7 ms·

Some clients are evil and their work is toxic

144 points by j4mie 16y ago

sunkencity 16y ago
And he didn't even go into mentioning that these people that want fast, good & cheap are experts sneakscope ops, it's totally right to pull out or severly limit the deliverables.
- gaius 16y ago
  experts sneakscope ops What does this mean?
  - JoachimSchipper 16y ago
    "Scope creep" - adding more and more work.
    - sunkencity 16y ago
      Yep also was a little typo, I meant "expert sneakscope ops" not experts. My bad.
shfshfh 16y ago
I've always lived by this - http://magazine.creativecow.net/article/clients-or-grinders-understanding-the-three-market-types http://magazine.creativecow.net/article/clients-or-grinders-... - which says much the same thing.
slantyyz 16y ago
Interesting article but the title is a little misleading. Before I clicked, I thought they were talking about doing work for cigarette or oil companies. I worked at a company that was pitching services to a cigarette company, and --nobody-- involved felt good about doing the pitch. But back to the point, one of the speakers at the Business of Software series once said "When someone tells you the work you do is easy, they probably have no idea what they're talking about". Being in services, I think there's at least one person at every client who thinks that everything I do is overpriced and easy. You can't blame clients for wanting to get the 'most for the least' from their vendors. Interesting that they know they're not capable of doing it themselves to hire a vendor. Yet after that decision, they don't seem to know enough to not disrespect the work you do.
- brudgers 16y ago
  I agree. High client expectations are hardly evil. Without a patron, everyone competes on fast, good, and cheap. It drives efficiency and innovation, e.g. Google. The responses to clients with unrealistic goals is the same as to those with practical ones -- find out the "why?" and provide a detailed proposal with realistic terms. If your proposal is rejected,being indignant is counterproductive. It's just business.
  - slantyyz 16y ago
    Actually I would argue the market winners tend to be at the opposite ends of the spectrum. The best (arguably the most expensive) and the cheapest generally have the easiest time. Everyone in the middle is fighting for the rest of the market, which, as the Jersey Shore boys put it, is full of grenades.
iuguy 16y ago
It sounds to me that he doesn't see this from the toxic client's point of view, and is at risk of passing up work that he views as toxic, but really isn't. We just had a quote in for some mailshot work for us that looked awfully highly priced for what it was as everything on the quote had things that we could do ourselves with mailchimp, but the key thing that we would've relied upon for them to do that we couldn't do ourselves (mailshot template design, modifying the content to maximise attention) wasn't even mentioned on the quote. When bidding, it's sometimes easier to justify your prices by highlighting the value in the things your potential customer can't do, rather than the stuff they can and try to do it cheaper than their internal guys. There are toxic clients out there and they should be avoided, but sometimes cheap, good and fast means cheap enough, good enough, fast enough and (most importantly) takes care of my pain.
rmoriz 16y ago
I once made the mistake to work as contractor (Ruby) for a company that fits in the article's description. The customer was unable to deliver me input for serveral months but begged me to sit in their office all day. Just sit there and do some research (no kidding). Then around 6 weeks prior the launch date (which was not communicated to me upfront) the hurry started and it was totally rediculous: No specs, no clue, no decision making. I spent 4 weeks (including weekends) working ~10 hours (+1.5h commuting) per day to fix the sh*it as far as I could so that we had something to launch. Code quality was horrible of course. I felt totally burned out after the launch and there was not even a big financial neither emotional reward in doing this exhausting mess to save my customer's back from his angry client. Three days before my contract ended, the general manager had a conversation with me in his shiny office. He told me, that they wanted to extend the contract for 6 months (~60.000€). I answered: Thank you, but not under this circumstances. Best decision for my physical and mental health in the last 5 years. If you've a choice: DONT DO IT. Life is simply too short do work for such types of (in the end) losing companies and ruin yourself.
- eru 16y ago
  Did you give the general manager a feedback like this in the end, or did you think it more prudent to keep your cards closer to your chest?
  - rmoriz 16y ago
    I gave (naive) feedback how they should improve their work with their customers, improve hiring people, make sure employees are motivated and whatever. The general manager even told me that most things I said were true but he's not able to change it. As the company is inside a large publishing group and they've some large portal sites running, they're quite job-save for the next 5 years I guess.
- gaustin 16y ago
