10 ms·

If people tried to pay for other services like they try to pay for programming

503 points by dkasper 16y ago

nowarninglabel 16y ago
Yes, but as both a contractor and someone who hires contractors, I would say the optimal approach for both developer and client would be to get a small task done first then move from there. So, order the appetizer first, and if it's good, then go for the main course. (Or even better, go out for salad, and then come back next week for the main course if you didn't get food poisoning.)
foresterh 16y ago
Am I a rare contractor because I haven't had problems with people paying up? Is that common in the software contracting world? Or is it the case (as it is with most things in this world) that the people with problems also have the loudest voice, or tend to make the most noise, so it seems to be an issue more than it is?
- mgkimsal 16y ago
  You may be rare, or haven't done much yet. I've been in software dev in some capacity for about 17 years, and have been stiffed myself a couple of times, and I've had companies I've worked for been stiffed too. In some cases it was for a lot of money, in some cases very little. If it hasn't happened yet, it probably will at some point. It's not guaranteed, but I don't think I know anyone that's been at this for more than 5 years that hasn't had client payment issues at some stage.
  - foresterh 16y ago
    True, I've only been doing contract for 2 years, and it's only been hourly. Nobody's been late on the first (or any) monthly payment, so I've never had to worry about it. I'm assuming the problem is more with project-based pay? Which I'm afraid to take on (for these very reasons...)
    - mgkimsal 16y ago
      No. Hourly can still be problematic - you're just generally out less than you might be on a milestone-based project.
- phamilton 16y ago
  I recently had a problem with someone not paying. I finally said "I'm done." I took the software somewhere else (after consulting a lawyer) and sold it to another business doing the same thing. I had gotten half up front from the first guy, and sold it for full price to the next guy. Granted, my particular circumstance was a little bit loose on the details of the contract, but it was within my rights to do so, and I got paid in full (plus the extra half up front) for the work I did.
noonespecial 16y ago
There are two angles at play that got a little mixed together in the video. The first is the hard bargain during initial negotiations (ala the CD for much less) the second (and much uglier) is the restaurant, where after the work is done the client flat refuses to pay. I'm fine with the former, you get what you pay for, the latter however, really makes me mad.
- netcan 16y ago
  The in between one is the woman at the hairdresser. Get past the point where negotiations usually happen and the deal appears done and your counterpart is committed, then bargain. We're used to it happening as consumers. There we call it bait & switch.
- softbuilder 16y ago
  The difference is that a CD is a commodity. People are not. Certainly there is a marketplace at work, but even if you do view programmers or designers as commoditized, no one wants to be treated that way. It's ugly behavior. (Although in my experience that is usually ignorance, not malice.)
  - eof 16y ago
    CD?
    - dholowiski 16y ago
      Shiny things they used to put un-ripped MP3's on.
      - noonespecial 16y ago
        Un-ripped MP3's? I thought they were just how AOL mailed software.
        InclinedPlane 16y ago
51Cards 16y ago
I am up-voting just because I have lived each and every one of these at least once.
netcan 16y ago
Funny. Now I want to see a comeback video from the clients' perspective. Cutting edge meat, still some bugs being ironed out but totally worth it if you avoid that whole beef mess. A weird disc with wires attaching it to a projector that that you can put in the dvd player and it plays the projector reels, sort of. When the hair's half cut, a grey hair is discovered. Now it's on track to be finished by Christmas.
- zmonkeyz 16y ago
  The gray hair scene would be funny :)
maxawaytoolong 16y ago
This sort of negotiation is common for things like design, photography, video, music, illustration and other creative assets. Based on the production values I'm assuming the video comes from that world, rather than the programming world.
- steveklabnik 16y ago
  My designer buddy says "oh yeah, that's a really old designer thing." You appear to be correct.
- albemuth 16y ago
  You're right, if it were about programming there would have to be a parody for file recovery and windows installs.
mantas 16y ago
Been there, had most of those (and many other similar) situations.. The worst customer experience... Once a guy called me and asked for a quote. I told I prefer hourly rate * hours worked and explained why it's better for him. He called me crazy and insisted on fixed quote, although he wasn't even sure what he exactly wants. I did fast calculation in my mind and gave him a rough quote. I was bargaining at that time and quote was really very low. Then client did a fast calculation on his end and was lecturing me for ~ 45 minutes that I'm ridiculously expensive and I won't have any clients unless I lower my prices 3x and how dare I charge average monthly salary (for probably 2+ months work...) if I never went to university and so on.. Fast forward 1.5 years - I charge 4x more than in those days and I'm fully booked...
