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Food for thought: It's quite possible you're not understanding the client well, and are indeed wasting their time. I've worked with contractors where you know

Food for thought: It's quite possible you're not understanding the client well, and are indeed wasting their time. I've worked with contractors where you know what you want and why, but the developer insists on throwing up a lot of objections on how it won't solve the problem for x or y reason. Changing the orientation of a PDF seems like the kind of request that should be straight forward and not require a lot of heavy lifting to convince a contractor that it's worthwhile.

unsupp0rted 4y ago
I changed the orientation of the PDF as requested. This did not add any white space next to line items, since the line items table uses 98 % width either way, unlike when printing from Excel I guess. This is what I tried and failed to get heard yesterday. Also now in Landscape the cover page header takes up like 50% of the page. But hey “just make it landscape”. What the client needs me to do, I suspect without being able to confirm because my questions are “wasting their time”, is give the warehouse a place to pencil stuff in next to line items. So I prepped both versions, portrait and landscape with a SKU Notes column at the side, adjusting the table width and header height, etc and emailed those options over unprompted. The portrait version shows double the line items per page and probably (?) solves the problem at hand… assuming I guessed right on limited information. So far no reply to any of the 3 solutions.
- jcheng 4y ago
  Not sure why, but now I really want to know how this turns out!
  - martinflack 4y ago
    At least the conversation hasn't progressed to printing it upside down or on the back...
  - unsupp0rted 4y ago
    If history with this client is any indication, they will not realize I have offered these viable solutions at all. A week or so from now the warehouse will complain vaguely that they have “no place to write”. The client will blame me for the poorly designed packing slip and suggest we “just go back” to the Excel version (which required multiple hours a day of manual data entry by an employee who is no longer at the company and cost untold $ in human error).
    - travisjungroth 4y ago
      I'm assuming you're being serious here. I'd suggest sending an email: Tomorrow I'm going with option #[your favorite]. I think it best solves the problem. Let me know if you'd like something different.
- 2devnull 4y ago
  The next trick to learn is that the customer will still blame you for not telling them that landscape won’t fix it. Then you’ll waste less time the next time your customer asks for something stupid. Fail fast can work well for client management.
  - unsupp0rted 4y ago
    Solid advice. I shouldn’t have pushed so hard to get heard. Should have just made it landscape (which took minutes) and let it fail. The trick is balancing that against wanting to be a consultant to them (i.e. somebody who knows what he’s doing and offers viable solutions that they themselves can’t think of) rather than a mindless pair of hands that gets directed by them to throw code at a wall.
    - Aeolun 4y ago
      You need clients that will allow you to be that for them. Sometimes they just want a really expensive code monkey. I’m not exactly sure why. Maybe paying hundreds of dollars an hour is a sort of status symbol?
      - yamtaddle 4y ago
        Raising rates seems to help. The more they're paying you, the more they're willing to listen, it seems. Though of course you can never completely escape bad clients.
    - shanusmagnus 4y ago
