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What being ripped off taught me

thesaintlives 6mo ago
You went to China and worked for free. What you whining about? Are you surprised they did not pay you? You even had a sore wrist. What a hero! No sympathy whatsoever.
for_i_in_range 6mo ago
Who are they?
- dspillett 6mo ago
  Which they? The contractor, the project owners, etc? And is who they are relevant to the lesson (stealing time/effort is easy to get away with, you need to protect yourself from that)?
  - firtoz 6mo ago
    Article contains this: > I’ll happily tell you who they are - get in touch
    - dspillett 6mo ago
      I don't think a message on HN classes as getting in touch. This may have been posted by someone else entirely, having seen it posted elsewhere. In any case, if they don't want to publish the name on their own web page, they'll not want to publicly post it as a reply on HN either…
- sva_ 6mo ago
  I don't want to name what my quick Google search revealed, but if you search for augmented reality bus Beijing there aren't many options and it fits the authors characterization of their fleet consisting of ~20 buses.
BowBun 6mo ago
All this for a $35K contract, that sucks.
gnfargbl 6mo ago
> A contract is toilet paper It isn't, but you can't get blood from a stone and squeezing costs money. It sounds like the entity that the contract is with has no real assets and/or is based in a jurisdiction which is hard to enforce judgements in. That's a case where you need to get paid up-front, which is the real lesson in this article.
- andix 6mo ago
  > That's a case where you need to get paid up-front Or at least in very small batches and with very short due dates.
hyperhello 6mo ago
> They were carpetbaggers and dilettantes convinced by their own inexperience and the advice of a onetime VJ that they could pull off something I’d twice helped quote to be brought home by a cadre of hardened killers with shitloads of math and know-how at eye-watering prices. They were way way way over their heads and were in no way interested in updating their priors in light of the shit they were swimming in. And yet, somehow, you gave them the most important time you had for their promises.
- buran77 6mo ago
  > I missed the month of May with my 2-year-old kid. My wife cared for a 2-year-old alone. This wasn't because of the customer or not getting paid. This was the author's choice.
dragonsenseiguy 6mo ago
Who are they?
condensedcrab 6mo ago
Contract terms can vary greatly depending on the situation and the company you’re working with. Early/frequent payment terms are always good to have but you may not always have the leverage for it depending on where you’re at as a contractor. Takes getting ripped off a times before insisting on better terms I guess. It’s like bombing your first job interview… you can prepare but it just needs to happen.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
fontain 6mo ago
“A contract is toilet paper” A little hyperbolic, but more accurate than not when laypeople think about contracts. A contract isn’t a magic spell, it is a declaration of shared understanding that can be used for clarity and in legal proceedings. If you think of a contract as a way to ensure you get what you agreed, yes, it is toilet paper, because a contract doesn’t remove counterparty risk.
- blitzar 6mo ago
  In a fight between a piece of toilet paper backed by millions in legal spending vs a rock solid contract backed by nothing -- the toilet paper (even if it is used toilet paper) will win every single time.
- hermannj314 6mo ago
  A piece of contract toilet paper is still better than a bare hand shake agreement.
wewewedxfgdf 6mo ago
Be paid or don't work. I am so deadly serious - do not continue working if your invoices are late. You don't have to be a jerk about it, just explain to your primary contact that you need to be paid and you pick up tools again when the money has arrived. BUT it is on YOU to properly negotiate reasonable payment terms. And if you don;t know or don't trust the client then require payment in advance until a stronger commercial relationship can be settled in. Do not be a baby - go research business contracts and payment terms. Do not be afraid to lose business from companies that are squeamish about paying you - in fact actively avoid such companies.
- righthand 6mo ago
  100% agree, and to add it can be tough sometimes to walk away from a cool project. I had worked on a project building scientific trial software, an app to review 3D lung scans, and an ML model to detect lesions in lung scans. It was really empowering, but after the first scientific trial the customer stopped paying their bills and ended up in back payment of $1M. My boss closed the project which sucked but it ultimately cost the company and people’s jobs. Just not worth interacting with bad people if they stop the agreement. There is most likely more money later but there is also money that is on time with other customers.
- magicalhippo 6mo ago
  > Do not be afraid to lose business from companies that are squeamish about paying you - in fact actively avoid such companies. My boss said that the ones who have negotiated the best deals are the ones that are late paying, complain about just about every bill and will write angry letters when my boss index adjust pricing. He said it taught him to never offer a really good deal for a regular customer (ie where the upside isn't very obvious).
  - stavros 6mo ago
    I'm not sure that's the best takeaway here, in that it gets the causation wrong. It's not the deal that made the customer bad, it's that the bad customer insisted on getting a deal, whereas a good customer usually knows what quality costs and is prepared to pay. The takeaway here is probably that the fix isn't just "never discount", but it's to screen for the kind of customer who treats a good deal as an invitation to strengthen the relationship.
rwmj 6mo ago
What's an "AR bus"? How can augmented reality windows work on a bus unless you are (a) tracking the passenger's head and (b) there's only one passenger?
- post-it 6mo ago
  Screens outside the windows (not on the windows) can provide parallax, no need to track heads. However, in this case: > They were attempting to pull off AR effects on the transparent OLED windows of the bus without accounting for lens distortion, field of view, parallax, occlusion, etc., and were frustrated and mystified when things didn’t appear to line up. They were completely naive to what depth and scale cues are and how to deploy them.
  - sambaumann 6mo ago
    So is it an actual moving bus or just a simulation of one? I have not heard of the concept before
  - FabHK 6mo ago
    Can you elaborate? It seems to me that unless the screens are that far outside that they are where the target object is, two people that are offset laterally wrt the target object would have to be displayed something that's offset on the screen.
  - aziaziazi 6mo ago
    Imagine two passengers seating in rows r10 and r11, looking at the target T A. You need to know where a passager's eyes are to display the POI in the right place. Even if each rows gets their own and only screen you'll need to account for their head vertical position (different people are different height) and movement, hence the eye tracking. B. If you share a window between multiple people you end us with a POI mess with informations displayed multiplied by as much passengers in the bus. |- r9 -|w9 | |w9 |- r10 -|w10 T | |w10 |- r11 -|w11 | |w11 |- r12 -|w12 IMHO the only practical way is with personal headsets like [0] but then you don't need a bus: just use your foot or any transportation: it's AR and not VR. 0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpoLdQpPcAc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpoLdQpPcAc
rglover 6mo ago
Never do anything on faith or as a handshake deal. Always ensure you get paid (hint: escrow is kryptonite for weasels). Trust everyone, just not the devil inside them. Also, mandatory: https://creativemornings.com/talks/mike-monteiro--2/1 https://creativemornings.com/talks/mike-monteiro--2/1
- chrisweekly 6mo ago
  > “Starting work without a contract is like putting on a condom after taking a home pregnancy test" Choice quote from the linked talk (aptly titled "F*ck you, pay me").
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
- leviathant 6mo ago
  Yes! I regularly share a link to Mike's talk - I was about to post it myself before scanning the comments.
- DamnInteresting 6mo ago
  Back in my freelancer days, I learned this lesson the hard way, and I became strict about payments (half in advance, the other half required to turn over the final work). But when someone I'd known for years had an emergency, and needed their software patched over a weekend, I made an exception and delivered the work in good faith. And then they tried to get out of paying for it. I had to harangue them for months to get the check. The lesson I learned is that it doesn't matter how long they've been your friend, when it comes time to pay, they may still try to stiff you. The value of your service diminishes infinitely after it has been performed.
  - ekropotin 6mo ago
    Just reinforces the golden rule of not doing business with friends or family.
InMice 6mo ago
> I missed the month of May with my 2-year-old kid. My wife cared for a 2-year-old alone. The weirdest part to me, receive a call and just get up and go? Priorities? Did you write this blog post from the doghouse?
- close04 6mo ago
  Reads to me like the author is trying to elicit some empathy. It just sounds like he was just fine leaving his family for a job. Not getting paid couldn’t have factored into that decision.
  - 0x3f 6mo ago
    > It just sounds like he was just fine leaving his family for a job. Or... maybe he needs income to exist.
    - InMice 6mo ago
      He doesnt provide any context for that if so and if you look around the site, doesn't seem like the case at all. More like he just decided on the phone something interested him enough to bounce indefinitely.
      - williamdclt 6mo ago
        Seems strange to assume that he does _not_ need income to exist, not sure what society you live in but I'm interested
  - Imustaskforhelp 6mo ago
    They work within a niche space, as others have said, they follow where the work is, So they are able to charge more which I hope is able for them to survive in modern economy and be able to give more time to their family. atleast that's my interpretation of it of how logic might follow if they are working in niche space, many people seem to be applying the logic onto themselves into completely standard situation, but I don't suppose that is the case here. Hope this helps in genuinely understanding their situation, from my reading/thinking about it.
fred_is_fred 6mo ago
He says "trust your gut" about 12 times, but the whole lead up has 0 mention that he was worried he would not get paid. His only gut feelings seemed to be around tech issues.
- billnad 6mo ago
  Yes, I guess also trust the situation when it looks completely wrong. your gut is not lying when it sees that as well
balbladsaf1231 6mo ago
> A contract is toilet paper no it isn't. why you did not sue them? success rate of international arbitrage (New York Convention) proces into China is 90% success rate. USA/EU companies who sue Chineses companies in China for breach of contract seem to be winning rates. Enforcement of USA curt orders do not need to go thorugh Chinese courts again, and are enforced by local authorities (local sharks) with success rate of 80% for foreign firms suing chinese firms. fees are also fairly low. case is straightfoward. if author went and sue, likely he would get his money back.
- LoganDark 6mo ago
  > why you did not sue them? Because they could just dissolve the entity and get away with it. Did you even read the rest of the article?
  - direwolf20 6mo ago
    You can't do that and if you do do that it's an imprisonable felony. You have to pay all debts before dissolving a corporation. If you can't pay them you have to go through the bankruptcy process.
- ctdinjeu4 6mo ago
  [dead]
eckesicle 6mo ago
We’ve also learned this lesson the hard way. These are now the clauses we require in every project we do: - Payment is due X days after receipt of invoice, or immediately after the consultant has addressed any quality issues, whichever is sooner - Late payment shall incur interest at 8% above the BoE base rate and a late fee of 100 GBP as per the UK Late Payment Legislation. Partial payments on invoices shall apply to late fees, interest, and then principal, in that order. - In the event of a late payment the invoice for the next deliverable shall immediately fall due. - The consultant shall be entitled to shift deadlines on deliverables in the event of a late payment as a result of any work disruption, without incurring any liability. - Payment shall be made in X currency, or an exchange rate at X date on Oanda.com shall apply. - The client is responsible for any bank fees incurred by their, or any intermediary bank. In the event of a SWIFT transaction it shall be made with the OUR payment code. - The jurisdiction in the event of a conflict shall be England and Wales. Neither party shall be bound by arbitration. - The client and consultant shall both indemnify the other up to the total value of the contract and shall not under any circumstance be liable beyond X GBP. We also no longer share downloadable links of our deliverables until they are paid up. They get a view/comment only link for reports/data etc. We’ve found that clients that aren’t willing to accept these terms won’t pay you either way. We determine the net days on the invoice based on the credit rating of the client. Ironically, the good clients pay within 2-3 days normally, and the difficult ones are very “long tail”. About 1% of contracts tend to fully or partially default on their payments. We’re in a particularly credit poor industry but our average delay due to late payment is 23 days. Those clients where we stop delivery pay on average 11 days sooner than those contracts where we don’t stop delivery. This is based on around 2,000 invoices sent over the last 5 years.
