12 ms·

Fucking Sue Me (2011)

295 points by quickthrower2 9y ago

dang 9y ago
An unusually dense thread history: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Fucking%20Sue%20Me&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Fucking%20Sue%20Me&sort=byDate....
libeclipse 9y ago
> I’m not sure what the lesson is here. Aha, I laughed out loud. I love this guy.
- rc_kas 9y ago
  I did enjoy that ending. Everyone always seems to force a neat tidy conclusion to their writing.
TwelveNights 9y ago
I really like the writing style in this post, so I went to check on some other posts he had made. He seems to be a pretty nice guy overall! This one was particularly fun to read: http://pud.com/post/65374847162/how-i-deal-with-users-who-steal http://pud.com/post/65374847162/how-i-deal-with-users-who-st...
pram 9y ago
Is this the same Pud who created Fucked Company? Guy is a legend!
- gonzo 9y ago
  The same. Edit: he has an account on HN. Username is obvious.
  - aidos 9y ago
    And I have seen him post for a while. I'm going to assume he's busy.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- pud 9y ago
  Aw shucks.
  - harel 9y ago
    I was living in San Francisco when Fucked Company was very relevant. Was a regular reader (unpaid, sorry). I'd say these days there is a place for a comeback...
igitur 9y ago
Epitome of survivor bias. Those who failed by taking on too much risk aren't here to tell their story.
- bkanber 9y ago
  What, they died or something? And now can't tell their story? That isn't survivorship bias at all. You can fail and still tell your story.
  - eternauta3k 9y ago
    Is it possible the terms of a settlement prevent them from posting the story of their failure here?
    - nradov 9y ago
      I've seen a number of people posting comments here that violate settlement confidentiality or non-disparagement agreements using anonymous throwaway accounts.
  - jhasse 9y ago
    They may be too ashamed to tell their story.
    - closed 9y ago
      Or because of the acute pain of losing be more likely to tell their story. I guess whichever side gets this wrong is exhibiting survivorship bias bias.
  - notalawyer 9y ago
    But overall, most failed business owners don't whine on the internet.
  - peacetreefrog 9y ago
    Great response. And people do tell it, there are a ton of "why my startup failed" articles on HN all the time.
herrkanin 9y ago
This could just as well have been a blog post about what strategies he used to win the lottery. If anything would have gone wrong, the lesson learned would have been quite different.
- ballenf 9y ago
  If being successful in business was a 1-in-a-trillion random chance then yes. If success in business depends on taking certain risks and understanding which ones are worth taking, then no, I disagree. That doesn't mean that this approach is the one single ingredient needed for success, of course.
  - ryandrake 9y ago
    OK, then this is more like "I once walked across a busy street without waiting for the crosswalk signal, and I did not get hit by a car. So a good strategy is to just go, you won't get hit!"
quanticle 9y ago
“But what if something happens?? What if the site crashes? What if I’m late? What if..??” “Do you think any of that stuff is going to happen?” he asked. “Probably not. But what if it does?” “Then you know what you do?” he said. “Tell them, ‘fucking sue me.’” This is dangerous advice. It will work well right up until you come across someone who will "fucking sue you". A contract, once signed, is a legally binding promise. You have promised to deliver what's on the contract, and you can be held accountable in a court of law if you fail to do so. The financial penalties for violating a signed contract can easily drive one into bankruptcy, and the reputational penalties can make it very hard to recover.
- alansammarone 9y ago
  Not only that, but there is also something morally very questionable about making promises and don't giving a sh*t about whether you'll be able to deliver or not. This a wrong attitude in its moral and legal aspects, and I think it tells us something about the very worrying ethical aspects of today's (or maybe it was always like that) startup environment.
  - quanticle 9y ago
    I think it tells us more about the ethical system of the OP's father. There are some people for whom "everything is negotiable". These people will make promises and then try to renegotiate their price before they deliver, betting that you need them more than they need you. This doesn't always work. Heck, I'm not even sure it even works in a majority of cases. However, when it does work, it can pay off extremely well. Thus, thanks to survivorship and availability biases, it may seem like the majority of startup founders are ethical degenerates, when in reality, it's a minority that happens to be overrepresented in the tiny subgroup of startup founders who become successful enough to become household names.