  I had a full time job like this (but Ruby on Rails). I lasted about three months before I gave up. I fled when I realized I would never be able to change the way they did things.
edw519 16y ago
Wanting it fast, good, and cheap is also a red flag for lots of other little bonuses, such as: - You will constantly wait for them to make a decision. - It will be your fault they took so long to make a decision. - They will have emergencies of their own making. - It will be your fault they have emergencies. - They will commit to little or nothing on paper. - It's not their fault because they never committed to that. - You think you have specs; they think you're prototyping, so... - You will do much work 2 or 3 times. - They will constantly change priorities. - They will forget they changed priorities, so... - They will complain when a lower priority isn't done. - You won't get paid on time. - You will spend lots of time trying to get paid. - They will always find some excuse to not pay. - You may never get paid. - If it's good, it's because they thought of it. - If it's bad, it's because you suck. - You can't win. Honestly, I wish we could tattoo these people to save the next developer all the heartache. Listen to OP; as soon as you realize they want it fast, good, and cheap, run the other way.
- slantyyz 16y ago
  When you're dealing with anyone outside the Fortune 10,000, money is still not something that is just thrown around willy nilly. So, in the grand scheme of things, --everyone-- wants it fast, good and cheap, if it's possible. If you can educate your prospect on why it's not possible, they'll usually come around and even be reasonable about things. So I would say if the prospect wants it fast, good and cheap, and it smells like they're going to be clueless dicks about it, then run the other way. With respect to many of the bullet points above, I would also say that you have to vet your prospects just as much as they are vetting you, and protect yourself with a contract that isn't heavily in favor of the customer (i.e., you're entitled to stop work if you're not paid on time, that you have an exit clause, etc., etc.) More often than not, you also have to put your bad cop hat on and manage the customer. I've seen so many projects fail because the Account Manager or PM was too scared to say anything to control the scope of the project.
  - gaius 16y ago
    You're correct, but you're missing the point that many clients interests are not aligned with either yours or even their organizations. When someone refuses to commit to decisions in writing, even in an email, then you are a pawn in some game they are playing. You're being set up to fail and to be scapegoated because they believe that this will advance them in the organization quicker than you succeeding (e.g. the project's sponsor is a rival of theirs). That is why they are best described as toxic.
jasonkester 16y ago
I've found that the best thing to do with these people is send them offshore. Let them see what cheap, "fast" work looks like. Let them have all their preconceptions shattered, and their sense of what it takes to build software modified towards reality. Let them get all the frustration out of their system until they're ready for you to show them what good, genuinely fast work looks like. The quickest way to accomplish this is to tell them your rate upfront. They'll go "ouch", at which point you can gently point them towards rentacoder, safe in the knowledge that they'll be back in 6 months time with a bit of perspective and a willingness to pay your extortionate rate so long as you promise never to put them through anything like what they just suffered ever again.
- slantyyz 16y ago
  Yeah I still don't know if people have realized that offshoring can easily cost more and take longer than having locals do the work. The projects that I've been on that had offshore resourcing struck me as slower and more difficult to work on. There are only so many times that I can ask someone to repeat themselves on a conference call because his/her accent is too thick for me to understand.
  - nadam 16y ago
    I've seen some offshoring went well and some which went not so well. Common mistakes are: Some western companies want to do it ridiculously cheap. To hire really good programmers in Eastern Europe you need to offer bigger than market salaries (which are still lower than western salaries). The other problem is, even if they hire good people they outsource the most boring jobs, because western programmers keep the interesting stuff for themselvs. The result in this case: Phd-s doing the user interface programming in Eastern Europe. The server is developed in the U.S. Political stuff: western guys don't want their eastern colleagues succeed. I can understand why: they are afraid that their jobs will be taken. And sometimes communication is hard to do right. In fact depends on the project. I think it is better to outsource highly self-contained tasks which do not need an exteremely high amount of interactive communication.
    - 16y ago
mfukar 16y ago
I wish I could upvote this multiple times; the article is spot on.
narrator 16y ago