- eckesicle 6mo ago
  Oh and another lesson! Ensuring that each deliverable invoice is small enough that it falls under the simplified claims procedure (in the UK it’s 10,000 pounds) greatly simplifies collection. It costs something like 80 quid to file for recovery in court and in our experience invoices are immediately paid up when a “Letter before action” is sent. You burn the relationship, but arguably you probably don’t want it anyway.
bob1029 6mo ago
I've started operating in really granular units of work. Like less than $1000 per. Cash on delivery. This won't work with all clients and all jobs, but there are places where it does work very well. Advantages include being able to avoid paper contracts altogether. Verbal agreements and a 4 column xlsx that is reviewed monthly are all that seem to be required with some of my clients. If I don't get paid for one day of work, I will probably get over it in a few hours. If I don't get paid for six months of work, we will have a serious problem. The tighter and more incremental we can make the delivery process, the less likely anyone gets screwed. If a party is pushing hard for long-term contracts or large up-front sums of payment, I would walk away from that transaction unless there was a literal golden goose sitting in their lap.
- lnsru 6mo ago
  I am also trying to set granular milestones and get paid every 1000€. Not provide 20000€ work and then start looking for my money. I can live with a loss of 1000€, but missing 20000€ will impact negatively my mortgage and investment plan.
carlosjobim 6mo ago
There's no such thing as a company temporarily being in dire straits. These kind of companies are always in dire straits and crisis - it's a business tactic to not deliver and not pay. Just stay away, whether you're a customer, a contractor, an employee or if they want to be your customer.
xyzelement 6mo ago
The fact that this is so many words makes me worry the author underappreciated the main lesson: risk exposure. When you go out of pocket - you are out of pocket and the risk is all yours. If that one thing was different then all the remaining risk is on the client - they don't want to do version contr - ok cool you still get paid. Usually when you have to pay in to get paid out (outside of a direct investment scenario) it's a scam. The people who fall for the Nigeria Prince thing are operating the same way.
jfrbfbreudh 6mo ago
No longer a contractor but I used to offer a 10-15% discount for paying upfront. Almost every client took this deal. Earned a little less but never lost sleep over payments.
- bena 6mo ago
  Why not make your rate 15% higher than your desired rate? That way your “discounted” rate is the rate they should have paid and they feel like they got a deal.
throwaway98797 6mo ago
> End clients can’t tell the difference between these bozos and me. I don’t know what to do with that information but it feels bad. this is only getting worse with ai. all the artifacts of good work are there but none of the depth.
ChrisMarshallNY 6mo ago
That doesn’t really sound like “being ripped off,” as opposed to “betting on a lame horse.” The people behind this were irresponsible, childish, and exemplars of the Dunning-Kruger effect. They weren’t really hardline crooks. Crooks are probably a lot more organized. I have gotten myself invested with similar crowds. There’s usually a charismatic spokesperson, leading the chaos. They likely didn’t plan to rip him off, but paying him wasn’t really something they thought about. Real crooks put lots of planning into taking money. > Multiple very junior developers were touching (binary, TouchDesigner) code and deploying straight to production via thumb drive, with zero version control. In fact, they didn’t know what version control was. I suspect many startups fit that description. If they survive, then they usually pull themselves up by the bootstraps, eventually. Many of them collapse, taking everything with them.
- doctorhandshake 6mo ago
  I think you’re right and it’s fair to reframe this that way, in that in a certain sense, despite my naivety, I was the adult in the room and should have seen what they couldn’t. But then given what I’ve learned since I think I can say with some certainty that this particular group saw the writing on the wall and were willing to use the skilled labor and time of an endless army of cannon fodder to try to staunch the bleeding or take one more long shot at getting final payment, and doing so without the agreement or awareness of the people they enlisted to the risk they were participating in.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 6mo ago
    I've seen similar, at a bigger scale. When the wheels start coming off, morals are first over the side. In some cases (think Theranos), it can go all the way into straight criminality. Most times, it just reaches the point where everything collapses, when the supports rust away.
burnt-resistor 6mo ago
I was owed billable hours from Stanford University but refused to do any further work until the outstanding invoice was paid. Their accounts payable department didn't want to, so I had to tell the client "sorry" and walked away. It's really weird because I didn't have a problem in the near past then and was even an FTE at one point. I'm unwilling to work for free or for imaginary, low liquidation preference equity of a worthless startup. Ordinarily, I would sign master agreements and set PO terms up-front. Typically, the better customers would agree to very strict requirements / objectives for a particular time period for a specific price. Any deviations would require negotiation. Hourly is fine too but there must be regular milestone deliveries so that there's demonstrable value for money being conveyed rather than an appearance of a milking-oriented consultant. Expectations must always be managed.
apt-apt-apt-apt 6mo ago
Sometimes you just have to get scammed to be able to recognize scams. Seems obvious to outsiders, but can be hard to see when you're in it. Some favorites: - No way they would actually screw me over! We're buds/they got me tiger balm/they paid some/I did them a solid - Thin veneer of safe fallbacks that doesn't hold up under scrutiny. Legal or other 'repercussions' - Endless delays and excuses (though it's usually too late by this point)
- veunes 6mo ago
  Yeah, a lot of it only becomes obvious in hindsight because each individual signal is easy to rationalize away
ian_d 6mo ago
Evergreen advice from the design side: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U (Mike Monteiro: F*ck You, Pay Me)
- normie3000 6mo ago
  Watched a couple of times, but I don't fully understand the message in this video. Can someone ELI5?
  - Kye 6mo ago
    Have a contract that encodes "fuck you, pay me" into the terms. Ideally, have an actual lawyer take care of the contract and the enforcement. There's a lot of law-y stuff out there that won't hold up in reality. Mortgage companies don't take payment in excuses from your clients, so neither should you.
  - post-it 6mo ago
    The message is to have a contract and insist on being paid according to the contract, and refuse further work until you get paid.
apt-apt-apt-apt 6mo ago
Actually sort of darkly clever– they turned OP into an unwitting investor. Project goes well, he gets paid and they're best buds, and he doesn't even realize he was scammed (by intent). If not, well there's no point suing a failed company.
- dilyevsky 6mo ago
  If you're in California, even if business goes totally kaput and runs out of money company officers are personally liable for any and all unpaid wages. Labor Commission Office will also include a hefty punitive sum to boot.
  - sudobash1 6mo ago
    I don't think this makes a difference for independent contractors.
  - Analemma_ 6mo ago
    Doesn’t apply to contractors. In fact, if you do contract work for a company which misses payroll, courts can claw back money out of your bank account in order to pay it. It’s rare, because usually this is about “contractors” who are actually accomplices of the owner, getting free money out of the failing company with inflated payments for fake work, but it does happen.
ng12 6mo ago
One thing I learned from consulting is if you position yourself as the "fix your mess" guy you have to be very defensive. Ask for more up-front, and bail at the first sign of underpayment. Be pleasantly surprised when a poorly run project is being run by nice, honest people. Prep for the opposite.
- veunes 6mo ago
  You're not just delivering expertise, you're stepping into a situation where incentives are already misaligned, expectations are fuzzy, and there's often a cashflow problem hiding somewhere
- randomNumber7 6mo ago
  It sounds counterintuitive but from my experience it are often nice and (somewhat) honest people. They just came after whoever messed it up horribly in the first place and at some point they came to the conclusion that they need some external help.
- caminante 6mo ago
  IMHO, he was defensive in the way you suggest. He got ~25% upfront. But let's assume he got 100% upfront. More importantly, he didn't protect scope or contract change requests. That was the time to contract. It sounds like collecting 100% would've been leaving money on the table for value delivered. I like your label for "fix your mess" guys, but I know/use a few who definitely bill and get paid much later (especially lawyers). Sucks for OP that he contracted with a CN firm with credit risk.
jordanb 6mo ago
Wage theft is the most lucrative and least prosecuted crime in America.
- QuarterReptile 6mo ago
  FTA: China
  - AlexeyBelov 6mo ago
    FTA: California-based client
avoidyc 6mo ago
[flagged]
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
- munificent 6mo ago
  > NEVER work for a YC founder. I would generalize this to "don't work for someone whose ability to pay is based on a high-risk gamble". There are certainly shady people who can pay but don't because they are greedy avaricious bastards. But there are also plenty of people who would like to pay but whose business venture fails and with it goes their funds. In the author's story, they probably should have concluded fairly early on that a team that wildly incompetent was also unlikely to produce a product that satisfies their client. And if the client doesn't pay, no one gets paid.
  - throwway120385 6mo ago
    "I'll get you the money tomorrow. I'm heading down to the track to go get it."
- gavinray 6mo ago
  I'd say it's almost something of a rite of passage to get taken advantage of if you're young and working in tech startups. Usually this is in the form of abysmally low pay, along with "Sweat Equity": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_equity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_equity Of course, the startup doesn't go anywhere, and your sweat equity never materializes, so you're left with just the pitiful pay. I went through this in my late teens/early 20's, along with many friends.
  - hn_acc1 6mo ago
    I've been part of 2 startups, 2000 and 2005. In both cases, taking the "more salary and less stock" option worked out to my advantage.
- tombert 6mo ago
ycarechildren 6mo ago
The same founders who require employees to work 24/7/365 while they jack off to Hentai all day are the same ones who don't pay: HockeyStack, Greptile, Velt all had problems paying me and all required 7 day a week, overnight, etc.
cainxinth 6mo ago
I have a friend who retired but still does some contract work. They were on salary their whole career and are not used to sending invoices and tracking down payments. One of their clients was late paying and my friend wasn't concerned, but I encouraged them to be diligent about insisting on being paid on time. I have been a freelancer for over a decade and in my experience, the further away you get from a bill, the less real it becomes to the person who owes it. They start forgetting what the project was, or worse, start questioning why they even have to pay for it. You have to stay on top of these things or they can spiral out of control.
- bityard 6mo ago
  Just for my own general curiosity, once a bill is overdue, how often do you nag the customer about it? Or does it look more like an escalation process? (Start out with a polite email, then a phone call, then a phone call to their manager/business partner, etc?) Do you ever "fire" customers who always pay, but always pay late and only after they've been reminded 3 times?
  - cainxinth 6mo ago
    They get 30 days to pay. I used to start sending reminders if they were late by even a day past that, but I quickly learned that can unnecessarily embarrass or annoy some clients, so now everyone gets a two week grace period after the 30 days are up. I send a gentle reminder just to my immediate point of contact to start. If that doesn't work, I start sending more business-like requests for payment every week, and I CC anyone I think might help make it happen. I've never fired anyone, and everyone has eventually paid (knock wood), but there have been times when I assumed the money was a lost cause (though never five figures worth like the person who shared this blog post). But more than once, I've had a client contact me and request new work, and I've had to remind them they still have an unpaid invoice. I'll tell them I can't start anything new until the old work is paid. They almost invariably blame the delay on their billing department, and the money eventually finds its way to me.
  - _whiteCaps_ 6mo ago