  - tluyben2 9y ago
    > but there is also something morally very questionable about making promises That really depends; some company's legal department might go overboard with the stuff they make you sign 'or no deal'. I have seen a lot of them myself. It is comparable to job ads; 'wanted, junior with 40 years experience in React and every other tech ever invented'. Lawyers just want/need to cover ever eventuality. If you sign that doesn't mean you broke your promise; it's just how it works. If you don't sign this kind of contract you might never get this kind of work. Maybe it works different in different parts of the world, but we signed some crazy things (which were dealbreakers if not signed) in the past and no-one ever sued us for it ; it's just their legal department making sure the company is protected in the event of malice. Nothing to do with morals. It depends a lot about the case though and reading Pud (who is a known shoot from the hip guy), I would say as worded here it's generally bad advice to do it like that.
ktta 9y ago
I remember reading something here on HN. I'm paraphrasing: Contracts aren't there for when things are going smoothly, they are there to save your ass when things go wrong.
shalmanese 9y ago
There are two primary purposes for a contract: 1. Laying out legal remedies in cases of breach of contract 2. As a formalized negotiation tool to make sure both parties are on the same page People focus on #1 but overwhelmingly, the utility for a contract comes from #2. In cases where business deals go sour, actual malice is a far trailing cause to misunderstanding and contract negotiations are a best faith effort to avoid this as much as possible.
mxstbr 9y ago
Has the author ever heard of survivorship bias? And confirmation bias? I wonder if they still haven't gotten sued...
- omginternets 9y ago
  His last sentence suggests he does.
dtech 9y ago
> This lesson in total disregard for risk served me well. > They say entrepreneurs are risk takers. > I think of myself as too lazy and irresponsible to fully understand the risk. What is the difference? He took fairly large risks and they paid off, the situation could have been different, but engineers working 80 hours/week to pay off debt don't usually write blog posts about how they came to be there.
erikb 9y ago
The thing is it only needs one small problem that you are not able to cover and you're out. A few are lucky and make it for a long time, most aren't. The true sucess comes from being able to handle such kind of problems not from never thinking about them.
frigen 9y ago
I read my contracts. I make a risk assessment. I weigh it against likelihood. I rarely question clients contracts unless they fuck with the payment terms, or unless they impose unreasonable work guarantees. Almost nothing else matters in a contract. If the contract is unreasonable I don't hestitate to say "this bit isn't practical". If they don't agree to adjust to fair and reasonable terms I drop the client/contract. I really hate working for companies who impose exploitative terms because they hold the more powerful position in the relationship. I'd rather tell em to go elsewhere.
wheelerwj 9y ago
In my experience with sending/receiving/signing contracts, I think they are pretty ineffective if you use them solely and entirely as a derisking tool. This is because there are many mechanism that one side can use to inflict pain to the other side and no contract can protect against all of it. This is why binding arbitration is a thing. But as an entrepreneur, I use contracts as a way to set expectations early on in the relationship. Our side agrees to do X, your side agrees to Y, this is when we agree to do it, and lets mitigate some basic and common miscommunication. The excessive legal back and forth for small businesses and mostly friendly deals is probably unnecessary in a lot of situations, but failure to effectively communicate expectations is a killer, because a client can decide not to pay and tell you to "fucking sue me."
throwaway613834 9y ago
> They say entrepreneurs are risk takers. I think of myself as too lazy and irresponsible to fully understand the risk. It works for me. > I’m not sure what the lesson is here. I guess the lesson is entrepreneurs make progress by recklessly disregarding the risks they take with other people's lives and money, and they keep doing it because it works for them and that's all that matters to them.
wyclif 9y ago
I've always thought of this as pud's greatest post. It's still a good read six years later.
penguat 9y ago
Case a: you're expecting to do ongoing business, do well, and both benefit. wrangling contract is not good for you, beyond a basic level. Make sure you're on the same page, and hooray. Case b: This is a one-time deal, they have no reason to care. be more careful. I am in no way an expert, but looking at the incentives the other side of the negotiating table is surely more important (and way cheaper and quicker) than lawyering up a contract?