- detst 16y ago
  So is it time to go 5-6x?
  - maxer 16y ago
    the cheaper your hourly rate is, the less that people respect you, simple. if your not told your expensive on a monthly basis your too cheap
    - detst 16y ago
      Hmm. Not sure if I was interpreted as saying something different (considering you have 3x the upvotes) but I agree. If I wasn't clear, I was saying: if you're fully booked and charging 4x what you were once told is too much, are you considering increasing your rate? In general, I would say you should but I was interesting in hearing this person's thoughts.
- nfriedly 16y ago
  Back when I was contracting, I knew it was time to raise my rates if I hadn't been told I was too expensive recently.
- mkramlich 16y ago
  After years of doing contracting, I've found a general pattern where the clients that wanted to the pay the very least, tended to cause me the most headaches, cause the most scope creep, be the most anal, etc. I also found that doing fixed fee contracts were the most likely to cause both sides problems. I also found another interesting pattern where the clients who treated me with the most skepticism or paranoia ended up being the ones who themselves were the most problematic or dishonest with me. Another pattern I've seen is that whichever side throws out a dollar figure first, almost always "loses" in the negotiations (meaning, gets a deal that is less beneficial to them in terms of dollar cost/income.) General trends, not without exceptions. Also, there's no such thing as a single standard rate. Varies by skill set, by person, by project, by time/situation, by non-monetary factors (the strategic benefits or opportunity costs of doing a deal/project, etc.) So when someone asks me what's my rate, it signals to me that they are, at least somewhat, a newbie and/or unsophisticated (even if "experienced"). Instead, you tell me what you (think you) want. I tell you whether (I think) I can provide that. We go back and forth. Then somebody (hopefully the other guy) throws out a figure. The other accepts or counter-proposes a different figure/terms. Back and forth. Then shake/sign on something. Move on. Repeat.
axiom 16y ago
This is the difference between business-to-business versus buying consumer goods. You can't waste time negotiating with every client who buys a $50 pair of shoes from you - it's just not cost effective. So you have a fixed price for everyone. However you can (and should) negotiate with people buying $20k worth of services from you. Historically, the consumer experience is actually the exception, not b2b. Up until fairly recently it was standard practice to haggle for everything you buy. It's only the rise of the middle class and of huge companies that sell goods/services to millions that brought about this new idea of fixed prices that aren't open to negotiation.
- bmcleod 16y ago
  Slightly related: In pretty much any store which has sales people that come and talk to you those people have the ability to knock 5-10% off if you ask for it. Cheap things aren't worth negotiating a lot for, but they certainly can be negotiated and the other side will quite happily make a small concession normally since it pays off in happy customers. This is why always asking for a discount is worth it.
  - vacri 16y ago
    The medical equipment company I used to work for had a 5% discount that they built into every sale - people rarely paid full price, so sometimes just asking 'can you do better?' on high cost items will at least get you this "auto" discount.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- patio11 16y ago
  You can't waste time negotiating with every client who buys a $50 pair of shoes from you - it's just not cost effective. This is where price discrimination comes in, and it is staggeringly effective: coupons, sales, discounts, etc etc. The great thing about fixed prices is that there are so many to choose from!
  - 16y ago
jwh 16y ago
The video shows perfectly why unwritten/verbal/implied contracts are to be avoided at all cost. Against my better judgement I recently completed some work without a written contract. It was exactly like the restaurant scene: they'd received the services and used them but started questioning the bill (after it became overdue). I still find it strange that people view other people as a commodity like oil or pork bellies yet they expect ridiculous returns, akin to a barrel of oil spontaneously duplicating and selling itself for $300
- billswift 16y ago
  I used to work for an architectural and landscape designer and builder. After getting a judgement against him when a client took him to court, he quit using written contracts and instead went to week-by-week meetings with clients and billing on the same basis, so neither ran away with misunderstandings or too great sunk costs. It worked pretty well for the next 25 years, until he retired.
