8 ms·

Client cheques that I rejected

141 points by janeboo 9y ago

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
wslh 9y ago
Great article. I have similar experiences in my market and many times I ended up pointing to a Crunchbase page to defend the budget. It is not by chance that companies like Uber and Spotify raised more than one billion. Even if the customer will spend only a fraction in software they are not understanding how much capital they need for their product. I am not saying that you cannot compete with Uber in a smarter way but if you only ask about an app then you are forgetting all the stuff that happens in the back office.
wpietri 9y ago
One of the best things about being independent: You can't tell everybody to fuck off, but you can tell anybody to fuck off. That's clearly great because then you don't end up doing dumb, pointless work because some executive said so. But the subtly great part is that clients get better results. They know they don't own you, that you have other options. So they have to take your advice seriously. They may not follow it, but they'll at least listen. Which, counterintuitively, means you'll have a lot less desire to actually tell people to fuck off than you would in a regular job.
- 52-6F-62 9y ago
  Lately, that just sounds like the dream.
- HumanDrivenDev 9y ago
  If you're a permanent employer, you usually can't flat out refuse, true. But I still think we have a responsibility as professionals to tell people why their ideas are shit - politely. management: "I want an app that does A to solve business problem B" programmer: "If you want to solve B, you're better off with an app that does C. If you do A you'll run into problems X, Y, and Z. I can do A but i strongly advise against it" Far too many programmers just go ahead and do the first idea and then it inevitably falls apart, because they're too scared to act like professionals and give their own professional recommendations.
  - stronglikedan 9y ago
    Probably because far too many managers will blame the programmer for any failures that result from following the recommendations, no matter how tangential, while simultaneously taking the credit for any successes.
  - cosmie 9y ago
    I think one of the more fundamental issues is the programmers access to that conversation itself. I’ve seen this scenario be far more common when developers try to get business context : Management: “I want an app that does A.” Programmer: “Alrighty. Can you give me more details on why you want that app and what you’re hoping to achieve?” Management: “No. Now how long will it take to get App A out the door? Executive Foo said he wanted app A, so we need to give it to him ASAP.” Programmer feels satisfies they’ve at least tried, and any screwups are managements fault. Scrambles to get App A out the door. Management comes back with feedback Manager: “What is this? This isn’t what we asked for. It doesn’t even remotely address Business Problem B and now Executive Foo is on the warpath after championing this project and looking like a fool!” Management finds a way to convince Executive Foo it was all the overpaid, useless developers that screwed up and reinforces the stereotype of IT being an untrustworthy and frustrating blackhole of a cost center. Management saves face and they pay a consultant to do it. The programmer is left dizzied by the sudden political flak they were just blindsided by.
    - HumanDrivenDev 9y ago
      Ha! I'll take your word for it. Makes me think I would not last long at all in that kind of workplace, as I'd go right over managers head to executive foo with evidence if he pulled that on me.
      - cosmie 9y ago
        I've only worked in a place like that twice. Once (a large company), I didn't last long. In the other (a growing company), the blame-shifting and credit-stealing politics and the people who brought them in didn't last long. In that situation, it's really a lose-lose for the developer. If they go over their manager's head, they've just made a very unfortunate enemy. And as the manager has more rapport and access to the executive, it's likely going to wind up fruitless as the manager finagles doubt into your evidence (by leaning on that existing relationship and handwaving misunderstandings and referencing non-existent verbal conversations into the points of contention that you raised). And if they don't go over the manager's head, they now have an internal reputation for incompetence that'll negatively impact the rest of their time at that employer. So they're screwed either way. At that point it's better to just leave rather than make waves. If you make waves they can come back to drown you later on during your career or job search. If you leave with little ado it stays more compartmentalized to that toxic environment.
- lisper 9y ago
  Telling people to fuck off sucks. But being able to tell people to fuck off is awesome. There's an analogous aphorism: it's not working that sucks, it's having to work that sucks.
  - 0xWilliam 9y ago
    Except we're inherently idle creatures. So while you may be right in some silly marxian sense. 90% of us would do nothing until forced to due to biological needs.