The best thing to do to avoid crap like this is charge a decent hourly rate and don't let the clock run too long before you get your first check. They will not waste your time.
- slantyyz 16y ago
  It depends on the situation. Oftentimes the people you're working with don't know how much you're being paid (their superiors don't talk to them about how much you're paid because they're afraid members of their team will just want to leave because they think they're underpaid). Those people will still waste your time. At the end of the billing period, you'll be asked to shave hours because you didn't notify someone higher up that your time was being wasted.
dolinsky 16y ago
While we've all come across these kinds of clients and it is probably in our best interest not to become involved in a working relationship with these clients, I disagree with his classification of them being 'evil' and 'douchebags'. I've found that many of these individuals are just naive to the effort involved in taking their (website|product|application|widget) from an idea to a tangible working product. They are able to envision 'something' in their minds, and because they are able to do that they consider the job at least partially done. Many of them have never done our jobs, and even those that have probably fall at the long tail end of the hockey stick and can't appreciate the difference between someone that learned HTML in 24 hours and someone who can create a design that creates value to their product (same goes for us backend folks). If someone says to me 'I'd like to build X, and my budget is Y, and my timeline is Z' and they're not completely obnoxious in their approach, it's not very difficult to have a conversation with this individual, ask a few questions, and get a better understanding of what 'X' really is and how 'Z' came to be (assuming Y is either non-negotiable or you don't have the experience to know what you're worth). You might find that this individual isn't even aware that a product (yes I'm mostly talking web properties here) can be broken down into pieces to fit into a continuous timeline, where those smaller pieces are easier to manage and deliver on. With all this in mind, I've avoided doing consultancy work for the better part of the past 6 years because I got worn out at the time of dealing with what the OP had described about. After 6 years, I have learned a lot more about myself and have acquired soft skills that I didn't have before (and learned from a great PM). Those 6 years have also helped me realize that humility, when used properly, can help distinguish between the arrogant and the naive client.
- eru 16y ago
  And the naivety works the other way, too. I had a friend who organized big company events, setting up sound systems, light, hiring catering, and musicians, getting an ice castle for the lobby, such things. Clients had absolutely no ability to gauge what stuff should cost. So the company overcharged heavily on a lot of technical stuff (like renting out lights or speakers), but could offer a supreme service. (One other `trick' was to make sure that their hired hands always wore suits, did not smoke, and looked respectable in general. They hired the same students as anybody else, but could charge much more for their work.)
bwooceli 16y ago
However accurate this post is, it represents something I don't understand at all. How often do we see posted here a rant about how terrible it is to deal with some clients. That in and of itself is not bad. A venting space is necessary. That said, I don't care how good you are, if I was a prospective client who a) was savvy b) had heard of you c) read your personal blog which you maintain as part of your professional profile... I would personally not be excited about doing business with someone who called a business opportunity a douche bag (/prick). I know that "hacker culture" prides itself to a certain degree on counter-culturalism, but isn't there a place for class any more?
- exit 16y ago
  what the fuck is class?
- derefr 16y ago
  No matter how classy you are, there are some people for whom there is no other description as well-suited as "giant, flaming douche." Good writers avoid cursing when adjectives will do—but great writers know when to pull the rare curse back out as an extreme, jarring intensifier.
- chc 16y ago
  I'm not sure I understand. Is it the language that offends you, or the venting about a client? Because you already said the latter is "not bad" and "necessary." But getting that upset that somebody uses very mildly offensive swear words in an informal, personal setting seems a bit petty and kind of juvenile, certainly not something I would expect from most adults. I don't know, maybe the words "douche" and "prick" are more severe in some places than in my neck of the woods? Because over here, they're roughly on par with "jerk."
eru 16y ago
Off-topic: I like the look of that page.
lukev 16y ago
Let's just slow down a minute. Any manager who doesn't want work done fast, good and cheap is a bad manager. Fast, good and cheap are all good things and something that everyone involved should strive for on all projects. You can't have them all in the real world, of course. And good managers will be realistic - I think that's what this article is saying. But even given that you have to trade off some of these points doesn't still mean you don't want it as fast, cheap or good as possible given the constraints. Even if you decide to sacrifice "cheap", for example, there's nothing wrong about negotiation to still get the best rate possible.