matthew349hall 9y ago
Love this.
cmurf 9y ago
The same year this was written, I received a contract to sign right in the middle of work. Oh oopsie! We meant to have you sign this before getting started! It was not an ordinary one page bi-directional NDA, or terms of service, or non-compete. It was a five page sprawling pile of crap: me indemnifying a multi-billion dollar company, a non-compete worded in a way that on strict reading I'd have no other customers, they own all IP conceived, produced, or derived. I redlined pretty much four pages of the five page contract, and sent it back. That triggered an hour with their in-house lawyer were I proceeded to call the contract idiotic nonsense. Basically it was an hour of me saying, go fuck yourselves, because the contract wouldn't have let me say fucking sue me. It would have let me say uncle no matter what. It was that much of a one-way contract. In retrospect, upon receiving the contract, it's clear it was gross incompetency and also possibly intended to scuttle the work in-progress and take ownership of what had been produced so far. It was a vindictive contract. What I should have done, is publish the work with a sane research/education license (non-commercial), and published this stupid contract and outed the company and thrown them under the goddamn bus for trying to push me under one first. Dicks. 6 years later and that's what I regret not doing.
- i_am_nomad 9y ago
  You should put those regrets to bed and feel better that you actually did the smart thing. Throwing that company under the bus could have opened up a legal nightmare that you'd still be contending with today.
CalChris 9y ago
“It says I’m personally liable if anything goes wrong!” That is exactly why you incorporate. And there are folks who will come after you personally if you don't pay them what you owe them. They're called the government. Dad's bad advice won't get you out of that one. You think he'd spent enough on lawyers that he'd have gotten that advice at some point.
tyingq 9y ago
I would argue for something in the middle. Big companies put all sorts of unsavory clauses in that you might want to negotiate. Indemnity for millions of dollars, for example. At the very least, you would want to know what the additional insurance to provide that would cost and negotiate the pricing. Or, non-compete clauses that keep you from selling to customers in the same space. So, yeah, don't nitpick everything, but don't sign a blank check either.
glbrew 9y ago
I think this relates to an important concept which is the difference between thinking as an individual and a corporation. If an individual breaks the law (feloniously) or gets sued he probably f'ed up pretty bad. However even your most well managed and proper corporation is probably breaking more laws than you could ever count. When running a company you have to have a different mindset than as a individual when it comes to the law.
pavel_lishin 9y ago
> Then there was the time I wanted to hire my first full time employee. I was apprehensive to do it because I only had enough money to pay him for 2 months, unless I got another client fast. > “Worry about that in 2 months,” Dad said. Gosh, and people wonder why tech employees seem disinclined to be loyal to companies.
- 0x6c6f6c 9y ago
  Suppose he was forward about that though; anyone interviewing he would let them know and it'd be all the more important to make a positive impact in order to secure your job. Especially if you liked it or generally have a go-getter attitude, you'd want to enable the company to do better and get another client.
  - EGreg 9y ago
    That's not the point. Suppose a tech employee was forward and said she has a startup that takes up 20 hours a week for her and she might leave if she got funding? Because these days, many do. Far better imho than the world of Full Time Employment and its endless office politics and keeping up of appearances. No need to ask for permission to work on a project or give more attention to your own family.
  - pavel_lishin 9y ago
    I'm not sure how that changes my loyalty equation. I might work harder than I would otherwise, but I'm still not loyal. If I work hard and we don't get a client, I'm still not going to stick around if they stop paying me.
Animats 9y ago
"It says I’m personally liable if anything goes wrong!" Things like that are really bad to sign. You can end up with no business and a collection agency taking a cut of your salary for years.
dkural 9y ago