jeffiel 16y ago
Ha, this reminds me of the Microsoft vs. GM comparison from yesteryears. Cars would crash unexpectedly, etc.
edw519 16y ago
It's war, I tell ya! The video should play the first 10 minutes and then display a dialog box prompting for a credit card in order to update to "Premium" (which would just make the dialog box go away). The hairdresser should color her hair purple, but once she paid the bill, it would magically turn blond at 3 a.m. via Microcolor Automatic Update. The chef should electronically disable the steak-embedded Exlax dispenser once the bill was paid in full. oops, just in case... </sarcasm>
wh-uws 16y ago
Link to original site http://www.vendorclientvideo.com/ http://www.vendorclientvideo.com/
andyidsinga 16y ago
classic: "we'll do this this time but you need to show us how you did it so we can do it in house"
invisible 16y ago
The guys that made this seem to do a lot of "high-end" marketing, so I guess it doesn't get much better with big clients (http://www.scofieldedit.com/ http://www.scofieldedit.com/). Really neat video though!
ecuzzillo 16y ago
You can order a filet for a fairly predictable price, it will take a fairly predictable amount of time, and it will fairly predictably make you happy. Software, by and large, does not make people happy or do what they want nearly as reliably as steak does, and so if I were them I would be much more finicky about paying people to make it for me than I am about paying people to make me steak. And especially, software made to order has even lower mean and even higher variance than most of the software that people use. And you don't know what you're getting until you get it, at which point the incompetent software vendor is demanding some ridiculously exorbitant sum for something it turned out you didn't want anyway. You personally may not suck at programming, but the majority of programmers do, and so people are very justifiably unwilling to cough up the dough programmers demand.
- skore 16y ago
  I'm not really sure whether arguing the "the work you receive might suck" case is helpful for the discussion. (I'm also pretty sure that it won't get you much love here for that train of though ;-) ) If that's where you start, sure, you can arrive at a lot of conclusions and be none the wiser. I have been to restaurants where the steak was far less reliable than you suppose. Actually, that's not true - I avoid restaurants like that by figuring out that the one I do go to respects me as a client as I do respect it as the place that makes my tummy full. And there we arrive at the point of the video: The vendors are the ones who bring respect and quality to the table, the problem is that the clients do in no way mirror that respect. If a client is willing to "just get somebody to do something for as little cash as possible", that's what they will get. Fortunately, people who care about the things they want to have done check first, treat their business partners well and live in a happy place where real things are negotiated for real prices that are then paid like adults.
- bmelton 16y ago
  The obvious counterpoint to that is that there is no give and take in the preparation of a filet. The success of a development project, or software implementation depends just as much on involvement from the customer as it does for the developer or provider. In the enterprise, this means setting up a project consisting of stakeholders from which you can gather information, get integration assistance, etc. In the single-project bespoke software or web development arena, it's even more important that the customer is able to provide good feedback, offer and direct according to their vision, etc. Back to the steak analogy, what would be the remediation for the customer yelling "More salt! More salt!" and then refusing to pay when the final product is too salty?
piney 16y ago
Companies who treat their vendors like this have a company culture that treats them the same way. Its therefore OK to kick around other people, even easier since they are behind a company's 'mask'.
franze 16y ago
[video] better than i thought it would be
erikb 16y ago
The difference, as I see it, is just that these people in the video really fight for their right. The cook will let his fists talk, if they don't pay. That dvd guy will never buy this dvd and so on. In the IT world there is the problem that there are actually really many people that let themself beeing enslaved and accept those situations. If 60% of the dvd shops would react positively to bargaining, every client would try it. That is "just" the situation w face in our business. If you didn't see it, I can connect you to some companies. Work for them for some months and you see that 90% of the coders there (contractors or employers) effectively put themself in slavery. Although not all software developers are like this, we all have to suffer from the consequences of these acts of low selfevaluation.
exit 16y ago
this would be a great way to spend fu money. pretend to be a small time contractor and then absolutely destroy companies run by sleazy conniving wheeler-dealers who try to short you.