    Net 30 is a standard way to do this. Lots of examples online on how to add this to your invoices. Well run businesses will pay you on the 29th day. :)
freediddy 6mo ago
When you walk into a shitshow like this, the first thing you do is secure your payments. Anyone who is in such bad shape like how OP described it means that they are desperate, and desperate people will do and say anything to get help. It is most likely going to not pay anyone so you need to make sure you're paid above and beyond anything else otherwise walk.
- notquitebuddy 6mo ago
  You forgot the middleground where there are thousands of laid off people who can do your exact job and undercut you etc. These founders hire/fire through hundreds of us, they don't give a shit. If you say 1 thing they don't like they go to the next.
  - freediddy 6mo ago
    That's not the middle ground. That's the other extreme, where people are desperate for work so they will say they can do anything in order to get work.
    - notquitebuddy 6mo ago
      [dead]
  - noident 6mo ago
    How many of those people have experience with augmented reality? Probably not that many. $35k seems pretty low for this job. Hindsight is 20/20 of course.
    - necovek 6mo ago
      As 75% of a single month fee (25% paid upfront), not too bad either: $46k in total for 4 weeks of work. Expenses were not included (flight was paid for).
swiftcoder 6mo ago
> End clients can’t tell the difference between these bozos and me. I don’t know what to do with that information but it feels bad. This is unfortunately all too common. It's hard for someone who isn't an expert in the specific field to separate a smooth grifter from a more typical sales pitch
jancsika 6mo ago
> The faith was that if they could’t pay, they’d let me know because I was actively digging their asses out of a hole they’d dug, and doing so tirelessly and professionally, without complaint. I get what the author is saying here. But it's a bad idea to treat one's work team with deep communal devotion in this way, as if they are a kind of dysfunctional family-- or, in the author's case, apparently higher in status than real family. Doing this without proper remuneration creates a market distortion, and that is bad for capitalism.
b8 6mo ago
There's not any incentives to pay you when they're in China and there's no legal recourse from the US. Even in the US suing is often times not worth it economically and getting someone to pay after a win is painful too if they don't just file bankruptcy. Escrow or upfront only is the best way to go.
- doctorhandshake 6mo ago
  This was a California company and contract, but your comment does apply to their situation with their client
- deaddodo 6mo ago
  The company was California-based, they were offering services in China. At least, that was my read. The contractor was also in California. Honestly, this seems to be bad advice from their recovery services. Suing is 100% recommended here. There are plenty of lawyers that will work on a pro rata basis for account recovery in California. Sure, you lose a portion of your 35k; but you get more than you would have letting them get away with paying zero. There's also laws in place to keep companies from "closing up shop" and opening in a new entity. It doesn't necessarily erase your debt (it can, but only in rare circumstances). And, even if they do get around it, it keeps them from pulling the same shenanigans going forward, in the state.
  - doctorhandshake 6mo ago
    Not saying I know better but this contradicts what I heard from multiple collections companies with in-house legal - they all said suing would not be worth the ~$2,500 upfront fees and that the debtor would just vanish. The debt still exists so I'd love to think otherwise! Feel free to HMU if you have a specific lawyer/practice in mind ;
    - deaddodo 6mo ago
      The debtor can't "vanish", they are either an individual or an entity with registered individuals attached to it. Obviously, their structure matters a little bit along with where they are incorporated. But if they are incorporated in California, their debt is 95% recoverable if they want to continue doing business in any way. As an individual you can go after garnishment and other relief. As an entity, it's similar but to their company/corporate holdings. If they try to dissolve and create another business that operates in the same sphere/as a successor or with the same management team; the debt doesn't disappear, you just prosecute the new entity. With an added cherry of potential criminal prosecution, if they're particularly egregious about it. People can 100% get around paying, that happens. But the judgement will remain on their record. This will make reincorporation difficult as well as just acting as a warning to future partners that do basic due diligence. No one's saying it's easy to get the money back, but rolling over probably is the least desirable outcome (and probably why they've acted this way with so many people). As to your collection firms, I can't speak to it. Maybe your situation is more complicated (e.g. registered entity out of state, unclear contract terms, etc) or they just don't want to go through with the hassle of doing more than they were hired to do (send nag letters and hope for easy turnover). In the future, you can use it as a learning experience. Keep your deliverables under the small claims limit, do metered payouts, etc.
dangus 6mo ago
OP wasn't ripped off, OP just forgot to define their contract. Like, entirely. Nobody forced OP to work 11-14 hour days. Contracting 101 stipulates that you define your hours ahead of time. You come in, you provide your expertise, and you leave at the end of the day. Let the client's junior employees work long hours. Not your problem. OP brought their own equipment, which is totally fine but "who provides equipment" is also in the contract from the start. OP should have made a list of equipment that the client will require to complete such a project and stipulate a client budget be set aside to cover any shortcomings as they arise. The contract is where you define when you get paid. "Deposit is XYZ quantity, non-refundable. Contractor will be paid for the upcoming week in advance by X date. Failure to remit payment will halt work." I understand that the point of this blog piece is that it was a learning experience for OP but this stuff is pretty obvious isn't it? This is pretty much what comes up when you google stuff like "how to get into freelance contracting." I'm shocked and feel bad for OP for letting things get this far. Sadly, they were not ripped off by anyone but themselves.
- doctorhandshake 6mo ago
  These types of situations are endemic to my industry, for better or worse. I wasn't intending to complain about the working conditions by way of making it seem as though any of those things were unusual — I was providing that context by way of saying I conducted myself as a professional does in these situations. I've been in this (immersive, interactive, creative tech) industry for 20 years and those conditions are absolutely expected onsite when commissioning, installing, or preparing for a live event. Refusing to work beyond say an 8-10 hour day would leave the project unfinished and we work on a 'show must go on basis'. With that said, doing this for 20+ days without a break is unusually grueling, even for this industry.
- theredones 6mo ago
  [dead]
999900000999 6mo ago
Back in my younger days I found a bunch of liberals who were claiming to run a software company. They were really into the social justice BS. After about a month of employment, I was told I was being rude to ask for payment. Apparently they neglected to tell me that they actually only pay their employees 60 to 70 days after they start. Of course the first red flag was them doing the 1099 dance for slightly above minimum wage. I had been forced to do that before, but guess what. They paid us every single week. Quiting without notice was one of the greatest feelings with these clowns. By this time they had started to ask me to literally work for free. "Unpaid training". They stopped scheduling me for paid hours anyway, so no notice needed. Right after that I worked for some conservatives. They paid me early. My first year I got a large raise. There were some awkward moments like the CEO telling me who to vote for. But for the most part it was awesome. I still consider myself to be very liberal, but I don't want to work anywhere that does a lot of virtue signaling. Your beliefs don't make you a good person, your actions do.
- bena 6mo ago
  You realize that your anecdote here is itself virtue signaling, right? Because, I’m sure multiple people here could tell similar stories with the political leanings of the groups involved reversed.
  - 999900000999 6mo ago
    I'm an individual. I can have beliefs. Corporations, can not. I've been though this twice. If they're doing press releases about how liberal they are, it's probably not a good fit. Now that I'm old and jaded, I want politics out of my workplace.
    - s5300 6mo ago
      [dead]
- add-sub-mul-div 6mo ago
  A bunch of liberals got into my walls and started chewing the wires.
veunes 6mo ago
This reads less like a "got ripped off" story and more like a perfect storm of every classic consulting red flag showing up at once
Aurornis 6mo ago
Good lessons in here, but the part about giving up on legal action because they told him they’d dissolve the entity is questionable. This is where it pays to have a good relationship with a lawyer who will be up front about your chances and the cost of legal action. The sum discussed falls into the difficult range where it could take enough hours to try to collect that you’d be worse off than where you started if the lawyer can’t deliver anything. However them dissolving the entity and moving their assets and IP around is also not free and will incur overhead, if they actually did it. Threatening to dissolve the entity seemingly admits that they do have something worth collecting against. In my experience the companies who run out of money just tell you that they’re out of money and they also start losing key employees and your email contacts because they’re not getting paid either. If the company continues to exist and they’re threatening you to not sue, that might be a sign that they do have the money but they’re relying on intimidating contractors to not try collecting it. Legal action is not free, so all of this has to be weighed. EDIT: I should explain how I know this. Younger me took a job with a startup that got in over its head with spending but the CEO didn’t want the party to stop. His strategy was to stop paying any vendors and use the remaining cash flow to only pay past invoices for vendors that we needed something from (more work, more product) or anyone who looked like they were going to sue us. If someone got lawyers involved, they got paid. Needless to say I didn’t keep that job very long.
- jagged-chisel 6mo ago
  I don’t know this for certain, IANAL, but it seems to me if they’re threatening to dissolve the entity, that could open the owners to personal liability. Definitely bring it up with your lawyer.
  - direwolf20 6mo ago
    I believe dissolving a corporation requires you to attest you've paid all debts. If that's impossible, you have to go through the bankruptcy process. If you attest that you've paid all debts but you haven't, now you're committing frame against the government which they really don't like. You could be imprisoned for that.
alsetmusic 6mo ago
The page is actively hostile to me using reader mode on my phone. It keeps resetting my scroll progress to the top of the article. This is the second time I’ve run into this (first was within the last two weeks). I hope this is a bug in my phone’s handling of something and not intentional. Until I know otherwise, I’m treating sites where this happens as deliberately hostile for the same reason as always: ads. I use reader mode to escape ads that my ad blockers miss but also to avoid poor design or hard to read fonts and the like. My response is the same as ever: I closed the article.
- doctorhandshake 6mo ago
  think you got a bug my friend - this is a static site
  - alsetmusic 6mo ago
    Thanks for confirming. I was confident the first time because many websites are hostile to users. Seeing it again within a short window made my spidey-sense tingle.
uxcolumbo 6mo ago
Your blog is a treasure trove - thanks for sharing. Do you still cut your own hair ;) ? But yes us folks in the creative world can learn a few things from the corporate world when it comes to contracts and payment schedules. Mike Monteiro's talk 'F*ck you, pay me' comes to mind. --- https://www.mikemonteiro.com/ https://www.mikemonteiro.com/ https://creativemornings.com/talks/mike-monteiro--2/1 https://creativemornings.com/talks/mike-monteiro--2/1
- doctorhandshake 6mo ago
  Thanks - still cut my own hair but rethinking after a particularly disastrous one recently!
TravelTechGuy 6mo ago
Sadly every consultant can tell you at least one (hopefully only one) story about clients who refuse to pay. Either outright, or with some excuse about you "not delivering", or they "not liking" what you delivered. I have one of those stories as well. My SO has her own story - she ran into a guy whom she later found out does it as a policy: hires people, never pays, threatens to sue them if they publish their story. Her lawyer told her to just forget about it. It's then that find out the limitations of our legal system: if the client is international, forget about it. If they're out of state, prepare to deal with an expensive legal process taking place where the laws may not always favor you. And even if it's local, and you won in a small claims court - good luck collecting. I have periodic payments built into all my contracts, with the final payment taking place after acceptance tests, but before me surrendering all materials and code. I won't say this is a 100% bulletproof solution, but the alternatives suck.