- gaius 16y ago
  Actually no competent manager thinks in terms of "cheap" but in terms of ROI.
  - Luyt 16y ago
    Indeed. Something is not 'cheap' or 'expensive'; it's worth the money, or not.
  - seunosewa 16y ago
    "Cheap" implies "high ROI".
    - gaius 16y ago
      No it only implies low initial cost.
TheSOB88 16y ago
Am I the only one who finds those left-side magazine-style quotes from the article distracting? I don't think they add anything to the article.
- qjz 16y ago
  I like the format, but agree it could have been done better in this particular case.
johngalt 16y ago
As an IT Director I apologize and here's why: I will outsource anything that the stakeholders are being unreasonable about. Specifically to show what an "easy/quick" project will cost. I won't throw you to the wolves but there are many IT people that will. So always protect yourself, even from the in house technical staff. Yes they'll understand the challenges you face, sometimes all too well.
eplanit 16y ago
I have to ask, do you really use phrases like "nurturing ecosystem where all parties benefit and grow from their relationship" with your clients? Are you referring to their relationship to their customers, or your relationship to the client? 'Fast', 'good', and 'cheap' are all subjective terms. Each one works against the other two, for sure. That's a fact that your client will have to discover. I completely agree with the suggestions in other comments to prompt your client to use offshore talent -- then they'll truly learn that Fast+Cheap != Good. I've worked with these kinds of clients, and their opposite: large, established financial institutions who insist on working with 'Big Name' consulting firms: IBM, Accenture, etc. These firms make projects that would be 6 months of interesting effort into 2 or 3 year-long efforts, costing multi-millions, with a ratio of documentation/artifact to useful code being about 5:1. In the end, the deliverable is generally of mediocre quality. Great software does not come from financial institutions, nor from those operating on the fast and cheap. You won't change that reality, and I think you'd grow weary trying to do so. I'll warn you now: 90%+ of your clients will be some combination of the above -- mostly the fast/cheap type. You'll learn, over time, how to work these kinds of gigs. Think of your bottom-line (money, experience) gain. Don't look to your client to fulfill your career goals -- 'tis not their role. Apply your own sense of 'fast' and 'good', and remind your client that your expectations are to be paid in-full and on-time, every time. ...and keep looking for that next gig.
ora600 16y ago
Why not set a minimum price per hour, and if the customer can't afford you, then say good-bye with no hard feelings? He is not evil and toxic, he just needs someone cheaper and may need to adjust his definition of "good" and "fast" accordingly. There are good reasons to take work for less than your normal fee. I do it to learn sexy new technologies I would not have access to otherwise. (i.e. if you have Exadata and need a cheap, good and fast DBA send me and email!) As long as you know what you are getting out of the deal, all is good. Calling someone a douche-bag, evil and poison because he asked for reduced rate? Giving a condescending rant about it? I don't think its professional and I'd never treat potential customers like this, even if I disagree with their way of doing business.
mattm 16y ago
I accepted a job at a company where, during the interview, one of the interviewers said "we are looking for someone who can do work fast, good and cheap and we don't want any excuses." I was thinking of bringing up the point that it is impossible to get all three but didn't and accepted the job. What a big mistake. I ended up leaving half a year later although it was a good experience learning the types of people I don't want to work with.
8ren 16y ago
Larry Niven said there are two bumps in a writer's career: - In the beginning, a writer should accept all work he can get, because he needs to develop his skills, and any work will do that, regardless of how well paying etc. - But then the writer needs to learn to turn down bad work - that's the first bump. - And later, he needs to learn to turn down good work, because there's a limit to how much you can handle - that's the second bump. The submission here is talking about the first bump. It's not necessarily right for everyone, at every stage; though of course it's good advice and worth knowing about (btw: I always interpret the "fast" as meaning performant - ie. fast software not fast development - but the latter makes more sense for work in general.) Note that most writers have a day job (or are independently wealthy, as Niven was - for a year), so it doesn't apply to a professional full-time contractor... but it may apply to you if you are a student, hobbiest or moon-lighting contractor.