503 points by dkasper 16y ago

Yes, but as both a contractor and someone who hires contractors, I would say the optimal approach for both developer and client would be to get a small task done first then move from there. So, order the appetizer first, and if it's good, then go for the main course. (Or even better, go out for salad, and then come back next week for the main course if you didn't get food poisoning.)

foresterh 16y ago

Am I a rare contractor because I haven't had problems with people paying up? Is that common in the software contracting world? Or is it the case (as it is with most things in this world) that the people with problems also have the loudest voice, or tend to make the most noise, so it seems to be an issue more than it is?

mgkimsal 16y ago
You may be rare, or haven't done much yet. I've been in software dev in some capacity for about 17 years, and have been stiffed myself a couple of times, and I've had companies I've worked for been stiffed too. In some cases it was for a lot of money, in some cases very little. If it hasn't happened yet, it probably will at some point. It's not guaranteed, but I don't think I know anyone that's been at this for more than 5 years that hasn't had client payment issues at some stage.
- foresterh 16y ago
  True, I've only been doing contract for 2 years, and it's only been hourly. Nobody's been late on the first (or any) monthly payment, so I've never had to worry about it. I'm assuming the problem is more with project-based pay? Which I'm afraid to take on (for these very reasons...)
  - mgkimsal 16y ago
    No. Hourly can still be problematic - you're just generally out less than you might be on a milestone-based project.
phamilton 16y ago
I recently had a problem with someone not paying. I finally said "I'm done." I took the software somewhere else (after consulting a lawyer) and sold it to another business doing the same thing. I had gotten half up front from the first guy, and sold it for full price to the next guy. Granted, my particular circumstance was a little bit loose on the details of the contract, but it was within my rights to do so, and I got paid in full (plus the extra half up front) for the work I did.

noonespecial 16y ago

There are two angles at play that got a little mixed together in the video. The first is the hard bargain during initial negotiations (ala the CD for much less) the second (and much uglier) is the restaurant, where after the work is done the client flat refuses to pay. I'm fine with the former, you get what you pay for, the latter however, really makes me mad.

netcan 16y ago
The in between one is the woman at the hairdresser. Get past the point where negotiations usually happen and the deal appears done and your counterpart is committed, then bargain. We're used to it happening as consumers. There we call it bait & switch.
softbuilder 16y ago
The difference is that a CD is a commodity. People are not. Certainly there is a marketplace at work, but even if you do view programmers or designers as commoditized, no one wants to be treated that way. It's ugly behavior. (Although in my experience that is usually ignorance, not malice.)
- eof 16y ago
  CD?
  - dholowiski 16y ago
    Shiny things they used to put un-ripped MP3's on.
    - noonespecial 16y ago
      Un-ripped MP3's? I thought they were just how AOL mailed software.
      - InclinedPlane 16y ago

51Cards 16y ago

I am up-voting just because I have lived each and every one of these at least once.

netcan 16y ago

Funny. Now I want to see a comeback video from the clients' perspective. Cutting edge meat, still some bugs being ironed out but totally worth it if you avoid that whole beef mess. A weird disc with wires attaching it to a projector that that you can put in the dvd player and it plays the projector reels, sort of. When the hair's half cut, a grey hair is discovered. Now it's on track to be finished by Christmas.

zmonkeyz 16y ago
The gray hair scene would be funny :)

maxawaytoolong 16y ago

This sort of negotiation is common for things like design, photography, video, music, illustration and other creative assets. Based on the production values I'm assuming the video comes from that world, rather than the programming world.

steveklabnik 16y ago
My designer buddy says "oh yeah, that's a really old designer thing." You appear to be correct.
albemuth 16y ago
You're right, if it were about programming there would have to be a parody for file recovery and windows installs.