- njovin 6mo ago
  > If they're out of state, prepare to deal with an expensive legal process > you won in a small claims court - good luck collecting While these statements are generally true, it shouldn't dissuade anyone from pursuing these remedies. Years back I took a small programming contract with a 'friend of a friend' that ended with me delivering what was asked and them suddenly not having any money, claiming the company was going under. They were in another state. I filed small claims by mail and they never responded, so I got a default judgement without ever needing to travel, for under $500 in total fees. The judgement is worthless though, right? Probably... Fast forward about a month and they had an investor willing to float the company for a while longer, but now my judgement is a giant wrench - the investor won't give them money as long as this is hanging around. I got the cofounders to jointly take on the debt personally (after consulting with a lawyer that this was possible - he didn't even charge for the consult!) and I vacated the judgement against the LLC. A short while later the LLC went under anyway, but since I had both founders' personal finances under my thumb (which would allow garnishing wages, obtaining leins, etc.) I was able to recoup the entire contract amount from them personally. I wouldn't have spent more than about $1,000 chasing that money down, but a few hours of paperwork and a few hundred dollars ended up making it easily worth my while.
andix 6mo ago
In such a situation (startup with unclear financial situation, foreign country) I would demand weekly payments. And if it is more than a week late, I would just leave.
yawnxyz 6mo ago
Very very important to get something up front; sometimes half up front doesn't always work for long projects, but you can scope out tranches where if you dont get paid for the first section of work, you walk away. Has saved me from wasting my time on loads of projects before. Reading the thread, I think most of us who have worked contracts here have been burned one way or another
TheMagicHorsey 6mo ago
I don't know what it is about me, but I have a sixth sense for losers who will not pay. There's been a number of times where acquaintences have taken contracts I've turned down (against my advice too) and have not been paid. There's something about slick communicators that just activates my spidey sense. And TBH, I have also had a few false positives. One contract I did not take (it was for a mix of equity and cash) turned into a 10B+ company, and I would have made enough to retire (again) on it over a 1-year contract. I didn't because the founder who called me just sounded completely clueless and was barraging me with marketing speak instead of explaining what he needed. I was so exhausted from his BS I just decided I didn't need the headache. (This is also a danger of having enough to retire ... you turn down a lot of potentially lucrative work because you just don't think the headaches are worth it). In the grand scheme of things, other than that one big missed opportunity, I haven't missed too much upside by being so picky. And when I'm counseling colleagues about their unpaid contracts and conflicts, I'm always silently thanking the stars I have the luxury to say no. I know that's a priviledge.
TrackerFF 6mo ago
One thing I've learned from working in different fields, which seems to hold true for all business: If a client approaches you with a dumpster fire of a repair job, are too broke to get a real fix, and get agitated (or simply ignore) by the talk of what the job will cost - simply tell them "sorry, I can't help you with this one". 99 out 100 times they will be a hassle, and you'll be lucky if they pay you anything beyond the upfront payment. Even worse if it is another business, as the author writes, those can just declare bankruptcy and walk away.
harvey9 6mo ago
Not really to the point of the post, but how can you deal with parallax error when your users are sitting on bus seats and your display is built into the bus window anyway?
Nifty3929 6mo ago
Author - I don't think you learned the correct lessons here. The most important thing is that you weren't "ripped off" - you were taken advantage of. Ripped off is when you buy a TV that's supposed to work and it doesn't. Or you just don't get one. You were taken advantage of - which requires your active consent. Nobody made you do all these things for them on faith. You could have left after a few days. You could have demanded payment up front. But you volunteered to continue down this awful path. I hope you learn to value your time, and yourself, higher than this in the future.
- doctorhandshake 6mo ago
  I’ve worked on these terms or similar ones on every job I’ve ever done, for 20 years. They’re the norm. How do I know? I’ve been in this industry for 20 years. I’ve been on both sides of freelance contracts in that time. I moderate a discord of 8000 of my peers. I speak at industry events. We compare notes. We all work ahead of payment, and honestly nothing about the fact that this was a rescue job was particularly out of the ordinary either. This is the case in which I wasn’t paid. If you’re suggesting we as a labor force attempt to change things en masse, it’s an interesting idea. If you’re suggesting I personally could have succeeded at getting payment up front in this case, you may be right, although I didn’t know how desperate they were until ~2.5 weeks into the run. If you’re suggesting I should demand payment in full before every job, you are suggesting I should win zero jobs. Edit to note: I took the contract’s enforceability on faith. That was not what I thought it was. Had I known the contract gets you jack shit in the way of justice, I’d have taken more seriously the possibility that these guys would rip me off, which they did.
  - interstice 6mo ago
    The difference between armchair pricing advice (and the advice of literature on the subject) vs the actual experience of trying to action said advice has lead me to question my sanity more than once.
  - komali2 6mo ago
    I agree with you on all points, but I'm surprised you come with that much experience but also faith that contracts are enforceable, especially when dealing with PRC clients. I understand you had a California based entity you were dealing with but even then, I've experienced first hand the worth of a contract in California very early in my career and it's the same as in the PRC: toilet paper. I guess maybe you've just been lucky to go this long without finding that out?
3abiton 6mo ago
Man that was an awful read (but well written). As someone who is starting to slowly work on my own consulting activities, I feel I am up against a world of "ripping-off". Thanks for sharing.
hn_acc1 6mo ago
When I was unemployed, looking for a job, living off severance, someone from my previous job contacted me to do some consulting work "for a friend". Initial terms were for some kind of stock in the company. It seemed shady from the start, but since it involved python, something I had very little experience with, I decided to try it. I worked like 15-20 hours per week for a few months, learned enough python to be comfortable with it and some other APIs as well (being a little vague on purpose). Later said they could maybe afford to pay me some $$ due to another company they had founded being sold (I verified this much, the person had founded and sold a few companies). It eventually fell apart after my first deliverable (as I expected, mostly). I used encryption to send python files that would only work for a couple of weeks. Not sure if they ever did anything with it (it's been a few years). Oh well, it ended up helping me get another job where python was a good skill to have. The biggest loss was that of losing all trust in the person setting things up.
nightrate_ai 6mo ago
[dead]
gverrilla 6mo ago
It's a scam economy.
iamleppert 6mo ago
I once worked for a founder who gave me a “raise” from a W2 to a 1099 contractor. Except the raise was just not deducting any of the taxes from my pay. I was 24 and was naive. I sued him, and won reclassification as well as two payments he never paid me, but both the state and IRS could care less that I’d been taken advantage of. They happily added their fees, interest and penalties for something I was the victim of. Years later, the debt resurfaced in the form of aggressive levies directly to my bank account after no contact for over 10 years and no collection activity. By then, the fees and interest were 3x what was “owed” to them. They actually told me it’s standard practice to wait until the debt grows and then collect on it. After so many years I didn’t even have the records from the lawsuit. I learned that the government doesn’t care about you, especially if you’ve been scammed you have to be extra careful because that’s a signal to them you’re someone they can get even more money from. The process of disputing it will waste more of your time and mental health than it’s worth in all but the most extreme cases, and that is 100% by design.
renewiltord 6mo ago
Hmm, definitely an unpleasant lesson in lead qualification. Lots of clients aren't worth it. Good learnings to trust your gut. Especially with places that are in bad shape income-wise.
marcus_holmes 6mo ago
> A contract is toilet paper A contract is an entrance ticket to a court case. If you can't afford to fight the court case, the contract isn't much use. If the other party aren't in a jurisdiction that the court can enforce in, the contract isn't much use. If the other party can just vanish and when you try to take them to court, the contract isn't much use. A contract doesn't stop other people from doing things (or make them do things that they would otherwise not do). It just specifies that if they do those things (or don't do them) then you can take them to court. You still need to be able to take them to court for any of this to work. Contracts aren't toilet paper. But they also aren't the magic solution to all problems that they are sometimes held up to be.
elwray 6mo ago
Tried freelancing for a bit. Thought being my own boss might give me better mental health. I couldn't have been more wrong. The better part of my time was spent on convincing the clients, what is built is what they had described.
anovikov 6mo ago
In atheist cultures with no concept of sin, people see obeying contracts as being sheep, it is in fact looked down upon. People will pay you only when they need something else from you, so solution is to frame a contract in a way they won't be able to make do without your final deliverable - and assume that final deliverable will never be paid, just price that in. It's not a pleasure to work like this, but it can be done.
- oerdier 6mo ago
  Dutch culture is primarily atheist, yet it's considered virtuous and goes-without-saying to uphold agreements . A common saying any child would have heard is "afspraak is afspraak": an agreement is an agreement, period. Atheist doesn't mean amoral or unreliable. Individual businesses may be different, of course.
NeoBild 6mo ago
[dead]
fencepost 6mo ago
Doesn't China have that whole "social capital" thing where defaulting on debts and other bad behavior can have real long-term consequences? Or does that not apply if you're defaulting on debts to non-Chinese?
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
gaws 6mo ago
> I’ll happily tell you who they are - get in touch Don't be a coward. Name and shame.
kjlldld 6mo ago
I'm sorry that this happened to the author... but I can't help but wonder if any western business or contractor will ever learn that this is a very likely outcome of doing any kind of business in China. "The faith was that if they didn’t pay, the legal system would enforce our California-law contract and make them pay." Like come on dude. You left your wife and 2 year old child to fly across the world do this project on the faith that some random AR bus company would honor their word and pay you 35k? How did you think this contract would be enforceable? I've got a bridge to sell you if that's all it takes to get you to go all in. Business in China does not operate the same way that it does in western countries. Period, end of story. If my California based AR bus company hired this person, agreed to pay them this amount in writing, signed the contract, then bailed. I would get sued and have to either pay this person or spend more money hiring a legal team to draw it out long enough to where this person quit trying to sue me. Either way thats not a great outcome, it makes my business look bad, there are repercussions so I would rather just pay this person the agreed amount. In China they will just walk away and dissolve the company if you come after them hard enough (like the author mentions) and start working again under a new company name. They know this too, and they know that western businesses (Americans especially) are operating under the assumption that there will be penalties for not following through on something you said was going to happen, so they take advantage. I guarantee that all this company intended to pay the author was the initial amount they gave to him in the upfront fee, knowing full well they would eventually leave the country once the work visa ended or the project time was up and they would never see them again / be able to just send a canned response back to any follow up about paying the full amount. The company in China will sign whatever you want them to, you could ask for the moon in return if they don't deliver on their side of the agreement and they would happily sign it knowing that you won't be able to do anything but make a blog post about it if they don't. When are we going to learn this?