    - lisper 9y ago
      That might be true of the population in general, but I doubt it's true of the kind of person who hangs out on HN. Even among the population in general, I don't think people enjoy being idle for long. We're curious creatures. We seek out novelty and challenges, and we don't like to feel useless.
    - wpietri 9y ago
      I think you're entirely wrong. There's a great bit in Johnstone's Impro where he has people paint simple pictures, and then shows them the work of others. The people exclaim at how bold, how creative the shown work is compared with theirs. The difference is that the old paintings are by kids, and the new ones are by adults. His point is that kids have a natural creativity that gets trained out of them over time. One can get that back. (In his case, he helps people get it back through improvisational theater classes. They work!) 90% of people have been forced to do things most of their lives. First through an industrial-age education system, then by employers running organizations designed to maximize compliance, not initiative, creativity, or agency. It's no wonder they have lost the joy of creation. Tech for me was the ticket out of work like that. It took me years to work through my resentment. But now for me there's a joy in creation, a joy in service that doesn't match anything I can get with mere consumption-oriented entertainment. My nephew has been in a Montessori program since kindergarten, and he's far from inherently idle. He loves learning. He loves creation. We all do, deep down, if we're half encouraged in it.
    - EliRivers 9y ago
edraferi 9y ago
Thoughtful article highlighting common pitfalls of rookie app ideas.
iopuy 9y ago
"you want a clone for eBay/Facebook/Amazon? You realize they have teams of many thousands of people working on code bases over 15 years old right? And you think a single person, me, is going to be able to replicate that in 3 months?"
- ben_jones 9y ago
  Relevant XKCD [1]. It's the one about identifying birds. https://xkcd.com/1425/ https://xkcd.com/1425/
  - bastijn 9y ago
    The proof that even XKCD can go out of date. Now (soon) we just call a google image API :).
    - nighthawk454 9y ago
      Arguably, it's still relevant. It took about 5 years for suitable image recognition apis to come out. Although Flickr tried to get it done in about a month: http://code.flickr.net/2014/10/20/introducing-flickr-park-or-bird/ http://code.flickr.net/2014/10/20/introducing-flickr-park-or...
      - bastijn 9y ago
        When the API becomes common practice the xkcd is no longer relevant, yet it was correct (at time of writing). Unless educating on the difficulties of the past of course, then it would be relevant.
      - matte_black 9y ago
        I could have done it in a weekend with Mechanical Turk.
- spiderfarmer 9y ago
  Aargh, the memories of these frustrating meetings. I am so happy I am not developing for clients anymore.
gwbas1c 9y ago
Learning to tell idea people to pound sand was the hardest, and most expensive lesson, in my career. The crux of this article is that it's important to quickly identify and reject idea people. They just suck on your energy and waste your time going nowhere.
- jotm 9y ago
  Or, you know, make sure you get paid for your part of the work, and if they don't take your advice and fail, that's on them. They are developers, not investors, this article goes against common business sense.
  - smt88 9y ago
    I've discovered that a lot of "idea" people (no technical background, no deep connection to their target audience, often B2C products) don't end up paying once they fail. Yes, there's escrow and other options, but it can be incredibly time-consuming and/or reputation-harming to pursue those people, especially if they're skipping out on only the last payment or two.
  - gwbas1c 9y ago
    "Common business sense" is to choose your customers wisely when you have that kind of a business. A customer that requires a disproportionate higher amount of time is a poor choice to work with.
- optimuspaul 9y ago
  What do you mean by "idea people"? Because I consider myself an idea person, but I also make things and get things done. I'm afraid you are throwing the good out with the bad... unless you have some other idea of what idea people are... and maybe a better name for them that is less inclusive.
  - pdpi 9y ago
    "Idea people" to me suggests the sort of folks who think that the secret to success is having a killer idea nobody thought of before, and execution is something that will sort itself out. This goes double if they think that execution is something that can be outsourced.
dboreham 9y ago
In our consultancy we refer to this kind of situation by similarity to the Mad Man "Jai alai" episode (S3:E4)
gnicholas 9y ago
Note: this is not about cheques that were rejected from clients — it’s about clients that were rejected.
- gnicholas 9y ago
