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This is all very true. But there is one big but. If you live like that you yourself will have it easy, but the economy as a whole will suffer and the weak in so

• tluyben2 15y ago
  Agreed. But north and south are 2 extremes; I travel between Netherlands, France and Spain with a bit of Germany. The mix makes it great; TOO laid back has problems but having the Spanish feeling when working with clients in the Netherlands gives you great advantage and economic wealth. I used to be NL only and this was very stressful; we have very large (for EU) clients which were pushing through projects at great speed and everyone was stressed. It made a lot of my colleagues and me physically ill. We used to work hard. In NL that's no longer the idea; it's a national 'thing' now that people (even big company CEOs) want to spend more time with their families and so work a lot less hours per week and still the economy grows. But that's something else (don't know why that is). The thing is that I always wondered why there was so much pressure behind every project, because, usually, after delivering the technical part, there is a lot of other work to be done which takes them months or years to complete after which the entire project usually gets binned because it's not relevant anymore. Southern Spain teaches you that you can just tell those clients to stuff it; we deliver when we deliver and if that's not ok, then that's a shame, go elsewhere. Of course it's said in slightly different tone and SCRUM is used a lot but it works. Clients want quality, not speed. Speed is almost never relevant. Actually I have, in my 25 year software career encountered exactly 2 times it was time critical. Out of over a 1000 projects I managed or built. And 1 of those 2 times the client actually messed up the launch, not us. I never thought about this (stupid me) until I spent significant time in Spain; that made me see that there is always enough time for anything. Being in a hurry is just some lame excuse for not having a solid plan. If it just is done fast enough, the profits will come, right? I have too many examples for this; few years ago we built a Facebook app for about $100k which HAD TO BE DONE in 3 weeks. Of course that's not possible, but he, we are up for a challenge and the specs were ok. So we slept in the office, worked ourselves crazy and finished it. This was 2006 or something, the app STILL is not launched. Southern Spain taught me; if you are in a hurry, your plan sucks. But I'm making more money than I ever made doing projects the stressed way and so i'm contributing to the economy and making (many) jobs.
  • 0x12 15y ago
    Customer control is a difficult issue. Of course everybody likes to pretend that their stuff needs to be done yesterday. But in reality, most things can wait for a day or two, or even longer. Too much of that and you do start to suffer and I think that is what is driving this, the fear to miss the window of opportunity. I did some contract work and usually the speed with which I could deliver the solution was a key element in getting the contract. Making sure I charged a stiff premium for the work gave me the opportunity to get some 'down time' after completing a job and that helped me in staying balanced. As long as you are swimming in work you are probably too cheap.
    • tluyben2 15y ago
      I never realized I was doing it wrong :) And that it's either time/material with a fixed deadline or fixed price with a flexible deadline. Funny thing is how many people do not (want) to understand this. I now enforce this and we're still swimming in work with about 35% profit, which is excellent for consultancy work. I'm fine with that :)
      • 0x12 15y ago
        > we're still swimming in work with about 35% profit, You're still too cheap! Trust me on that, give it a shot and raise your prices until you get 'no' about 1/3rd to 1/2 the time you write proposals or until you have more than 20% unbooked time, whichever arrives first.