You went to China and worked for free. What you whining about? Are you surprised they did not pay you? You even had a sore wrist. What a hero! No sympathy whatsoever.

for_i_in_range 6mo ago

Who are they?

dspillett 6mo ago
Which they? The contractor, the project owners, etc? And is who they are relevant to the lesson (stealing time/effort is easy to get away with, you need to protect yourself from that)?
- firtoz 6mo ago
  Article contains this: > I’ll happily tell you who they are - get in touch
  - dspillett 6mo ago
    I don't think a message on HN classes as getting in touch. This may have been posted by someone else entirely, having seen it posted elsewhere. In any case, if they don't want to publish the name on their own web page, they'll not want to publicly post it as a reply on HN either…
sva_ 6mo ago
I don't want to name what my quick Google search revealed, but if you search for augmented reality bus Beijing there aren't many options and it fits the authors characterization of their fleet consisting of ~20 buses.

BowBun 6mo ago

All this for a $35K contract, that sucks.

gnfargbl 6mo ago

> A contract is toilet paper It isn't, but you can't get blood from a stone and squeezing costs money. It sounds like the entity that the contract is with has no real assets and/or is based in a jurisdiction which is hard to enforce judgements in. That's a case where you need to get paid up-front, which is the real lesson in this article.

andix 6mo ago
> That's a case where you need to get paid up-front Or at least in very small batches and with very short due dates.

hyperhello 6mo ago

> They were carpetbaggers and dilettantes convinced by their own inexperience and the advice of a onetime VJ that they could pull off something I’d twice helped quote to be brought home by a cadre of hardened killers with shitloads of math and know-how at eye-watering prices. They were way way way over their heads and were in no way interested in updating their priors in light of the shit they were swimming in. And yet, somehow, you gave them the most important time you had for their promises.

buran77 6mo ago
> I missed the month of May with my 2-year-old kid. My wife cared for a 2-year-old alone. This wasn't because of the customer or not getting paid. This was the author's choice.

dragonsenseiguy 6mo ago

Who are they?

condensedcrab 6mo ago

Contract terms can vary greatly depending on the situation and the company you’re working with. Early/frequent payment terms are always good to have but you may not always have the leverage for it depending on where you’re at as a contractor. Takes getting ripped off a times before insisting on better terms I guess. It’s like bombing your first job interview… you can prepare but it just needs to happen.