  I'm curious to know why this comment dropped from near the top of the page (2nd comment) to near the bottom (2nd-to-last). The points have consistently increased, so why would it drop? I purposely didn't write a "this title is misleading clickbait" comment, opting instead to describe what the blog post is actually about. I know a lot of people check the comments before reading an article (esp. from unknown blogs) so they can avoid wasting time if the article is not what they're looking for. Allowing this comment to stay at the top of the page would help people who are interested to know this.
  - dang 9y ago
    A moderator marked it off topic. It's not that you made a bad point, but it's not one that should be accumulating mass at the top of a thread, because it chokes out interesting discussion.
    - gnicholas 9y ago
      Thanks for the timely explanation. I would maintain that substantive comments that help people quickly understand what the article is about—and what it's not about—should be allowed to rise/fall organically. If people are +1'ing it, that means they found it helpful. Doesn't that tend to indicate that others might find it helpful also? I should say that if this down-weighting had happened simultaneous to a title change, I would feel differently. A better title would be: "Clients I Chose Not To Work With". To my ear, it's equally click-baity, but it has the benefit of accurately describing the post itself.
      - dang 9y ago
        I hear you, and of course we change titles like that all the time. I'm not quite over the line on this one though; the objection feels a bit pedantic to me and that's not how we moderate the front page. Also, the upvoting system isn't great for cases like this. There are certain qualities in comments that attract upvotes almost mechanically (indignation is another) and if we didn't moderate the threads, the result would be such comments at the top of every thread, and less interesting discussions. HN functions best not when it's entirely community-and-software driven, but when community, software, and moderators interact in feedback loops. Our goal is to help the community process coalesce into something more interesting than it would in a less complex system.
jimrandomh 9y ago
> It’s not cost-effective to build the app on all the platforms at once because it takes 3 times more effort to make a small change. We should start with just one and invest into others when the concept is proven to be successful.” There are multiple development toolsets that will let you do this, without tripling your effort. There are tradeoffs involved, but I think this request was more reasonable than this article presents it as.
- ksenzee 9y ago
  The article specifies that the customer didn't want a cross-platform framework: "I want the mobile apps in native to make sure the responsiveness of the app is good."
a_c 9y ago
"We want a [insert big name here] clone, how long does it take." is, in my experience, a good indicator to move on.
antonkm 9y ago
> I’ll eventually ask, “Which platform do you like to build on to start with?” > One client answer was: “All — Android, iOS and web. And I want the mobile apps in native to make sure the responsiveness of the app is good.” Maybe I'm misreading, but the client wanted a Yelpish kind of app. The right play, in my book, would be convincing the client that a React Native app would do. This is a really easy sell since that is actually what the client need. Maybe the author's team aren't yet familiar with RN. React Native is super snappy and is a great choice for MVPs. It's easy to develop, the reusability is really high between platforms and the price tag is usually quite low in comparison.
intrasight 9y ago
My opinion is that any client that is serious, is putting together a team, has a budget, and has real prospective customers is something I can get on board with. I personally don't have to like the idea or think that it's going to find a wider audience. Pretty much any billion dollar unicorn I would have looked at their elevator pitch and said "I don't like the idea and I don't think you are going to succeed".
BeetleB 9y ago
The photos in the article provided no value to the content. I know the common wisdom to get lots of page hits is to include fairly random pictures, but I do tire of them. To the point that I find myself unconsciously discounting the content because my brain automatically assumes the article is more about becoming more popular than providing useful content (and may have suppressed content that would be unpopular).
HumanDrivenDev 9y ago
I have to wonder why they wrote this article. I mean, it's a well written article, I enjoyed reading it. Great for a target audience of developers. But what will potential clients read when they see this? A company disclosing details of (possibly confidential?) meetings, talking about how stupid their ideas were. They don't name companies but they do give some very specific details - and HK isn't a huge market.
mankash666 9y ago
Why is an app agency judging the client's business model. If what the client is asking for is legal, and if the agency can deliver, I'd think it a win-win to make it happen. Specifically, they should have cloned Uber for their client, and let the markets decide.