      Argh, that resonates. My general strategy: speak up briefly on how we should do {x}, and then, when I am not heard, do their thing {y}, which usually fails, since if I speak up in the first place it means I probably know what I'm talking about. Anyway, they can recognize the failure of {y}. Now it's time to make my suggestion again, not in an asshole way, but rather: "I think we should do {x}" as if it's the first time I said it; or "Let's revisit what you're trying to accomplish here." The happy story would be that people are abashed at my great wisdom and sorrowful that they did not heed it. More accurate story is that no acknowledgement of anything occurs, but they are more receptive in the moment, and even a bit more receptive in the future. Took a long time to arrive at this, sadly, my great wisdom notwithstanding.
- jcelerier 4y ago
  > What the client needs me to do, I suspect without being able to confirm because my questions are “wasting their time”, is give the warehouse a place to pencil stuff in next to line items. have you thought that maybe this is not the reason at all why they want this ? maybe they have a scanner somewhere that works better with the landscape format ? some regulation to comply with ? I find it absolutely insufferable when you ask people to do something that you want, and they ask you why ; like, this is not at all why you're being paid unless you're in a R&D position ; if I was in your client's shoes I'd start looking for another contractor that would give me what I ask no question asked. They're paying you for your time, no? If they ask you to dig in a hole and then fill it back after you do it.
  - QuercusMax 4y ago
    If you ask me to implement something and I don't understand why you need it, then I may not do it right, and you may get regressions in this functionality in the future. Developers need to build a mental model of the problem they're solving. If the answer is "we've always done it this way" that's not very compelling especially when we're building a new system! But if you say "this is required because of XYZ", then this is something that I can understand, and more importantly, document as a requirement.
  - unsupp0rted 4y ago
    > have you thought that maybe this is not the reason at all why they want this ? Yes, that is the reason I ask questions about who is using this and what their objectives are. > They're paying you for your time, no? No. They're paying me for the value my skillset and experience brings. I don't bill hourly, I bill bi-weekly, 2 weeks in advance. At any time they can fire me or I can fire them. Most likely we're setting the stage for either of those two outcomes right now, unless we can get our communication in sync. I'll try to find a replacement client who's interested in communicating the problems they're facing, working with me to come up with solutions, then working with me to iterate on them. > If they ask you to dig in a hole and then fill it back after you do it. I'm not currently at the point of desperation that accepting something like this would require. This is more like something a prison or internment camp might do to mentally break prisoners.
- robocat 4y ago
  You seem to be making things difficult for yourself. Do you have an example of what it used to do from Excel? Just do something similar as your first cut. You implied you knew how Excel printed since you wrote “because even though ‘just making it landscape’ solves this same problem in Excel”. It sounds like you can’t communicate with your users, which could be the meta-problem that you need to fix. When you have a problematic person in the middle, sometimes you can set up covert channels of communication (risks, but rewards too). Problematic people are often causing problems within the organisation too, so you can find champions that will route around them. Edit: Politics are important, but sometimes you are getting paid to solve a problem, perhaps using unofficial nefarious methods. It requires a lot of skill, and you need to avoid traps, but again that is part of what an external developer is paid for?