For investment terms, I've come to believe every term matters quite a bit. There is a good chance you'll eventually have a down round, or IPO under your last rounds price; when all these terms will catch up with you. Time kills all deals though, and NOT getting the deal done imho is a big risk factor. So an imperfect contract is better than no contract..
gravypod 9y ago
This is some bad advice because there are people who will "Fucking sue [you]". If you want to learn about how a professional deals with contracts, payments, and contracting I'd say to check out "Fuck you. Pay me" [0] that gives a reasoned explanation of negotiations, what to expect, and reasonable ways to react/behave. [0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U
SimonPStevens 9y ago
I don't quite know how to feel about this. On the one hand, I actually did something similar to his second story. I hired two full time employees with only enough cash for a short period of time. I relied on finding more clients to stay afloat. It didn't work out well in the end for me. On the other hand, at no point during that process did I ever consider myself "too lazy to understand the risks". I don't think that's a good trait. I considered the risks and knew exactly what I was getting in to. I had backup plans and exit strategies. It was a calculated and considered risk that I decided was worth taking. I also decided that I was OK with the worst case scenario outcome. Not knowing the risks is foolhardy. Knowing the risks, and making the conscious decision that some risks are worth taking is a different thing entirely. (On the other hand, I failed, he succeeded, so full respect too him for making it work. Maybe his strategy is better after all. Maybe along the way there was a risk I consciously choose not to take that he would have blindly taken that would have changed the outcome for me. And there were limits for me. I was prepared to risk losing cash savings, but not my home, and I wasn't prepared to go into debt to make it work)
devdad 9y ago
For those of you that have signed with assholes. If you were able to drop them, how did you do it? I have a client I want to drop, but they're locked in into our development routines and it would probably cost them for us to hand it over to another firm. If another firm would take them. The one's I know that would take them can't handle the complexity of the app's environment and can't code.
- marklyon 9y ago
  Why is it your responsibility to find them a new vendor? Tell them when you'll stop servicing their account and offer to take reasonable steps to transfer the work to the new vendor of their choice.
  - devdad 9y ago
    It isn't. But, they're assholes, have no understanding of the work that has been done (substantial) and if we quit on them it could have really negative results on their business. Which could lead to legal action.
- cerberusss 9y ago
  Increase your price substantially.
  - devdad 9y ago
    On it! :)
anon_dev_123456 9y ago
Wow what a stupid article. Follow this advice if you want to end up destitute. You can make a great living without a being a complete retard and taking needless mistakes. The advice is retarded.
fred_is_fred 9y ago
Survivor bias in full effect.
Ironchefpython 9y ago
> I’m not sure what the lesson is here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
SKYRHO_ 9y ago
Can I get a "Huzzah" here, now that's the spirit!
chasd00 9y ago
the door swings both ways, I've seen small business completely ripped off by big business with a good ole' "fuck you sue me". One was an independent pharmacy, I was writing A/R software for them and couldn't get some math to work out. Turns out an insurance carrier was ripping them off in a complicated reimbursement formula for a prescription drugs. The carrier basically told them "that's what you're going to get, sue us". It was cheaper for the pharmacy to just accept the lower reimbursement than try to go toe-to-toe with the carrier in court.
timbutlerau 9y ago
This is where professional indemnity insurance is invaluable. It will provide you with cover for mistakes as well as alleged negligence. Sometimes even when you're right, the legal costs to defend yourself are just as high as being guilty. In Australia, it'll cost around the $1k/year mark for a smaller agency but absolutely worth it.
mathattack 9y ago
I find this attitude to be correct for small companies. There are 100 things that can go wrong, so worrying about the 1% edge case is wrong. As companies grow, multiply the 1% edge case times dozens, or hundreds of clients and projects, and it becomes much more important. I've been at companies who fight every contract tooth and nail, and companies who are much more relaxed. It's the large companies who (rightfully) have more to worry about in terms of law suits. Legal risk is like any other. (Running out of cash is another) You just have to figure out which ones to protect against at which time. As they say in financial markets, "If you hedge away all the risks, you aren't left with any returns"