141 points by janeboo 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

wslh 9y ago

Great article. I have similar experiences in my market and many times I ended up pointing to a Crunchbase page to defend the budget. It is not by chance that companies like Uber and Spotify raised more than one billion. Even if the customer will spend only a fraction in software they are not understanding how much capital they need for their product. I am not saying that you cannot compete with Uber in a smarter way but if you only ask about an app then you are forgetting all the stuff that happens in the back office.

wpietri 9y ago

One of the best things about being independent: You can't tell everybody to fuck off, but you can tell anybody to fuck off. That's clearly great because then you don't end up doing dumb, pointless work because some executive said so. But the subtly great part is that clients get better results. They know they don't own you, that you have other options. So they have to take your advice seriously. They may not follow it, but they'll at least listen. Which, counterintuitively, means you'll have a lot less desire to actually tell people to fuck off than you would in a regular job.

52-6F-62 9y ago
Lately, that just sounds like the dream.
HumanDrivenDev 9y ago
If you're a permanent employer, you usually can't flat out refuse, true. But I still think we have a responsibility as professionals to tell people why their ideas are shit - politely. management: "I want an app that does A to solve business problem B" programmer: "If you want to solve B, you're better off with an app that does C. If you do A you'll run into problems X, Y, and Z. I can do A but i strongly advise against it" Far too many programmers just go ahead and do the first idea and then it inevitably falls apart, because they're too scared to act like professionals and give their own professional recommendations.
- stronglikedan 9y ago
  Probably because far too many managers will blame the programmer for any failures that result from following the recommendations, no matter how tangential, while simultaneously taking the credit for any successes.
- cosmie 9y ago
  I think one of the more fundamental issues is the programmers access to that conversation itself. I’ve seen this scenario be far more common when developers try to get business context : Management: “I want an app that does A.” Programmer: “Alrighty. Can you give me more details on why you want that app and what you’re hoping to achieve?” Management: “No. Now how long will it take to get App A out the door? Executive Foo said he wanted app A, so we need to give it to him ASAP.” Programmer feels satisfies they’ve at least tried, and any screwups are managements fault. Scrambles to get App A out the door. Management comes back with feedback Manager: “What is this? This isn’t what we asked for. It doesn’t even remotely address Business Problem B and now Executive Foo is on the warpath after championing this project and looking like a fool!” Management finds a way to convince Executive Foo it was all the overpaid, useless developers that screwed up and reinforces the stereotype of IT being an untrustworthy and frustrating blackhole of a cost center. Management saves face and they pay a consultant to do it. The programmer is left dizzied by the sudden political flak they were just blindsided by.
  - HumanDrivenDev 9y ago
    Ha! I'll take your word for it. Makes me think I would not last long at all in that kind of workplace, as I'd go right over managers head to executive foo with evidence if he pulled that on me.
    - cosmie 9y ago
      I've only worked in a place like that twice. Once (a large company), I didn't last long. In the other (a growing company), the blame-shifting and credit-stealing politics and the people who brought them in didn't last long. In that situation, it's really a lose-lose for the developer. If they go over their manager's head, they've just made a very unfortunate enemy. And as the manager has more rapport and access to the executive, it's likely going to wind up fruitless as the manager finagles doubt into your evidence (by leaning on that existing relationship and handwaving misunderstandings and referencing non-existent verbal conversations into the points of contention that you raised). And if they don't go over the manager's head, they now have an internal reputation for incompetence that'll negatively impact the rest of their time at that employer. So they're screwed either way. At that point it's better to just leave rather than make waves. If you make waves they can come back to drown you later on during your career or job search. If you leave with little ado it stays more compartmentalized to that toxic environment.
lisper 9y ago
Telling people to fuck off sucks. But being able to tell people to fuck off is awesome. There's an analogous aphorism: it's not working that sucks, it's having to work that sucks.
- 0xWilliam 9y ago
  Except we're inherently idle creatures. So while you may be right in some silly marxian sense. 90% of us would do nothing until forced to due to biological needs.
  - lisper 9y ago
    That might be true of the population in general, but I doubt it's true of the kind of person who hangs out on HN. Even among the population in general, I don't think people enjoy being idle for long. We're curious creatures. We seek out novelty and challenges, and we don't like to feel useless.
  - wpietri 9y ago
    I think you're entirely wrong. There's a great bit in Johnstone's Impro where he has people paint simple pictures, and then shows them the work of others. The people exclaim at how bold, how creative the shown work is compared with theirs. The difference is that the old paintings are by kids, and the new ones are by adults. His point is that kids have a natural creativity that gets trained out of them over time. One can get that back. (In his case, he helps people get it back through improvisational theater classes. They work!) 90% of people have been forced to do things most of their lives. First through an industrial-age education system, then by employers running organizations designed to maximize compliance, not initiative, creativity, or agency. It's no wonder they have lost the joy of creation. Tech for me was the ticket out of work like that. It took me years to work through my resentment. But now for me there's a joy in creation, a joy in service that doesn't match anything I can get with mere consumption-oriented entertainment. My nephew has been in a Montessori program since kindergarten, and he's far from inherently idle. He loves learning. He loves creation. We all do, deep down, if we're half encouraged in it.
  - EliRivers 9y ago