144 points by j4mie 16y ago

And he didn't even go into mentioning that these people that want fast, good & cheap are experts sneakscope ops, it's totally right to pull out or severly limit the deliverables.

gaius 16y ago
experts sneakscope ops What does this mean?
- JoachimSchipper 16y ago
  "Scope creep" - adding more and more work.
  - sunkencity 16y ago
    Yep also was a little typo, I meant "expert sneakscope ops" not experts. My bad.

shfshfh 16y ago

I've always lived by this - http://magazine.creativecow.net/article/clients-or-grinders-understanding-the-three-market-types http://magazine.creativecow.net/article/clients-or-grinders-... - which says much the same thing.

slantyyz 16y ago

Interesting article but the title is a little misleading. Before I clicked, I thought they were talking about doing work for cigarette or oil companies. I worked at a company that was pitching services to a cigarette company, and --nobody-- involved felt good about doing the pitch. But back to the point, one of the speakers at the Business of Software series once said "When someone tells you the work you do is easy, they probably have no idea what they're talking about". Being in services, I think there's at least one person at every client who thinks that everything I do is overpriced and easy. You can't blame clients for wanting to get the 'most for the least' from their vendors. Interesting that they know they're not capable of doing it themselves to hire a vendor. Yet after that decision, they don't seem to know enough to not disrespect the work you do.

brudgers 16y ago
I agree. High client expectations are hardly evil. Without a patron, everyone competes on fast, good, and cheap. It drives efficiency and innovation, e.g. Google. The responses to clients with unrealistic goals is the same as to those with practical ones -- find out the "why?" and provide a detailed proposal with realistic terms. If your proposal is rejected,being indignant is counterproductive. It's just business.
- slantyyz 16y ago
  Actually I would argue the market winners tend to be at the opposite ends of the spectrum. The best (arguably the most expensive) and the cheapest generally have the easiest time. Everyone in the middle is fighting for the rest of the market, which, as the Jersey Shore boys put it, is full of grenades.

iuguy 16y ago

It sounds to me that he doesn't see this from the toxic client's point of view, and is at risk of passing up work that he views as toxic, but really isn't. We just had a quote in for some mailshot work for us that looked awfully highly priced for what it was as everything on the quote had things that we could do ourselves with mailchimp, but the key thing that we would've relied upon for them to do that we couldn't do ourselves (mailshot template design, modifying the content to maximise attention) wasn't even mentioned on the quote. When bidding, it's sometimes easier to justify your prices by highlighting the value in the things your potential customer can't do, rather than the stuff they can and try to do it cheaper than their internal guys. There are toxic clients out there and they should be avoided, but sometimes cheap, good and fast means cheap enough, good enough, fast enough and (most importantly) takes care of my pain.

rmoriz 16y ago

I once made the mistake to work as contractor (Ruby) for a company that fits in the article's description. The customer was unable to deliver me input for serveral months but begged me to sit in their office all day. Just sit there and do some research (no kidding). Then around 6 weeks prior the launch date (which was not communicated to me upfront) the hurry started and it was totally rediculous: No specs, no clue, no decision making. I spent 4 weeks (including weekends) working ~10 hours (+1.5h commuting) per day to fix the sh*it as far as I could so that we had something to launch. Code quality was horrible of course. I felt totally burned out after the launch and there was not even a big financial neither emotional reward in doing this exhausting mess to save my customer's back from his angry client. Three days before my contract ended, the general manager had a conversation with me in his shiny office. He told me, that they wanted to extend the contract for 6 months (~60.000€). I answered: Thank you, but not under this circumstances. Best decision for my physical and mental health in the last 5 years. If you've a choice: DONT DO IT. Life is simply too short do work for such types of (in the end) losing companies and ruin yourself.

eru 16y ago
Did you give the general manager a feedback like this in the end, or did you think it more prudent to keep your cards closer to your chest?
- rmoriz 16y ago
  I gave (naive) feedback how they should improve their work with their customers, improve hiring people, make sure employees are motivated and whatever. The general manager even told me that most things I said were true but he's not able to change it. As the company is inside a large publishing group and they've some large portal sites running, they're quite job-save for the next 5 years I guess.
gaustin 16y ago
I had a full time job like this (but Ruby on Rails). I lasted about three months before I gave up. I fled when I realized I would never be able to change the way they did things.