295 points by quickthrower2 9y ago

dang 9y ago

An unusually dense thread history: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Fucking%20Sue%20Me&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Fucking%20Sue%20Me&sort=byDate....

libeclipse 9y ago

> I’m not sure what the lesson is here. Aha, I laughed out loud. I love this guy.

rc_kas 9y ago
I did enjoy that ending. Everyone always seems to force a neat tidy conclusion to their writing.

TwelveNights 9y ago

I really like the writing style in this post, so I went to check on some other posts he had made. He seems to be a pretty nice guy overall! This one was particularly fun to read: http://pud.com/post/65374847162/how-i-deal-with-users-who-steal http://pud.com/post/65374847162/how-i-deal-with-users-who-st...

pram 9y ago

Is this the same Pud who created Fucked Company? Guy is a legend!

gonzo 9y ago
The same. Edit: he has an account on HN. Username is obvious.
- aidos 9y ago
  And I have seen him post for a while. I'm going to assume he's busy.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
pud 9y ago
Aw shucks.
- harel 9y ago
  I was living in San Francisco when Fucked Company was very relevant. Was a regular reader (unpaid, sorry). I'd say these days there is a place for a comeback...

igitur 9y ago

Epitome of survivor bias. Those who failed by taking on too much risk aren't here to tell their story.

bkanber 9y ago
What, they died or something? And now can't tell their story? That isn't survivorship bias at all. You can fail and still tell your story.
- eternauta3k 9y ago
  Is it possible the terms of a settlement prevent them from posting the story of their failure here?
  - nradov 9y ago
    I've seen a number of people posting comments here that violate settlement confidentiality or non-disparagement agreements using anonymous throwaway accounts.
- jhasse 9y ago
  They may be too ashamed to tell their story.
  - closed 9y ago
    Or because of the acute pain of losing be more likely to tell their story. I guess whichever side gets this wrong is exhibiting survivorship bias bias.
- notalawyer 9y ago
  But overall, most failed business owners don't whine on the internet.
- peacetreefrog 9y ago
  Great response. And people do tell it, there are a ton of "why my startup failed" articles on HN all the time.

herrkanin 9y ago

This could just as well have been a blog post about what strategies he used to win the lottery. If anything would have gone wrong, the lesson learned would have been quite different.

ballenf 9y ago
If being successful in business was a 1-in-a-trillion random chance then yes. If success in business depends on taking certain risks and understanding which ones are worth taking, then no, I disagree. That doesn't mean that this approach is the one single ingredient needed for success, of course.
- ryandrake 9y ago
  OK, then this is more like "I once walked across a busy street without waiting for the crosswalk signal, and I did not get hit by a car. So a good strategy is to just go, you won't get hit!"

quanticle 9y ago

“But what if something happens?? What if the site crashes? What if I’m late? What if..??” “Do you think any of that stuff is going to happen?” he asked. “Probably not. But what if it does?” “Then you know what you do?” he said. “Tell them, ‘fucking sue me.’” This is dangerous advice. It will work well right up until you come across someone who will "fucking sue you". A contract, once signed, is a legally binding promise. You have promised to deliver what's on the contract, and you can be held accountable in a court of law if you fail to do so. The financial penalties for violating a signed contract can easily drive one into bankruptcy, and the reputational penalties can make it very hard to recover.