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

fontain 6mo ago

“A contract is toilet paper” A little hyperbolic, but more accurate than not when laypeople think about contracts. A contract isn’t a magic spell, it is a declaration of shared understanding that can be used for clarity and in legal proceedings. If you think of a contract as a way to ensure you get what you agreed, yes, it is toilet paper, because a contract doesn’t remove counterparty risk.

blitzar 6mo ago
In a fight between a piece of toilet paper backed by millions in legal spending vs a rock solid contract backed by nothing -- the toilet paper (even if it is used toilet paper) will win every single time.
hermannj314 6mo ago
A piece of contract toilet paper is still better than a bare hand shake agreement.

wewewedxfgdf 6mo ago

Be paid or don't work. I am so deadly serious - do not continue working if your invoices are late. You don't have to be a jerk about it, just explain to your primary contact that you need to be paid and you pick up tools again when the money has arrived. BUT it is on YOU to properly negotiate reasonable payment terms. And if you don;t know or don't trust the client then require payment in advance until a stronger commercial relationship can be settled in. Do not be a baby - go research business contracts and payment terms. Do not be afraid to lose business from companies that are squeamish about paying you - in fact actively avoid such companies.

righthand 6mo ago
100% agree, and to add it can be tough sometimes to walk away from a cool project. I had worked on a project building scientific trial software, an app to review 3D lung scans, and an ML model to detect lesions in lung scans. It was really empowering, but after the first scientific trial the customer stopped paying their bills and ended up in back payment of $1M. My boss closed the project which sucked but it ultimately cost the company and people’s jobs. Just not worth interacting with bad people if they stop the agreement. There is most likely more money later but there is also money that is on time with other customers.
magicalhippo 6mo ago
> Do not be afraid to lose business from companies that are squeamish about paying you - in fact actively avoid such companies. My boss said that the ones who have negotiated the best deals are the ones that are late paying, complain about just about every bill and will write angry letters when my boss index adjust pricing. He said it taught him to never offer a really good deal for a regular customer (ie where the upside isn't very obvious).
- stavros 6mo ago
  I'm not sure that's the best takeaway here, in that it gets the causation wrong. It's not the deal that made the customer bad, it's that the bad customer insisted on getting a deal, whereas a good customer usually knows what quality costs and is prepared to pay. The takeaway here is probably that the fix isn't just "never discount", but it's to screen for the kind of customer who treats a good deal as an invitation to strengthen the relationship.

rwmj 6mo ago

What's an "AR bus"? How can augmented reality windows work on a bus unless you are (a) tracking the passenger's head and (b) there's only one passenger?

post-it 6mo ago
Screens outside the windows (not on the windows) can provide parallax, no need to track heads. However, in this case: > They were attempting to pull off AR effects on the transparent OLED windows of the bus without accounting for lens distortion, field of view, parallax, occlusion, etc., and were frustrated and mystified when things didn’t appear to line up. They were completely naive to what depth and scale cues are and how to deploy them.
- sambaumann 6mo ago
  So is it an actual moving bus or just a simulation of one? I have not heard of the concept before
- FabHK 6mo ago
  Can you elaborate? It seems to me that unless the screens are that far outside that they are where the target object is, two people that are offset laterally wrt the target object would have to be displayed something that's offset on the screen.
- aziaziazi 6mo ago
  Imagine two passengers seating in rows r10 and r11, looking at the target T A. You need to know where a passager's eyes are to display the POI in the right place. Even if each rows gets their own and only screen you'll need to account for their head vertical position (different people are different height) and movement, hence the eye tracking. B. If you share a window between multiple people you end us with a POI mess with informations displayed multiplied by as much passengers in the bus. |- r9 -|w9 | |w9 |- r10 -|w10 T | |w10 |- r11 -|w11 | |w11 |- r12 -|w12 IMHO the only practical way is with personal headsets like [0] but then you don't need a bus: just use your foot or any transportation: it's AR and not VR. 0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpoLdQpPcAc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpoLdQpPcAc

rglover 6mo ago

Never do anything on faith or as a handshake deal. Always ensure you get paid (hint: escrow is kryptonite for weasels). Trust everyone, just not the devil inside them. Also, mandatory: https://creativemornings.com/talks/mike-monteiro--2/1 https://creativemornings.com/talks/mike-monteiro--2/1

chrisweekly 6mo ago
> “Starting work without a contract is like putting on a condom after taking a home pregnancy test" Choice quote from the linked talk (aptly titled "F*ck you, pay me").
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
leviathant 6mo ago
Yes! I regularly share a link to Mike's talk - I was about to post it myself before scanning the comments.
DamnInteresting 6mo ago
Back in my freelancer days, I learned this lesson the hard way, and I became strict about payments (half in advance, the other half required to turn over the final work). But when someone I'd known for years had an emergency, and needed their software patched over a weekend, I made an exception and delivered the work in good faith. And then they tried to get out of paying for it. I had to harangue them for months to get the check. The lesson I learned is that it doesn't matter how long they've been your friend, when it comes time to pay, they may still try to stiff you. The value of your service diminishes infinitely after it has been performed.
- ekropotin 6mo ago
  Just reinforces the golden rule of not doing business with friends or family.

InMice 6mo ago

> I missed the month of May with my 2-year-old kid. My wife cared for a 2-year-old alone. The weirdest part to me, receive a call and just get up and go? Priorities? Did you write this blog post from the doghouse?

close04 6mo ago
Reads to me like the author is trying to elicit some empathy. It just sounds like he was just fine leaving his family for a job. Not getting paid couldn’t have factored into that decision.
- 0x3f 6mo ago
  > It just sounds like he was just fine leaving his family for a job. Or... maybe he needs income to exist.
  - InMice 6mo ago
    He doesnt provide any context for that if so and if you look around the site, doesn't seem like the case at all. More like he just decided on the phone something interested him enough to bounce indefinitely.
    - williamdclt 6mo ago
      Seems strange to assume that he does _not_ need income to exist, not sure what society you live in but I'm interested
- Imustaskforhelp 6mo ago
  They work within a niche space, as others have said, they follow where the work is, So they are able to charge more which I hope is able for them to survive in modern economy and be able to give more time to their family. atleast that's my interpretation of it of how logic might follow if they are working in niche space, many people seem to be applying the logic onto themselves into completely standard situation, but I don't suppose that is the case here. Hope this helps in genuinely understanding their situation, from my reading/thinking about it.

fred_is_fred 6mo ago

He says "trust your gut" about 12 times, but the whole lead up has 0 mention that he was worried he would not get paid. His only gut feelings seemed to be around tech issues.

billnad 6mo ago
Yes, I guess also trust the situation when it looks completely wrong. your gut is not lying when it sees that as well

balbladsaf1231 6mo ago

> A contract is toilet paper no it isn't. why you did not sue them? success rate of international arbitrage (New York Convention) proces into China is 90% success rate. USA/EU companies who sue Chineses companies in China for breach of contract seem to be winning rates. Enforcement of USA curt orders do not need to go thorugh Chinese courts again, and are enforced by local authorities (local sharks) with success rate of 80% for foreign firms suing chinese firms. fees are also fairly low. case is straightfoward. if author went and sue, likely he would get his money back.

LoganDark 6mo ago
> why you did not sue them? Because they could just dissolve the entity and get away with it. Did you even read the rest of the article?
- direwolf20 6mo ago
  You can't do that and if you do do that it's an imprisonable felony. You have to pay all debts before dissolving a corporation. If you can't pay them you have to go through the bankruptcy process.
ctdinjeu4 6mo ago
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eckesicle 6mo ago

We’ve also learned this lesson the hard way. These are now the clauses we require in every project we do: - Payment is due X days after receipt of invoice, or immediately after the consultant has addressed any quality issues, whichever is sooner - Late payment shall incur interest at 8% above the BoE base rate and a late fee of 100 GBP as per the UK Late Payment Legislation. Partial payments on invoices shall apply to late fees, interest, and then principal, in that order. - In the event of a late payment the invoice for the next deliverable shall immediately fall due. - The consultant shall be entitled to shift deadlines on deliverables in the event of a late payment as a result of any work disruption, without incurring any liability. - Payment shall be made in X currency, or an exchange rate at X date on Oanda.com shall apply. - The client is responsible for any bank fees incurred by their, or any intermediary bank. In the event of a SWIFT transaction it shall be made with the OUR payment code. - The jurisdiction in the event of a conflict shall be England and Wales. Neither party shall be bound by arbitration. - The client and consultant shall both indemnify the other up to the total value of the contract and shall not under any circumstance be liable beyond X GBP. We also no longer share downloadable links of our deliverables until they are paid up. They get a view/comment only link for reports/data etc. We’ve found that clients that aren’t willing to accept these terms won’t pay you either way. We determine the net days on the invoice based on the credit rating of the client. Ironically, the good clients pay within 2-3 days normally, and the difficult ones are very “long tail”. About 1% of contracts tend to fully or partially default on their payments. We’re in a particularly credit poor industry but our average delay due to late payment is 23 days. Those clients where we stop delivery pay on average 11 days sooner than those contracts where we don’t stop delivery. This is based on around 2,000 invoices sent over the last 5 years.

eckesicle 6mo ago
Oh and another lesson! Ensuring that each deliverable invoice is small enough that it falls under the simplified claims procedure (in the UK it’s 10,000 pounds) greatly simplifies collection. It costs something like 80 quid to file for recovery in court and in our experience invoices are immediately paid up when a “Letter before action” is sent. You burn the relationship, but arguably you probably don’t want it anyway.

bob1029 6mo ago

I've started operating in really granular units of work. Like less than $1000 per. Cash on delivery. This won't work with all clients and all jobs, but there are places where it does work very well. Advantages include being able to avoid paper contracts altogether. Verbal agreements and a 4 column xlsx that is reviewed monthly are all that seem to be required with some of my clients. If I don't get paid for one day of work, I will probably get over it in a few hours. If I don't get paid for six months of work, we will have a serious problem. The tighter and more incremental we can make the delivery process, the less likely anyone gets screwed. If a party is pushing hard for long-term contracts or large up-front sums of payment, I would walk away from that transaction unless there was a literal golden goose sitting in their lap.

lnsru 6mo ago
I am also trying to set granular milestones and get paid every 1000€. Not provide 20000€ work and then start looking for my money. I can live with a loss of 1000€, but missing 20000€ will impact negatively my mortgage and investment plan.

carlosjobim 6mo ago

There's no such thing as a company temporarily being in dire straits. These kind of companies are always in dire straits and crisis - it's a business tactic to not deliver and not pay. Just stay away, whether you're a customer, a contractor, an employee or if they want to be your customer.

xyzelement 6mo ago

The fact that this is so many words makes me worry the author underappreciated the main lesson: risk exposure. When you go out of pocket - you are out of pocket and the risk is all yours. If that one thing was different then all the remaining risk is on the client - they don't want to do version contr - ok cool you still get paid. Usually when you have to pay in to get paid out (outside of a direct investment scenario) it's a scam. The people who fall for the Nigeria Prince thing are operating the same way.

jfrbfbreudh 6mo ago

No longer a contractor but I used to offer a 10-15% discount for paying upfront. Almost every client took this deal. Earned a little less but never lost sleep over payments.

bena 6mo ago
Why not make your rate 15% higher than your desired rate? That way your “discounted” rate is the rate they should have paid and they feel like they got a deal.

throwaway98797 6mo ago

> End clients can’t tell the difference between these bozos and me. I don’t know what to do with that information but it feels bad. this is only getting worse with ai. all the artifacts of good work are there but none of the depth.