mantas 16y ago

Been there, had most of those (and many other similar) situations.. The worst customer experience... Once a guy called me and asked for a quote. I told I prefer hourly rate * hours worked and explained why it's better for him. He called me crazy and insisted on fixed quote, although he wasn't even sure what he exactly wants. I did fast calculation in my mind and gave him a rough quote. I was bargaining at that time and quote was really very low. Then client did a fast calculation on his end and was lecturing me for ~ 45 minutes that I'm ridiculously expensive and I won't have any clients unless I lower my prices 3x and how dare I charge average monthly salary (for probably 2+ months work...) if I never went to university and so on.. Fast forward 1.5 years - I charge 4x more than in those days and I'm fully booked...

detst 16y ago
So is it time to go 5-6x?
- maxer 16y ago
  the cheaper your hourly rate is, the less that people respect you, simple. if your not told your expensive on a monthly basis your too cheap
  - detst 16y ago
    Hmm. Not sure if I was interpreted as saying something different (considering you have 3x the upvotes) but I agree. If I wasn't clear, I was saying: if you're fully booked and charging 4x what you were once told is too much, are you considering increasing your rate? In general, I would say you should but I was interesting in hearing this person's thoughts.
nfriedly 16y ago
Back when I was contracting, I knew it was time to raise my rates if I hadn't been told I was too expensive recently.
mkramlich 16y ago
After years of doing contracting, I've found a general pattern where the clients that wanted to the pay the very least, tended to cause me the most headaches, cause the most scope creep, be the most anal, etc. I also found that doing fixed fee contracts were the most likely to cause both sides problems. I also found another interesting pattern where the clients who treated me with the most skepticism or paranoia ended up being the ones who themselves were the most problematic or dishonest with me. Another pattern I've seen is that whichever side throws out a dollar figure first, almost always "loses" in the negotiations (meaning, gets a deal that is less beneficial to them in terms of dollar cost/income.) General trends, not without exceptions. Also, there's no such thing as a single standard rate. Varies by skill set, by person, by project, by time/situation, by non-monetary factors (the strategic benefits or opportunity costs of doing a deal/project, etc.) So when someone asks me what's my rate, it signals to me that they are, at least somewhat, a newbie and/or unsophisticated (even if "experienced"). Instead, you tell me what you (think you) want. I tell you whether (I think) I can provide that. We go back and forth. Then somebody (hopefully the other guy) throws out a figure. The other accepts or counter-proposes a different figure/terms. Back and forth. Then shake/sign on something. Move on. Repeat.

axiom 16y ago

This is the difference between business-to-business versus buying consumer goods. You can't waste time negotiating with every client who buys a $50 pair of shoes from you - it's just not cost effective. So you have a fixed price for everyone. However you can (and should) negotiate with people buying $20k worth of services from you. Historically, the consumer experience is actually the exception, not b2b. Up until fairly recently it was standard practice to haggle for everything you buy. It's only the rise of the middle class and of huge companies that sell goods/services to millions that brought about this new idea of fixed prices that aren't open to negotiation.

bmcleod 16y ago
Slightly related: In pretty much any store which has sales people that come and talk to you those people have the ability to knock 5-10% off if you ask for it. Cheap things aren't worth negotiating a lot for, but they certainly can be negotiated and the other side will quite happily make a small concession normally since it pays off in happy customers. This is why always asking for a discount is worth it.
- vacri 16y ago
  The medical equipment company I used to work for had a 5% discount that they built into every sale - people rarely paid full price, so sometimes just asking 'can you do better?' on high cost items will at least get you this "auto" discount.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
patio11 16y ago
You can't waste time negotiating with every client who buys a $50 pair of shoes from you - it's just not cost effective. This is where price discrimination comes in, and it is staggeringly effective: coupons, sales, discounts, etc etc. The great thing about fixed prices is that there are so many to choose from!
- 16y ago

jwh 16y ago

The video shows perfectly why unwritten/verbal/implied contracts are to be avoided at all cost. Against my better judgement I recently completed some work without a written contract. It was exactly like the restaurant scene: they'd received the services and used them but started questioning the bill (after it became overdue). I still find it strange that people view other people as a commodity like oil or pork bellies yet they expect ridiculous returns, akin to a barrel of oil spontaneously duplicating and selling itself for $300

billswift 16y ago
I used to work for an architectural and landscape designer and builder. After getting a judgement against him when a client took him to court, he quit using written contracts and instead went to week-by-week meetings with clients and billing on the same basis, so neither ran away with misunderstandings or too great sunk costs. It worked pretty well for the next 25 years, until he retired.

