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I was ready to fire the agency the moment the author mentioned they were going off script and building whatever they wanted. This was a huge, blinking red flag

I was ready to fire the agency the moment the author mentioned they were going off script and building whatever they wanted. This was a huge, blinking red flag for me. Why would you keep paying someone when they're doing work you didn't ask for, doing work that doesn't align with your goals, and ignoring what you say?

hnbad 4y ago
If it's not part of the agreed upon scope and they didn't ask for permission, I see no obligation to pay them. They can put the logo in context, sure, but if they end up spending more time on the sketches for that context than the logo itself, that isn't what you ordered.
deleted 4y ago
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encryptluks2 4y ago
I call this the being too nice mistake. It is like the customer that would watch an employee spit in their food and say thanks to them. Effective leaders do not fear confrontation.
- onionisafruit 4y ago
  In this case it might be a case of being intimidated by a big agency. Isaac telling him that he was their smallest client had a "you're lucky we are willing to work for you" feel.
  - Domenic_S 4y ago
    > I thought I’d enjoy service normally reserved for large companies despite my limited budget. Sounds like that's exactly what he got, tbh.
  - InspClouseau 4y ago
    This feels even more dubious because if I figured out the correct company, they're fishing in the freelancer threads quite a lot. They know what they're offering to HN readers.
  - roguas 4y ago
    This would be first red flag for me. If someone from the getgo positions himself as doing you a favour, switch - it is not going to get better. At best its uncontrolled ego problem, at worst its a scheme to dry you up.
mderazon 4y ago
You are right But it's not always a clear cut. Sometimes trades have "artistic integrity" for a lack of better words. Carpenters, architects and also programmers - The client tells them what to do, but they usually want some freedom to leave their mark.
WorldMaker 4y ago
That seems to be the point where sunk cost fallacy strikes hard in the post to me. They had paid $X for "80% of the first milestone of work" and that sunk cost locks them in to everything else that happens. They seemed too fearful from that point onward that if they fired the agency and brought in a new agency or freelancer that they would start from square 1 and do all of the previous work (and spend) over again. The sunk cost fallacy suggests that sometimes is better for you if you should just accept existing losses, accept you've already sunk those costs and won't get them back, and move on. I don't know what their contract looked like with the agency, but an 80% of a logo design sounds like a perfect deliverable that you can safely fire the existing team and take the 80% deliverable to a new designer, not start from scratch, and ask them to do a final polish step. I would have cut losses there, but of course it is much easier to armchair quarterback from hindsight and different perspectives than if you are in the middle of it fighting that gut feeling that you've already invested so much and can't "afford" to cut losses.
- bequanna 4y ago
  Which absolutely makes me think this was a well thought out con designed to prey on those types of fears and maximize the value extracted from the mark. Those lottery phone scams out of Jamaica which target the elderly in the US are almost the exact same scam as what was described here. Promise something, get them to send money, don’t deliver, tell them you need more time/more money. Keep repeating until the mark walks away.
  - nerdawson 4y ago
    Most of my career has been spent at agencies. I think you're attributing malice to what was more than likely routine mismanagement.
    - thayne 4y ago
      Perhaps, but there is an incentive to continue that mismanagement, rather than fixing it.
    - dahdum 4y ago
atourgates 4y ago
You're correct, and I expect the real issue is that working that was was completely foreign to WebAgency. They typically are employed by businesses who are looking for a very specific result: a good website that works well. Their team wasn't setup to, and didn't know how to just deliver a simple logo. The correct answer would have been for WebAgency's CEO to say, "We'd love to work with you, but we're not really setup for this type of project. If you'd like to have us take on your whole website, here's what that would look like. Otherwise, I don't think we're a good fit."
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Cthulhu_ 4y ago
I think that at the time, the agency upsold the author and they went along with it; after that, sunk cost became a factor. I do believe this is what most agencies will try, upselling I mean. That said, clients can also be problematic; I recall one where the client paid a fixed amount per two-week sprint, but then really started to stretch out how much work was done within that sprint by basically not signing off on tasks and reporting new features to be added as bugs. It's another case I think of a party not being firm enough about scope.