alansammarone 9y ago
Not only that, but there is also something morally very questionable about making promises and don't giving a sh*t about whether you'll be able to deliver or not. This a wrong attitude in its moral and legal aspects, and I think it tells us something about the very worrying ethical aspects of today's (or maybe it was always like that) startup environment.
- quanticle 9y ago
  I think it tells us more about the ethical system of the OP's father. There are some people for whom "everything is negotiable". These people will make promises and then try to renegotiate their price before they deliver, betting that you need them more than they need you. This doesn't always work. Heck, I'm not even sure it even works in a majority of cases. However, when it does work, it can pay off extremely well. Thus, thanks to survivorship and availability biases, it may seem like the majority of startup founders are ethical degenerates, when in reality, it's a minority that happens to be overrepresented in the tiny subgroup of startup founders who become successful enough to become household names.
- tluyben2 9y ago
  > but there is also something morally very questionable about making promises That really depends; some company's legal department might go overboard with the stuff they make you sign 'or no deal'. I have seen a lot of them myself. It is comparable to job ads; 'wanted, junior with 40 years experience in React and every other tech ever invented'. Lawyers just want/need to cover ever eventuality. If you sign that doesn't mean you broke your promise; it's just how it works. If you don't sign this kind of contract you might never get this kind of work. Maybe it works different in different parts of the world, but we signed some crazy things (which were dealbreakers if not signed) in the past and no-one ever sued us for it ; it's just their legal department making sure the company is protected in the event of malice. Nothing to do with morals. It depends a lot about the case though and reading Pud (who is a known shoot from the hip guy), I would say as worded here it's generally bad advice to do it like that.

ktta 9y ago

I remember reading something here on HN. I'm paraphrasing: Contracts aren't there for when things are going smoothly, they are there to save your ass when things go wrong.

shalmanese 9y ago

There are two primary purposes for a contract: 1. Laying out legal remedies in cases of breach of contract 2. As a formalized negotiation tool to make sure both parties are on the same page People focus on #1 but overwhelmingly, the utility for a contract comes from #2. In cases where business deals go sour, actual malice is a far trailing cause to misunderstanding and contract negotiations are a best faith effort to avoid this as much as possible.

mxstbr 9y ago

Has the author ever heard of survivorship bias? And confirmation bias? I wonder if they still haven't gotten sued...

omginternets 9y ago
His last sentence suggests he does.

dtech 9y ago

> This lesson in total disregard for risk served me well. > They say entrepreneurs are risk takers. > I think of myself as too lazy and irresponsible to fully understand the risk. What is the difference? He took fairly large risks and they paid off, the situation could have been different, but engineers working 80 hours/week to pay off debt don't usually write blog posts about how they came to be there.

erikb 9y ago

The thing is it only needs one small problem that you are not able to cover and you're out. A few are lucky and make it for a long time, most aren't. The true sucess comes from being able to handle such kind of problems not from never thinking about them.

frigen 9y ago

I read my contracts. I make a risk assessment. I weigh it against likelihood. I rarely question clients contracts unless they fuck with the payment terms, or unless they impose unreasonable work guarantees. Almost nothing else matters in a contract. If the contract is unreasonable I don't hestitate to say "this bit isn't practical". If they don't agree to adjust to fair and reasonable terms I drop the client/contract. I really hate working for companies who impose exploitative terms because they hold the more powerful position in the relationship. I'd rather tell em to go elsewhere.

wheelerwj 9y ago

In my experience with sending/receiving/signing contracts, I think they are pretty ineffective if you use them solely and entirely as a derisking tool. This is because there are many mechanism that one side can use to inflict pain to the other side and no contract can protect against all of it. This is why binding arbitration is a thing. But as an entrepreneur, I use contracts as a way to set expectations early on in the relationship. Our side agrees to do X, your side agrees to Y, this is when we agree to do it, and lets mitigate some basic and common miscommunication. The excessive legal back and forth for small businesses and mostly friendly deals is probably unnecessary in a lot of situations, but failure to effectively communicate expectations is a killer, because a client can decide not to pay and tell you to "fucking sue me."

throwaway613834 9y ago

> They say entrepreneurs are risk takers. I think of myself as too lazy and irresponsible to fully understand the risk. It works for me. > I’m not sure what the lesson is here. I guess the lesson is entrepreneurs make progress by recklessly disregarding the risks they take with other people's lives and money, and they keep doing it because it works for them and that's all that matters to them.

wyclif 9y ago

I've always thought of this as pud's greatest post. It's still a good read six years later.