edw519 16y ago

Wanting it fast, good, and cheap is also a red flag for lots of other little bonuses, such as: - You will constantly wait for them to make a decision. - It will be your fault they took so long to make a decision. - They will have emergencies of their own making. - It will be your fault they have emergencies. - They will commit to little or nothing on paper. - It's not their fault because they never committed to that. - You think you have specs; they think you're prototyping, so... - You will do much work 2 or 3 times. - They will constantly change priorities. - They will forget they changed priorities, so... - They will complain when a lower priority isn't done. - You won't get paid on time. - You will spend lots of time trying to get paid. - They will always find some excuse to not pay. - You may never get paid. - If it's good, it's because they thought of it. - If it's bad, it's because you suck. - You can't win. Honestly, I wish we could tattoo these people to save the next developer all the heartache. Listen to OP; as soon as you realize they want it fast, good, and cheap, run the other way.

slantyyz 16y ago
When you're dealing with anyone outside the Fortune 10,000, money is still not something that is just thrown around willy nilly. So, in the grand scheme of things, --everyone-- wants it fast, good and cheap, if it's possible. If you can educate your prospect on why it's not possible, they'll usually come around and even be reasonable about things. So I would say if the prospect wants it fast, good and cheap, and it smells like they're going to be clueless dicks about it, then run the other way. With respect to many of the bullet points above, I would also say that you have to vet your prospects just as much as they are vetting you, and protect yourself with a contract that isn't heavily in favor of the customer (i.e., you're entitled to stop work if you're not paid on time, that you have an exit clause, etc., etc.) More often than not, you also have to put your bad cop hat on and manage the customer. I've seen so many projects fail because the Account Manager or PM was too scared to say anything to control the scope of the project.
- gaius 16y ago
  You're correct, but you're missing the point that many clients interests are not aligned with either yours or even their organizations. When someone refuses to commit to decisions in writing, even in an email, then you are a pawn in some game they are playing. You're being set up to fail and to be scapegoated because they believe that this will advance them in the organization quicker than you succeeding (e.g. the project's sponsor is a rival of theirs). That is why they are best described as toxic.

jasonkester 16y ago

I've found that the best thing to do with these people is send them offshore. Let them see what cheap, "fast" work looks like. Let them have all their preconceptions shattered, and their sense of what it takes to build software modified towards reality. Let them get all the frustration out of their system until they're ready for you to show them what good, genuinely fast work looks like. The quickest way to accomplish this is to tell them your rate upfront. They'll go "ouch", at which point you can gently point them towards rentacoder, safe in the knowledge that they'll be back in 6 months time with a bit of perspective and a willingness to pay your extortionate rate so long as you promise never to put them through anything like what they just suffered ever again.

slantyyz 16y ago
Yeah I still don't know if people have realized that offshoring can easily cost more and take longer than having locals do the work. The projects that I've been on that had offshore resourcing struck me as slower and more difficult to work on. There are only so many times that I can ask someone to repeat themselves on a conference call because his/her accent is too thick for me to understand.
- nadam 16y ago
  I've seen some offshoring went well and some which went not so well. Common mistakes are: Some western companies want to do it ridiculously cheap. To hire really good programmers in Eastern Europe you need to offer bigger than market salaries (which are still lower than western salaries). The other problem is, even if they hire good people they outsource the most boring jobs, because western programmers keep the interesting stuff for themselvs. The result in this case: Phd-s doing the user interface programming in Eastern Europe. The server is developed in the U.S. Political stuff: western guys don't want their eastern colleagues succeed. I can understand why: they are afraid that their jobs will be taken. And sometimes communication is hard to do right. In fact depends on the project. I think it is better to outsource highly self-contained tasks which do not need an exteremely high amount of interactive communication.
  - 16y ago

mfukar 16y ago

I wish I could upvote this multiple times; the article is spot on.