ChrisMarshallNY 6mo ago

That doesn’t really sound like “being ripped off,” as opposed to “betting on a lame horse.” The people behind this were irresponsible, childish, and exemplars of the Dunning-Kruger effect. They weren’t really hardline crooks. Crooks are probably a lot more organized. I have gotten myself invested with similar crowds. There’s usually a charismatic spokesperson, leading the chaos. They likely didn’t plan to rip him off, but paying him wasn’t really something they thought about. Real crooks put lots of planning into taking money. > Multiple very junior developers were touching (binary, TouchDesigner) code and deploying straight to production via thumb drive, with zero version control. In fact, they didn’t know what version control was. I suspect many startups fit that description. If they survive, then they usually pull themselves up by the bootstraps, eventually. Many of them collapse, taking everything with them.

doctorhandshake 6mo ago
I think you’re right and it’s fair to reframe this that way, in that in a certain sense, despite my naivety, I was the adult in the room and should have seen what they couldn’t. But then given what I’ve learned since I think I can say with some certainty that this particular group saw the writing on the wall and were willing to use the skilled labor and time of an endless army of cannon fodder to try to staunch the bleeding or take one more long shot at getting final payment, and doing so without the agreement or awareness of the people they enlisted to the risk they were participating in.
- ChrisMarshallNY 6mo ago
  I've seen similar, at a bigger scale. When the wheels start coming off, morals are first over the side. In some cases (think Theranos), it can go all the way into straight criminality. Most times, it just reaches the point where everything collapses, when the supports rust away.

burnt-resistor 6mo ago

I was owed billable hours from Stanford University but refused to do any further work until the outstanding invoice was paid. Their accounts payable department didn't want to, so I had to tell the client "sorry" and walked away. It's really weird because I didn't have a problem in the near past then and was even an FTE at one point. I'm unwilling to work for free or for imaginary, low liquidation preference equity of a worthless startup. Ordinarily, I would sign master agreements and set PO terms up-front. Typically, the better customers would agree to very strict requirements / objectives for a particular time period for a specific price. Any deviations would require negotiation. Hourly is fine too but there must be regular milestone deliveries so that there's demonstrable value for money being conveyed rather than an appearance of a milking-oriented consultant. Expectations must always be managed.

apt-apt-apt-apt 6mo ago

Sometimes you just have to get scammed to be able to recognize scams. Seems obvious to outsiders, but can be hard to see when you're in it. Some favorites: - No way they would actually screw me over! We're buds/they got me tiger balm/they paid some/I did them a solid - Thin veneer of safe fallbacks that doesn't hold up under scrutiny. Legal or other 'repercussions' - Endless delays and excuses (though it's usually too late by this point)

veunes 6mo ago
Yeah, a lot of it only becomes obvious in hindsight because each individual signal is easy to rationalize away

ian_d 6mo ago

Evergreen advice from the design side: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U (Mike Monteiro: F*ck You, Pay Me)

normie3000 6mo ago
Watched a couple of times, but I don't fully understand the message in this video. Can someone ELI5?
- Kye 6mo ago
  Have a contract that encodes "fuck you, pay me" into the terms. Ideally, have an actual lawyer take care of the contract and the enforcement. There's a lot of law-y stuff out there that won't hold up in reality. Mortgage companies don't take payment in excuses from your clients, so neither should you.
- post-it 6mo ago
  The message is to have a contract and insist on being paid according to the contract, and refuse further work until you get paid.

apt-apt-apt-apt 6mo ago

Actually sort of darkly clever– they turned OP into an unwitting investor. Project goes well, he gets paid and they're best buds, and he doesn't even realize he was scammed (by intent). If not, well there's no point suing a failed company.

dilyevsky 6mo ago
If you're in California, even if business goes totally kaput and runs out of money company officers are personally liable for any and all unpaid wages. Labor Commission Office will also include a hefty punitive sum to boot.
- sudobash1 6mo ago
  I don't think this makes a difference for independent contractors.
- Analemma_ 6mo ago
  Doesn’t apply to contractors. In fact, if you do contract work for a company which misses payroll, courts can claw back money out of your bank account in order to pay it. It’s rare, because usually this is about “contractors” who are actually accomplices of the owner, getting free money out of the failing company with inflated payments for fake work, but it does happen.

ng12 6mo ago

One thing I learned from consulting is if you position yourself as the "fix your mess" guy you have to be very defensive. Ask for more up-front, and bail at the first sign of underpayment. Be pleasantly surprised when a poorly run project is being run by nice, honest people. Prep for the opposite.

veunes 6mo ago
You're not just delivering expertise, you're stepping into a situation where incentives are already misaligned, expectations are fuzzy, and there's often a cashflow problem hiding somewhere
randomNumber7 6mo ago
It sounds counterintuitive but from my experience it are often nice and (somewhat) honest people. They just came after whoever messed it up horribly in the first place and at some point they came to the conclusion that they need some external help.
caminante 6mo ago
IMHO, he was defensive in the way you suggest. He got ~25% upfront. But let's assume he got 100% upfront. More importantly, he didn't protect scope or contract change requests. That was the time to contract. It sounds like collecting 100% would've been leaving money on the table for value delivered. I like your label for "fix your mess" guys, but I know/use a few who definitely bill and get paid much later (especially lawyers). Sucks for OP that he contracted with a CN firm with credit risk.

jordanb 6mo ago

Wage theft is the most lucrative and least prosecuted crime in America.

QuarterReptile 6mo ago
FTA: China
- AlexeyBelov 6mo ago
  FTA: California-based client

avoidyc 6mo ago

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deleted 6mo ago
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munificent 6mo ago
> NEVER work for a YC founder. I would generalize this to "don't work for someone whose ability to pay is based on a high-risk gamble". There are certainly shady people who can pay but don't because they are greedy avaricious bastards. But there are also plenty of people who would like to pay but whose business venture fails and with it goes their funds. In the author's story, they probably should have concluded fairly early on that a team that wildly incompetent was also unlikely to produce a product that satisfies their client. And if the client doesn't pay, no one gets paid.
- throwway120385 6mo ago
  "I'll get you the money tomorrow. I'm heading down to the track to go get it."
gavinray 6mo ago
I'd say it's almost something of a rite of passage to get taken advantage of if you're young and working in tech startups. Usually this is in the form of abysmally low pay, along with "Sweat Equity": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_equity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_equity Of course, the startup doesn't go anywhere, and your sweat equity never materializes, so you're left with just the pitiful pay. I went through this in my late teens/early 20's, along with many friends.
- hn_acc1 6mo ago
  I've been part of 2 startups, 2000 and 2005. In both cases, taking the "more salary and less stock" option worked out to my advantage.
tombert 6mo ago

ycarechildren 6mo ago

The same founders who require employees to work 24/7/365 while they jack off to Hentai all day are the same ones who don't pay: HockeyStack, Greptile, Velt all had problems paying me and all required 7 day a week, overnight, etc.

cainxinth 6mo ago

I have a friend who retired but still does some contract work. They were on salary their whole career and are not used to sending invoices and tracking down payments. One of their clients was late paying and my friend wasn't concerned, but I encouraged them to be diligent about insisting on being paid on time. I have been a freelancer for over a decade and in my experience, the further away you get from a bill, the less real it becomes to the person who owes it. They start forgetting what the project was, or worse, start questioning why they even have to pay for it. You have to stay on top of these things or they can spiral out of control.

bityard 6mo ago
Just for my own general curiosity, once a bill is overdue, how often do you nag the customer about it? Or does it look more like an escalation process? (Start out with a polite email, then a phone call, then a phone call to their manager/business partner, etc?) Do you ever "fire" customers who always pay, but always pay late and only after they've been reminded 3 times?
- cainxinth 6mo ago
  They get 30 days to pay. I used to start sending reminders if they were late by even a day past that, but I quickly learned that can unnecessarily embarrass or annoy some clients, so now everyone gets a two week grace period after the 30 days are up. I send a gentle reminder just to my immediate point of contact to start. If that doesn't work, I start sending more business-like requests for payment every week, and I CC anyone I think might help make it happen. I've never fired anyone, and everyone has eventually paid (knock wood), but there have been times when I assumed the money was a lost cause (though never five figures worth like the person who shared this blog post). But more than once, I've had a client contact me and request new work, and I've had to remind them they still have an unpaid invoice. I'll tell them I can't start anything new until the old work is paid. They almost invariably blame the delay on their billing department, and the money eventually finds its way to me.
- _whiteCaps_ 6mo ago
  Net 30 is a standard way to do this. Lots of examples online on how to add this to your invoices. Well run businesses will pay you on the 29th day. :)

freediddy 6mo ago

When you walk into a shitshow like this, the first thing you do is secure your payments. Anyone who is in such bad shape like how OP described it means that they are desperate, and desperate people will do and say anything to get help. It is most likely going to not pay anyone so you need to make sure you're paid above and beyond anything else otherwise walk.