penguat 9y ago

Case a: you're expecting to do ongoing business, do well, and both benefit. wrangling contract is not good for you, beyond a basic level. Make sure you're on the same page, and hooray. Case b: This is a one-time deal, they have no reason to care. be more careful. I am in no way an expert, but looking at the incentives the other side of the negotiating table is surely more important (and way cheaper and quicker) than lawyering up a contract?

matthew349hall 9y ago

Love this.

cmurf 9y ago

The same year this was written, I received a contract to sign right in the middle of work. Oh oopsie! We meant to have you sign this before getting started! It was not an ordinary one page bi-directional NDA, or terms of service, or non-compete. It was a five page sprawling pile of crap: me indemnifying a multi-billion dollar company, a non-compete worded in a way that on strict reading I'd have no other customers, they own all IP conceived, produced, or derived. I redlined pretty much four pages of the five page contract, and sent it back. That triggered an hour with their in-house lawyer were I proceeded to call the contract idiotic nonsense. Basically it was an hour of me saying, go fuck yourselves, because the contract wouldn't have let me say fucking sue me. It would have let me say uncle no matter what. It was that much of a one-way contract. In retrospect, upon receiving the contract, it's clear it was gross incompetency and also possibly intended to scuttle the work in-progress and take ownership of what had been produced so far. It was a vindictive contract. What I should have done, is publish the work with a sane research/education license (non-commercial), and published this stupid contract and outed the company and thrown them under the goddamn bus for trying to push me under one first. Dicks. 6 years later and that's what I regret not doing.

i_am_nomad 9y ago
You should put those regrets to bed and feel better that you actually did the smart thing. Throwing that company under the bus could have opened up a legal nightmare that you'd still be contending with today.

CalChris 9y ago

“It says I’m personally liable if anything goes wrong!” That is exactly why you incorporate. And there are folks who will come after you personally if you don't pay them what you owe them. They're called the government. Dad's bad advice won't get you out of that one. You think he'd spent enough on lawyers that he'd have gotten that advice at some point.

tyingq 9y ago

I would argue for something in the middle. Big companies put all sorts of unsavory clauses in that you might want to negotiate. Indemnity for millions of dollars, for example. At the very least, you would want to know what the additional insurance to provide that would cost and negotiate the pricing. Or, non-compete clauses that keep you from selling to customers in the same space. So, yeah, don't nitpick everything, but don't sign a blank check either.

glbrew 9y ago

I think this relates to an important concept which is the difference between thinking as an individual and a corporation. If an individual breaks the law (feloniously) or gets sued he probably f'ed up pretty bad. However even your most well managed and proper corporation is probably breaking more laws than you could ever count. When running a company you have to have a different mindset than as a individual when it comes to the law.

pavel_lishin 9y ago

> Then there was the time I wanted to hire my first full time employee. I was apprehensive to do it because I only had enough money to pay him for 2 months, unless I got another client fast. > “Worry about that in 2 months,” Dad said. Gosh, and people wonder why tech employees seem disinclined to be loyal to companies.

0x6c6f6c 9y ago
Suppose he was forward about that though; anyone interviewing he would let them know and it'd be all the more important to make a positive impact in order to secure your job. Especially if you liked it or generally have a go-getter attitude, you'd want to enable the company to do better and get another client.
- EGreg 9y ago
  That's not the point. Suppose a tech employee was forward and said she has a startup that takes up 20 hours a week for her and she might leave if she got funding? Because these days, many do. Far better imho than the world of Full Time Employment and its endless office politics and keeping up of appearances. No need to ask for permission to work on a project or give more attention to your own family.
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  I'm not sure how that changes my loyalty equation. I might work harder than I would otherwise, but I'm still not loyal. If I work hard and we don't get a client, I'm still not going to stick around if they stop paying me.