hnbad 4y ago

If it's not part of the agreed upon scope and they didn't ask for permission, I see no obligation to pay them. They can put the logo in context, sure, but if they end up spending more time on the sketches for that context than the logo itself, that isn't what you ordered.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

encryptluks2 4y ago

I call this the being too nice mistake. It is like the customer that would watch an employee spit in their food and say thanks to them. Effective leaders do not fear confrontation.

onionisafruit 4y ago
In this case it might be a case of being intimidated by a big agency. Isaac telling him that he was their smallest client had a "you're lucky we are willing to work for you" feel.
- Domenic_S 4y ago
  > I thought I’d enjoy service normally reserved for large companies despite my limited budget. Sounds like that's exactly what he got, tbh.
- InspClouseau 4y ago
  This feels even more dubious because if I figured out the correct company, they're fishing in the freelancer threads quite a lot. They know what they're offering to HN readers.
- roguas 4y ago
  This would be first red flag for me. If someone from the getgo positions himself as doing you a favour, switch - it is not going to get better. At best its uncontrolled ego problem, at worst its a scheme to dry you up.

mderazon 4y ago

You are right But it's not always a clear cut. Sometimes trades have "artistic integrity" for a lack of better words. Carpenters, architects and also programmers - The client tells them what to do, but they usually want some freedom to leave their mark.

WorldMaker 4y ago

That seems to be the point where sunk cost fallacy strikes hard in the post to me. They had paid $X for "80% of the first milestone of work" and that sunk cost locks them in to everything else that happens. They seemed too fearful from that point onward that if they fired the agency and brought in a new agency or freelancer that they would start from square 1 and do all of the previous work (and spend) over again. The sunk cost fallacy suggests that sometimes is better for you if you should just accept existing losses, accept you've already sunk those costs and won't get them back, and move on. I don't know what their contract looked like with the agency, but an 80% of a logo design sounds like a perfect deliverable that you can safely fire the existing team and take the 80% deliverable to a new designer, not start from scratch, and ask them to do a final polish step. I would have cut losses there, but of course it is much easier to armchair quarterback from hindsight and different perspectives than if you are in the middle of it fighting that gut feeling that you've already invested so much and can't "afford" to cut losses.

bequanna 4y ago
Which absolutely makes me think this was a well thought out con designed to prey on those types of fears and maximize the value extracted from the mark. Those lottery phone scams out of Jamaica which target the elderly in the US are almost the exact same scam as what was described here. Promise something, get them to send money, don’t deliver, tell them you need more time/more money. Keep repeating until the mark walks away.
- nerdawson 4y ago
  Most of my career has been spent at agencies. I think you're attributing malice to what was more than likely routine mismanagement.
  - thayne 4y ago
    Perhaps, but there is an incentive to continue that mismanagement, rather than fixing it.
  - dahdum 4y ago

atourgates 4y ago

You're correct, and I expect the real issue is that working that was was completely foreign to WebAgency. They typically are employed by businesses who are looking for a very specific result: a good website that works well. Their team wasn't setup to, and didn't know how to just deliver a simple logo. The correct answer would have been for WebAgency's CEO to say, "We'd love to work with you, but we're not really setup for this type of project. If you'd like to have us take on your whole website, here's what that would look like. Otherwise, I don't think we're a good fit."

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Cthulhu_ 4y ago

I think that at the time, the agency upsold the author and they went along with it; after that, sunk cost became a factor. I do believe this is what most agencies will try, upselling I mean. That said, clients can also be problematic; I recall one where the client paid a fixed amount per two-week sprint, but then really started to stretch out how much work was done within that sprint by basically not signing off on tasks and reporting new features to be added as bugs. It's another case I think of a party not being firm enough about scope.