narrator 16y ago

The best thing to do to avoid crap like this is charge a decent hourly rate and don't let the clock run too long before you get your first check. They will not waste your time.

slantyyz 16y ago
It depends on the situation. Oftentimes the people you're working with don't know how much you're being paid (their superiors don't talk to them about how much you're paid because they're afraid members of their team will just want to leave because they think they're underpaid). Those people will still waste your time. At the end of the billing period, you'll be asked to shave hours because you didn't notify someone higher up that your time was being wasted.

dolinsky 16y ago

While we've all come across these kinds of clients and it is probably in our best interest not to become involved in a working relationship with these clients, I disagree with his classification of them being 'evil' and 'douchebags'. I've found that many of these individuals are just naive to the effort involved in taking their (website|product|application|widget) from an idea to a tangible working product. They are able to envision 'something' in their minds, and because they are able to do that they consider the job at least partially done. Many of them have never done our jobs, and even those that have probably fall at the long tail end of the hockey stick and can't appreciate the difference between someone that learned HTML in 24 hours and someone who can create a design that creates value to their product (same goes for us backend folks). If someone says to me 'I'd like to build X, and my budget is Y, and my timeline is Z' and they're not completely obnoxious in their approach, it's not very difficult to have a conversation with this individual, ask a few questions, and get a better understanding of what 'X' really is and how 'Z' came to be (assuming Y is either non-negotiable or you don't have the experience to know what you're worth). You might find that this individual isn't even aware that a product (yes I'm mostly talking web properties here) can be broken down into pieces to fit into a continuous timeline, where those smaller pieces are easier to manage and deliver on. With all this in mind, I've avoided doing consultancy work for the better part of the past 6 years because I got worn out at the time of dealing with what the OP had described about. After 6 years, I have learned a lot more about myself and have acquired soft skills that I didn't have before (and learned from a great PM). Those 6 years have also helped me realize that humility, when used properly, can help distinguish between the arrogant and the naive client.

eru 16y ago
And the naivety works the other way, too. I had a friend who organized big company events, setting up sound systems, light, hiring catering, and musicians, getting an ice castle for the lobby, such things. Clients had absolutely no ability to gauge what stuff should cost. So the company overcharged heavily on a lot of technical stuff (like renting out lights or speakers), but could offer a supreme service. (One other `trick' was to make sure that their hired hands always wore suits, did not smoke, and looked respectable in general. They hired the same students as anybody else, but could charge much more for their work.)

bwooceli 16y ago

However accurate this post is, it represents something I don't understand at all. How often do we see posted here a rant about how terrible it is to deal with some clients. That in and of itself is not bad. A venting space is necessary. That said, I don't care how good you are, if I was a prospective client who a) was savvy b) had heard of you c) read your personal blog which you maintain as part of your professional profile... I would personally not be excited about doing business with someone who called a business opportunity a douche bag (/prick). I know that "hacker culture" prides itself to a certain degree on counter-culturalism, but isn't there a place for class any more?

exit 16y ago
what the fuck is class?
derefr 16y ago
No matter how classy you are, there are some people for whom there is no other description as well-suited as "giant, flaming douche." Good writers avoid cursing when adjectives will do—but great writers know when to pull the rare curse back out as an extreme, jarring intensifier.
chc 16y ago
I'm not sure I understand. Is it the language that offends you, or the venting about a client? Because you already said the latter is "not bad" and "necessary." But getting that upset that somebody uses very mildly offensive swear words in an informal, personal setting seems a bit petty and kind of juvenile, certainly not something I would expect from most adults. I don't know, maybe the words "douche" and "prick" are more severe in some places than in my neck of the woods? Because over here, they're roughly on par with "jerk."

eru 16y ago

Off-topic: I like the look of that page.

lukev 16y ago

Let's just slow down a minute. Any manager who doesn't want work done fast, good and cheap is a bad manager. Fast, good and cheap are all good things and something that everyone involved should strive for on all projects. You can't have them all in the real world, of course. And good managers will be realistic - I think that's what this article is saying. But even given that you have to trade off some of these points doesn't still mean you don't want it as fast, cheap or good as possible given the constraints. Even if you decide to sacrifice "cheap", for example, there's nothing wrong about negotiation to still get the best rate possible.

gaius 16y ago
Actually no competent manager thinks in terms of "cheap" but in terms of ROI.
- Luyt 16y ago
  Indeed. Something is not 'cheap' or 'expensive'; it's worth the money, or not.
- seunosewa 16y ago
  "Cheap" implies "high ROI".
  - gaius 16y ago
    No it only implies low initial cost.