edraferi 9y ago

Thoughtful article highlighting common pitfalls of rookie app ideas.

iopuy 9y ago

"you want a clone for eBay/Facebook/Amazon? You realize they have teams of many thousands of people working on code bases over 15 years old right? And you think a single person, me, is going to be able to replicate that in 3 months?"

ben_jones 9y ago
Relevant XKCD [1]. It's the one about identifying birds. https://xkcd.com/1425/ https://xkcd.com/1425/
- bastijn 9y ago
  The proof that even XKCD can go out of date. Now (soon) we just call a google image API :).
  - nighthawk454 9y ago
    Arguably, it's still relevant. It took about 5 years for suitable image recognition apis to come out. Although Flickr tried to get it done in about a month: http://code.flickr.net/2014/10/20/introducing-flickr-park-or-bird/ http://code.flickr.net/2014/10/20/introducing-flickr-park-or...
    - bastijn 9y ago
      When the API becomes common practice the xkcd is no longer relevant, yet it was correct (at time of writing). Unless educating on the difficulties of the past of course, then it would be relevant.
    - matte_black 9y ago
      I could have done it in a weekend with Mechanical Turk.
spiderfarmer 9y ago
Aargh, the memories of these frustrating meetings. I am so happy I am not developing for clients anymore.

gwbas1c 9y ago

Learning to tell idea people to pound sand was the hardest, and most expensive lesson, in my career. The crux of this article is that it's important to quickly identify and reject idea people. They just suck on your energy and waste your time going nowhere.

jotm 9y ago
Or, you know, make sure you get paid for your part of the work, and if they don't take your advice and fail, that's on them. They are developers, not investors, this article goes against common business sense.
- smt88 9y ago
  I've discovered that a lot of "idea" people (no technical background, no deep connection to their target audience, often B2C products) don't end up paying once they fail. Yes, there's escrow and other options, but it can be incredibly time-consuming and/or reputation-harming to pursue those people, especially if they're skipping out on only the last payment or two.
- gwbas1c 9y ago
  "Common business sense" is to choose your customers wisely when you have that kind of a business. A customer that requires a disproportionate higher amount of time is a poor choice to work with.
optimuspaul 9y ago
What do you mean by "idea people"? Because I consider myself an idea person, but I also make things and get things done. I'm afraid you are throwing the good out with the bad... unless you have some other idea of what idea people are... and maybe a better name for them that is less inclusive.
- pdpi 9y ago
  "Idea people" to me suggests the sort of folks who think that the secret to success is having a killer idea nobody thought of before, and execution is something that will sort itself out. This goes double if they think that execution is something that can be outsourced.

dboreham 9y ago

In our consultancy we refer to this kind of situation by similarity to the Mad Man "Jai alai" episode (S3:E4)

gnicholas 9y ago

Note: this is not about cheques that were rejected from clients — it’s about clients that were rejected.