unsupp0rted 4y ago

I changed the orientation of the PDF as requested. This did not add any white space next to line items, since the line items table uses 98 % width either way, unlike when printing from Excel I guess. This is what I tried and failed to get heard yesterday. Also now in Landscape the cover page header takes up like 50% of the page. But hey “just make it landscape”. What the client needs me to do, I suspect without being able to confirm because my questions are “wasting their time”, is give the warehouse a place to pencil stuff in next to line items. So I prepped both versions, portrait and landscape with a SKU Notes column at the side, adjusting the table width and header height, etc and emailed those options over unprompted. The portrait version shows double the line items per page and probably (?) solves the problem at hand… assuming I guessed right on limited information. So far no reply to any of the 3 solutions.

jcheng 4y ago
Not sure why, but now I really want to know how this turns out!
- martinflack 4y ago
  At least the conversation hasn't progressed to printing it upside down or on the back...
- unsupp0rted 4y ago
  If history with this client is any indication, they will not realize I have offered these viable solutions at all. A week or so from now the warehouse will complain vaguely that they have “no place to write”. The client will blame me for the poorly designed packing slip and suggest we “just go back” to the Excel version (which required multiple hours a day of manual data entry by an employee who is no longer at the company and cost untold $ in human error).
  - travisjungroth 4y ago
    I'm assuming you're being serious here. I'd suggest sending an email: Tomorrow I'm going with option #[your favorite]. I think it best solves the problem. Let me know if you'd like something different.
2devnull 4y ago
The next trick to learn is that the customer will still blame you for not telling them that landscape won’t fix it. Then you’ll waste less time the next time your customer asks for something stupid. Fail fast can work well for client management.
- unsupp0rted 4y ago
  Solid advice. I shouldn’t have pushed so hard to get heard. Should have just made it landscape (which took minutes) and let it fail. The trick is balancing that against wanting to be a consultant to them (i.e. somebody who knows what he’s doing and offers viable solutions that they themselves can’t think of) rather than a mindless pair of hands that gets directed by them to throw code at a wall.
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    You need clients that will allow you to be that for them. Sometimes they just want a really expensive code monkey. I’m not exactly sure why. Maybe paying hundreds of dollars an hour is a sort of status symbol?
    - yamtaddle 4y ago
      Raising rates seems to help. The more they're paying you, the more they're willing to listen, it seems. Though of course you can never completely escape bad clients.
  - shanusmagnus 4y ago
    Argh, that resonates. My general strategy: speak up briefly on how we should do {x}, and then, when I am not heard, do their thing {y}, which usually fails, since if I speak up in the first place it means I probably know what I'm talking about. Anyway, they can recognize the failure of {y}. Now it's time to make my suggestion again, not in an asshole way, but rather: "I think we should do {x}" as if it's the first time I said it; or "Let's revisit what you're trying to accomplish here." The happy story would be that people are abashed at my great wisdom and sorrowful that they did not heed it. More accurate story is that no acknowledgement of anything occurs, but they are more receptive in the moment, and even a bit more receptive in the future. Took a long time to arrive at this, sadly, my great wisdom notwithstanding.
jcelerier 4y ago
> What the client needs me to do, I suspect without being able to confirm because my questions are “wasting their time”, is give the warehouse a place to pencil stuff in next to line items. have you thought that maybe this is not the reason at all why they want this ? maybe they have a scanner somewhere that works better with the landscape format ? some regulation to comply with ? I find it absolutely insufferable when you ask people to do something that you want, and they ask you why ; like, this is not at all why you're being paid unless you're in a R&D position ; if I was in your client's shoes I'd start looking for another contractor that would give me what I ask no question asked. They're paying you for your time, no? If they ask you to dig in a hole and then fill it back after you do it.
- QuercusMax 4y ago
  If you ask me to implement something and I don't understand why you need it, then I may not do it right, and you may get regressions in this functionality in the future. Developers need to build a mental model of the problem they're solving. If the answer is "we've always done it this way" that's not very compelling especially when we're building a new system! But if you say "this is required because of XYZ", then this is something that I can understand, and more importantly, document as a requirement.
- unsupp0rted 4y ago
  > have you thought that maybe this is not the reason at all why they want this ? Yes, that is the reason I ask questions about who is using this and what their objectives are. > They're paying you for your time, no? No. They're paying me for the value my skillset and experience brings. I don't bill hourly, I bill bi-weekly, 2 weeks in advance. At any time they can fire me or I can fire them. Most likely we're setting the stage for either of those two outcomes right now, unless we can get our communication in sync. I'll try to find a replacement client who's interested in communicating the problems they're facing, working with me to come up with solutions, then working with me to iterate on them. > If they ask you to dig in a hole and then fill it back after you do it. I'm not currently at the point of desperation that accepting something like this would require. This is more like something a prison or internment camp might do to mentally break prisoners.
robocat 4y ago
You seem to be making things difficult for yourself. Do you have an example of what it used to do from Excel? Just do something similar as your first cut. You implied you knew how Excel printed since you wrote “because even though ‘just making it landscape’ solves this same problem in Excel”. It sounds like you can’t communicate with your users, which could be the meta-problem that you need to fix. When you have a problematic person in the middle, sometimes you can set up covert channels of communication (risks, but rewards too). Problematic people are often causing problems within the organisation too, so you can find champions that will route around them. Edit: Politics are important, but sometimes you are getting paid to solve a problem, perhaps using unofficial nefarious methods. It requires a lot of skill, and you need to avoid traps, but again that is part of what an external developer is paid for?