TheSOB88 16y ago

Am I the only one who finds those left-side magazine-style quotes from the article distracting? I don't think they add anything to the article.

qjz 16y ago
I like the format, but agree it could have been done better in this particular case.

johngalt 16y ago

As an IT Director I apologize and here's why: I will outsource anything that the stakeholders are being unreasonable about. Specifically to show what an "easy/quick" project will cost. I won't throw you to the wolves but there are many IT people that will. So always protect yourself, even from the in house technical staff. Yes they'll understand the challenges you face, sometimes all too well.

eplanit 16y ago

I have to ask, do you really use phrases like "nurturing ecosystem where all parties benefit and grow from their relationship" with your clients? Are you referring to their relationship to their customers, or your relationship to the client? 'Fast', 'good', and 'cheap' are all subjective terms. Each one works against the other two, for sure. That's a fact that your client will have to discover. I completely agree with the suggestions in other comments to prompt your client to use offshore talent -- then they'll truly learn that Fast+Cheap != Good. I've worked with these kinds of clients, and their opposite: large, established financial institutions who insist on working with 'Big Name' consulting firms: IBM, Accenture, etc. These firms make projects that would be 6 months of interesting effort into 2 or 3 year-long efforts, costing multi-millions, with a ratio of documentation/artifact to useful code being about 5:1. In the end, the deliverable is generally of mediocre quality. Great software does not come from financial institutions, nor from those operating on the fast and cheap. You won't change that reality, and I think you'd grow weary trying to do so. I'll warn you now: 90%+ of your clients will be some combination of the above -- mostly the fast/cheap type. You'll learn, over time, how to work these kinds of gigs. Think of your bottom-line (money, experience) gain. Don't look to your client to fulfill your career goals -- 'tis not their role. Apply your own sense of 'fast' and 'good', and remind your client that your expectations are to be paid in-full and on-time, every time. ...and keep looking for that next gig.

ora600 16y ago

Why not set a minimum price per hour, and if the customer can't afford you, then say good-bye with no hard feelings? He is not evil and toxic, he just needs someone cheaper and may need to adjust his definition of "good" and "fast" accordingly. There are good reasons to take work for less than your normal fee. I do it to learn sexy new technologies I would not have access to otherwise. (i.e. if you have Exadata and need a cheap, good and fast DBA send me and email!) As long as you know what you are getting out of the deal, all is good. Calling someone a douche-bag, evil and poison because he asked for reduced rate? Giving a condescending rant about it? I don't think its professional and I'd never treat potential customers like this, even if I disagree with their way of doing business.

mattm 16y ago

I accepted a job at a company where, during the interview, one of the interviewers said "we are looking for someone who can do work fast, good and cheap and we don't want any excuses." I was thinking of bringing up the point that it is impossible to get all three but didn't and accepted the job. What a big mistake. I ended up leaving half a year later although it was a good experience learning the types of people I don't want to work with.

8ren 16y ago

Larry Niven said there are two bumps in a writer's career: - In the beginning, a writer should accept all work he can get, because he needs to develop his skills, and any work will do that, regardless of how well paying etc. - But then the writer needs to learn to turn down bad work - that's the first bump. - And later, he needs to learn to turn down good work, because there's a limit to how much you can handle - that's the second bump. The submission here is talking about the first bump. It's not necessarily right for everyone, at every stage; though of course it's good advice and worth knowing about (btw: I always interpret the "fast" as meaning performant - ie. fast software not fast development - but the latter makes more sense for work in general.) Note that most writers have a day job (or are independently wealthy, as Niven was - for a year), so it doesn't apply to a professional full-time contractor... but it may apply to you if you are a student, hobbiest or moon-lighting contractor.