to be diplomatic and be mindful of the way you're being percieved by the perm staff -- but generally I will not tolerate requests from clients w/r/t anything like attendance outside of meetings, dress code, general sobriety or whatever else which isn't impacting the deliberables we're providing, and wouldn't attempt to push them on my staff either (contract or not). I've walked away from several really lucrative contracts because of this sort of client behaviour and I don't regret that at all. Your clients aren't, and never will be in control of you, you're there because they need you and they should treat you with the respect an engineer with your day rate has earned.. shrug Generally, this sort of attitude has been accepted in every contract I've had in london in the last 5 years or so.. The secret is to get this point across very soon after, or even before, starting the gig. Absolute confidence is probably rq too tho... edit: butterfingers

passiveincomelg 10y ago
Makes perfect sense, thanks. I think the situation here is very similar. Telling a contractor when and where to work can get the client in legal trouble ("Scheinselbstständigkeit", one of those lovely german words ;). How that works out in practice probably depends on the company. If you work a gig at Siemens it might be different than at a startup (that is funded well enough to afford freelancers). I only have experience with two big corps so far (keep coming back to the second one ;), but I've seen quite a few contractors at both and some of them were just plain flaky. That of course makes it worse for all of us as well, wrt to clients tolerance for things like remote work, etc.
- cyberpunk 10y ago
  Hmm. I'll be in Berlin next week (I missed Nikolaus and I have some belated shoes to fill; failing that though definately again around silvester) If you're up for a beer or sixteen on me, I'd really find the insider scoop useful on a more personal medium; I'm sure we could probably both get something from it, at least the worst would be a lot of free beer! You can find me on freenode as 'cyb3rpunk' (inside a shiny new irssi in some tmux somewhere so might take me a while to respond) if you're up for it -- otherwise, prost!
  - passiveincomelg 10y ago
    Totally up for it! Will ping you on irc.