jeffiel 16y ago

Ha, this reminds me of the Microsoft vs. GM comparison from yesteryears. Cars would crash unexpectedly, etc.

edw519 16y ago

It's war, I tell ya! The video should play the first 10 minutes and then display a dialog box prompting for a credit card in order to update to "Premium" (which would just make the dialog box go away). The hairdresser should color her hair purple, but once she paid the bill, it would magically turn blond at 3 a.m. via Microcolor Automatic Update. The chef should electronically disable the steak-embedded Exlax dispenser once the bill was paid in full. oops, just in case... </sarcasm>

wh-uws 16y ago

Link to original site http://www.vendorclientvideo.com/ http://www.vendorclientvideo.com/

andyidsinga 16y ago

classic: "we'll do this this time but you need to show us how you did it so we can do it in house"

invisible 16y ago

The guys that made this seem to do a lot of "high-end" marketing, so I guess it doesn't get much better with big clients (http://www.scofieldedit.com/ http://www.scofieldedit.com/). Really neat video though!

ecuzzillo 16y ago

You can order a filet for a fairly predictable price, it will take a fairly predictable amount of time, and it will fairly predictably make you happy. Software, by and large, does not make people happy or do what they want nearly as reliably as steak does, and so if I were them I would be much more finicky about paying people to make it for me than I am about paying people to make me steak. And especially, software made to order has even lower mean and even higher variance than most of the software that people use. And you don't know what you're getting until you get it, at which point the incompetent software vendor is demanding some ridiculously exorbitant sum for something it turned out you didn't want anyway. You personally may not suck at programming, but the majority of programmers do, and so people are very justifiably unwilling to cough up the dough programmers demand.

skore 16y ago
I'm not really sure whether arguing the "the work you receive might suck" case is helpful for the discussion. (I'm also pretty sure that it won't get you much love here for that train of though ;-) ) If that's where you start, sure, you can arrive at a lot of conclusions and be none the wiser. I have been to restaurants where the steak was far less reliable than you suppose. Actually, that's not true - I avoid restaurants like that by figuring out that the one I do go to respects me as a client as I do respect it as the place that makes my tummy full. And there we arrive at the point of the video: The vendors are the ones who bring respect and quality to the table, the problem is that the clients do in no way mirror that respect. If a client is willing to "just get somebody to do something for as little cash as possible", that's what they will get. Fortunately, people who care about the things they want to have done check first, treat their business partners well and live in a happy place where real things are negotiated for real prices that are then paid like adults.
bmelton 16y ago
The obvious counterpoint to that is that there is no give and take in the preparation of a filet. The success of a development project, or software implementation depends just as much on involvement from the customer as it does for the developer or provider. In the enterprise, this means setting up a project consisting of stakeholders from which you can gather information, get integration assistance, etc. In the single-project bespoke software or web development arena, it's even more important that the customer is able to provide good feedback, offer and direct according to their vision, etc. Back to the steak analogy, what would be the remediation for the customer yelling "More salt! More salt!" and then refusing to pay when the final product is too salty?

piney 16y ago

Companies who treat their vendors like this have a company culture that treats them the same way. Its therefore OK to kick around other people, even easier since they are behind a company's 'mask'.

franze 16y ago

[video] better than i thought it would be

erikb 16y ago

The difference, as I see it, is just that these people in the video really fight for their right. The cook will let his fists talk, if they don't pay. That dvd guy will never buy this dvd and so on. In the IT world there is the problem that there are actually really many people that let themself beeing enslaved and accept those situations. If 60% of the dvd shops would react positively to bargaining, every client would try it. That is "just" the situation w face in our business. If you didn't see it, I can connect you to some companies. Work for them for some months and you see that 90% of the coders there (contractors or employers) effectively put themself in slavery. Although not all software developers are like this, we all have to suffer from the consequences of these acts of low selfevaluation.

exit 16y ago

this would be a great way to spend fu money. pretend to be a small time contractor and then absolutely destroy companies run by sleazy conniving wheeler-dealers who try to short you.