gnicholas 9y ago
I'm curious to know why this comment dropped from near the top of the page (2nd comment) to near the bottom (2nd-to-last). The points have consistently increased, so why would it drop? I purposely didn't write a "this title is misleading clickbait" comment, opting instead to describe what the blog post is actually about. I know a lot of people check the comments before reading an article (esp. from unknown blogs) so they can avoid wasting time if the article is not what they're looking for. Allowing this comment to stay at the top of the page would help people who are interested to know this.
- dang 9y ago
  A moderator marked it off topic. It's not that you made a bad point, but it's not one that should be accumulating mass at the top of a thread, because it chokes out interesting discussion.
  - gnicholas 9y ago
    Thanks for the timely explanation. I would maintain that substantive comments that help people quickly understand what the article is about—and what it's not about—should be allowed to rise/fall organically. If people are +1'ing it, that means they found it helpful. Doesn't that tend to indicate that others might find it helpful also? I should say that if this down-weighting had happened simultaneous to a title change, I would feel differently. A better title would be: "Clients I Chose Not To Work With". To my ear, it's equally click-baity, but it has the benefit of accurately describing the post itself.
    - dang 9y ago
      I hear you, and of course we change titles like that all the time. I'm not quite over the line on this one though; the objection feels a bit pedantic to me and that's not how we moderate the front page. Also, the upvoting system isn't great for cases like this. There are certain qualities in comments that attract upvotes almost mechanically (indignation is another) and if we didn't moderate the threads, the result would be such comments at the top of every thread, and less interesting discussions. HN functions best not when it's entirely community-and-software driven, but when community, software, and moderators interact in feedback loops. Our goal is to help the community process coalesce into something more interesting than it would in a less complex system.

jimrandomh 9y ago

> It’s not cost-effective to build the app on all the platforms at once because it takes 3 times more effort to make a small change. We should start with just one and invest into others when the concept is proven to be successful.” There are multiple development toolsets that will let you do this, without tripling your effort. There are tradeoffs involved, but I think this request was more reasonable than this article presents it as.

ksenzee 9y ago
The article specifies that the customer didn't want a cross-platform framework: "I want the mobile apps in native to make sure the responsiveness of the app is good."

a_c 9y ago

"We want a [insert big name here] clone, how long does it take." is, in my experience, a good indicator to move on.

antonkm 9y ago

> I’ll eventually ask, “Which platform do you like to build on to start with?” > One client answer was: “All — Android, iOS and web. And I want the mobile apps in native to make sure the responsiveness of the app is good.” Maybe I'm misreading, but the client wanted a Yelpish kind of app. The right play, in my book, would be convincing the client that a React Native app would do. This is a really easy sell since that is actually what the client need. Maybe the author's team aren't yet familiar with RN. React Native is super snappy and is a great choice for MVPs. It's easy to develop, the reusability is really high between platforms and the price tag is usually quite low in comparison.

intrasight 9y ago

My opinion is that any client that is serious, is putting together a team, has a budget, and has real prospective customers is something I can get on board with. I personally don't have to like the idea or think that it's going to find a wider audience. Pretty much any billion dollar unicorn I would have looked at their elevator pitch and said "I don't like the idea and I don't think you are going to succeed".

BeetleB 9y ago

The photos in the article provided no value to the content. I know the common wisdom to get lots of page hits is to include fairly random pictures, but I do tire of them. To the point that I find myself unconsciously discounting the content because my brain automatically assumes the article is more about becoming more popular than providing useful content (and may have suppressed content that would be unpopular).

HumanDrivenDev 9y ago

I have to wonder why they wrote this article. I mean, it's a well written article, I enjoyed reading it. Great for a target audience of developers. But what will potential clients read when they see this? A company disclosing details of (possibly confidential?) meetings, talking about how stupid their ideas were. They don't name companies but they do give some very specific details - and HK isn't a huge market.

mankash666 9y ago

Why is an app agency judging the client's business model. If what the client is asking for is legal, and if the agency can deliver, I'd think it a win-win to make it happen. Specifically, they should have cloned Uber for their client, and let the markets decide.