Animats 9y ago

"It says I’m personally liable if anything goes wrong!" Things like that are really bad to sign. You can end up with no business and a collection agency taking a cut of your salary for years.

dkural 9y ago

For investment terms, I've come to believe every term matters quite a bit. There is a good chance you'll eventually have a down round, or IPO under your last rounds price; when all these terms will catch up with you. Time kills all deals though, and NOT getting the deal done imho is a big risk factor. So an imperfect contract is better than no contract..

gravypod 9y ago

This is some bad advice because there are people who will "Fucking sue [you]". If you want to learn about how a professional deals with contracts, payments, and contracting I'd say to check out "Fuck you. Pay me" [0] that gives a reasoned explanation of negotiations, what to expect, and reasonable ways to react/behave. [0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U

SimonPStevens 9y ago

I don't quite know how to feel about this. On the one hand, I actually did something similar to his second story. I hired two full time employees with only enough cash for a short period of time. I relied on finding more clients to stay afloat. It didn't work out well in the end for me. On the other hand, at no point during that process did I ever consider myself "too lazy to understand the risks". I don't think that's a good trait. I considered the risks and knew exactly what I was getting in to. I had backup plans and exit strategies. It was a calculated and considered risk that I decided was worth taking. I also decided that I was OK with the worst case scenario outcome. Not knowing the risks is foolhardy. Knowing the risks, and making the conscious decision that some risks are worth taking is a different thing entirely. (On the other hand, I failed, he succeeded, so full respect too him for making it work. Maybe his strategy is better after all. Maybe along the way there was a risk I consciously choose not to take that he would have blindly taken that would have changed the outcome for me. And there were limits for me. I was prepared to risk losing cash savings, but not my home, and I wasn't prepared to go into debt to make it work)

devdad 9y ago

For those of you that have signed with assholes. If you were able to drop them, how did you do it? I have a client I want to drop, but they're locked in into our development routines and it would probably cost them for us to hand it over to another firm. If another firm would take them. The one's I know that would take them can't handle the complexity of the app's environment and can't code.

marklyon 9y ago
Why is it your responsibility to find them a new vendor? Tell them when you'll stop servicing their account and offer to take reasonable steps to transfer the work to the new vendor of their choice.
- devdad 9y ago
  It isn't. But, they're assholes, have no understanding of the work that has been done (substantial) and if we quit on them it could have really negative results on their business. Which could lead to legal action.
cerberusss 9y ago
Increase your price substantially.
- devdad 9y ago
  On it! :)

anon_dev_123456 9y ago

Wow what a stupid article. Follow this advice if you want to end up destitute. You can make a great living without a being a complete retard and taking needless mistakes. The advice is retarded.

fred_is_fred 9y ago

Survivor bias in full effect.

Ironchefpython 9y ago

> I’m not sure what the lesson is here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

SKYRHO_ 9y ago

Can I get a "Huzzah" here, now that's the spirit!

chasd00 9y ago

the door swings both ways, I've seen small business completely ripped off by big business with a good ole' "fuck you sue me". One was an independent pharmacy, I was writing A/R software for them and couldn't get some math to work out. Turns out an insurance carrier was ripping them off in a complicated reimbursement formula for a prescription drugs. The carrier basically told them "that's what you're going to get, sue us". It was cheaper for the pharmacy to just accept the lower reimbursement than try to go toe-to-toe with the carrier in court.

timbutlerau 9y ago

This is where professional indemnity insurance is invaluable. It will provide you with cover for mistakes as well as alleged negligence. Sometimes even when you're right, the legal costs to defend yourself are just as high as being guilty. In Australia, it'll cost around the $1k/year mark for a smaller agency but absolutely worth it.

mathattack 9y ago

I find this attitude to be correct for small companies. There are 100 things that can go wrong, so worrying about the 1% edge case is wrong. As companies grow, multiply the 1% edge case times dozens, or hundreds of clients and projects, and it becomes much more important. I've been at companies who fight every contract tooth and nail, and companies who are much more relaxed. It's the large companies who (rightfully) have more to worry about in terms of law suits. Legal risk is like any other. (Running out of cash is another) You just have to figure out which ones to protect against at which time. As they say in financial markets, "If you hedge away all the risks, you aren't left with any returns"