notquitebuddy 6mo ago
You forgot the middleground where there are thousands of laid off people who can do your exact job and undercut you etc. These founders hire/fire through hundreds of us, they don't give a shit. If you say 1 thing they don't like they go to the next.
- freediddy 6mo ago
  That's not the middle ground. That's the other extreme, where people are desperate for work so they will say they can do anything in order to get work.
  - notquitebuddy 6mo ago
    [dead]
- noident 6mo ago
  How many of those people have experience with augmented reality? Probably not that many. $35k seems pretty low for this job. Hindsight is 20/20 of course.
  - necovek 6mo ago
    As 75% of a single month fee (25% paid upfront), not too bad either: $46k in total for 4 weeks of work. Expenses were not included (flight was paid for).

swiftcoder 6mo ago

> End clients can’t tell the difference between these bozos and me. I don’t know what to do with that information but it feels bad. This is unfortunately all too common. It's hard for someone who isn't an expert in the specific field to separate a smooth grifter from a more typical sales pitch

jancsika 6mo ago

> The faith was that if they could’t pay, they’d let me know because I was actively digging their asses out of a hole they’d dug, and doing so tirelessly and professionally, without complaint. I get what the author is saying here. But it's a bad idea to treat one's work team with deep communal devotion in this way, as if they are a kind of dysfunctional family-- or, in the author's case, apparently higher in status than real family. Doing this without proper remuneration creates a market distortion, and that is bad for capitalism.

b8 6mo ago

There's not any incentives to pay you when they're in China and there's no legal recourse from the US. Even in the US suing is often times not worth it economically and getting someone to pay after a win is painful too if they don't just file bankruptcy. Escrow or upfront only is the best way to go.

doctorhandshake 6mo ago
This was a California company and contract, but your comment does apply to their situation with their client
deaddodo 6mo ago
The company was California-based, they were offering services in China. At least, that was my read. The contractor was also in California. Honestly, this seems to be bad advice from their recovery services. Suing is 100% recommended here. There are plenty of lawyers that will work on a pro rata basis for account recovery in California. Sure, you lose a portion of your 35k; but you get more than you would have letting them get away with paying zero. There's also laws in place to keep companies from "closing up shop" and opening in a new entity. It doesn't necessarily erase your debt (it can, but only in rare circumstances). And, even if they do get around it, it keeps them from pulling the same shenanigans going forward, in the state.
- doctorhandshake 6mo ago
  Not saying I know better but this contradicts what I heard from multiple collections companies with in-house legal - they all said suing would not be worth the ~$2,500 upfront fees and that the debtor would just vanish. The debt still exists so I'd love to think otherwise! Feel free to HMU if you have a specific lawyer/practice in mind ;
  - deaddodo 6mo ago
    The debtor can't "vanish", they are either an individual or an entity with registered individuals attached to it. Obviously, their structure matters a little bit along with where they are incorporated. But if they are incorporated in California, their debt is 95% recoverable if they want to continue doing business in any way. As an individual you can go after garnishment and other relief. As an entity, it's similar but to their company/corporate holdings. If they try to dissolve and create another business that operates in the same sphere/as a successor or with the same management team; the debt doesn't disappear, you just prosecute the new entity. With an added cherry of potential criminal prosecution, if they're particularly egregious about it. People can 100% get around paying, that happens. But the judgement will remain on their record. This will make reincorporation difficult as well as just acting as a warning to future partners that do basic due diligence. No one's saying it's easy to get the money back, but rolling over probably is the least desirable outcome (and probably why they've acted this way with so many people). As to your collection firms, I can't speak to it. Maybe your situation is more complicated (e.g. registered entity out of state, unclear contract terms, etc) or they just don't want to go through with the hassle of doing more than they were hired to do (send nag letters and hope for easy turnover). In the future, you can use it as a learning experience. Keep your deliverables under the small claims limit, do metered payouts, etc.

dangus 6mo ago

OP wasn't ripped off, OP just forgot to define their contract. Like, entirely. Nobody forced OP to work 11-14 hour days. Contracting 101 stipulates that you define your hours ahead of time. You come in, you provide your expertise, and you leave at the end of the day. Let the client's junior employees work long hours. Not your problem. OP brought their own equipment, which is totally fine but "who provides equipment" is also in the contract from the start. OP should have made a list of equipment that the client will require to complete such a project and stipulate a client budget be set aside to cover any shortcomings as they arise. The contract is where you define when you get paid. "Deposit is XYZ quantity, non-refundable. Contractor will be paid for the upcoming week in advance by X date. Failure to remit payment will halt work." I understand that the point of this blog piece is that it was a learning experience for OP but this stuff is pretty obvious isn't it? This is pretty much what comes up when you google stuff like "how to get into freelance contracting." I'm shocked and feel bad for OP for letting things get this far. Sadly, they were not ripped off by anyone but themselves.

doctorhandshake 6mo ago
These types of situations are endemic to my industry, for better or worse. I wasn't intending to complain about the working conditions by way of making it seem as though any of those things were unusual — I was providing that context by way of saying I conducted myself as a professional does in these situations. I've been in this (immersive, interactive, creative tech) industry for 20 years and those conditions are absolutely expected onsite when commissioning, installing, or preparing for a live event. Refusing to work beyond say an 8-10 hour day would leave the project unfinished and we work on a 'show must go on basis'. With that said, doing this for 20+ days without a break is unusually grueling, even for this industry.
theredones 6mo ago
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999900000999 6mo ago

Back in my younger days I found a bunch of liberals who were claiming to run a software company. They were really into the social justice BS. After about a month of employment, I was told I was being rude to ask for payment. Apparently they neglected to tell me that they actually only pay their employees 60 to 70 days after they start. Of course the first red flag was them doing the 1099 dance for slightly above minimum wage. I had been forced to do that before, but guess what. They paid us every single week. Quiting without notice was one of the greatest feelings with these clowns. By this time they had started to ask me to literally work for free. "Unpaid training". They stopped scheduling me for paid hours anyway, so no notice needed. Right after that I worked for some conservatives. They paid me early. My first year I got a large raise. There were some awkward moments like the CEO telling me who to vote for. But for the most part it was awesome. I still consider myself to be very liberal, but I don't want to work anywhere that does a lot of virtue signaling. Your beliefs don't make you a good person, your actions do.

bena 6mo ago
You realize that your anecdote here is itself virtue signaling, right? Because, I’m sure multiple people here could tell similar stories with the political leanings of the groups involved reversed.
- 999900000999 6mo ago
  I'm an individual. I can have beliefs. Corporations, can not. I've been though this twice. If they're doing press releases about how liberal they are, it's probably not a good fit. Now that I'm old and jaded, I want politics out of my workplace.
  - s5300 6mo ago
    [dead]
add-sub-mul-div 6mo ago
A bunch of liberals got into my walls and started chewing the wires.

veunes 6mo ago

This reads less like a "got ripped off" story and more like a perfect storm of every classic consulting red flag showing up at once

Aurornis 6mo ago

Good lessons in here, but the part about giving up on legal action because they told him they’d dissolve the entity is questionable. This is where it pays to have a good relationship with a lawyer who will be up front about your chances and the cost of legal action. The sum discussed falls into the difficult range where it could take enough hours to try to collect that you’d be worse off than where you started if the lawyer can’t deliver anything. However them dissolving the entity and moving their assets and IP around is also not free and will incur overhead, if they actually did it. Threatening to dissolve the entity seemingly admits that they do have something worth collecting against. In my experience the companies who run out of money just tell you that they’re out of money and they also start losing key employees and your email contacts because they’re not getting paid either. If the company continues to exist and they’re threatening you to not sue, that might be a sign that they do have the money but they’re relying on intimidating contractors to not try collecting it. Legal action is not free, so all of this has to be weighed. EDIT: I should explain how I know this. Younger me took a job with a startup that got in over its head with spending but the CEO didn’t want the party to stop. His strategy was to stop paying any vendors and use the remaining cash flow to only pay past invoices for vendors that we needed something from (more work, more product) or anyone who looked like they were going to sue us. If someone got lawyers involved, they got paid. Needless to say I didn’t keep that job very long.

jagged-chisel 6mo ago
I don’t know this for certain, IANAL, but it seems to me if they’re threatening to dissolve the entity, that could open the owners to personal liability. Definitely bring it up with your lawyer.
- direwolf20 6mo ago
  I believe dissolving a corporation requires you to attest you've paid all debts. If that's impossible, you have to go through the bankruptcy process. If you attest that you've paid all debts but you haven't, now you're committing frame against the government which they really don't like. You could be imprisoned for that.

alsetmusic 6mo ago

The page is actively hostile to me using reader mode on my phone. It keeps resetting my scroll progress to the top of the article. This is the second time I’ve run into this (first was within the last two weeks). I hope this is a bug in my phone’s handling of something and not intentional. Until I know otherwise, I’m treating sites where this happens as deliberately hostile for the same reason as always: ads. I use reader mode to escape ads that my ad blockers miss but also to avoid poor design or hard to read fonts and the like. My response is the same as ever: I closed the article.

doctorhandshake 6mo ago
think you got a bug my friend - this is a static site
- alsetmusic 6mo ago
  Thanks for confirming. I was confident the first time because many websites are hostile to users. Seeing it again within a short window made my spidey-sense tingle.

uxcolumbo 6mo ago

Your blog is a treasure trove - thanks for sharing. Do you still cut your own hair ;) ? But yes us folks in the creative world can learn a few things from the corporate world when it comes to contracts and payment schedules. Mike Monteiro's talk 'F*ck you, pay me' comes to mind. --- https://www.mikemonteiro.com/ https://www.mikemonteiro.com/ https://creativemornings.com/talks/mike-monteiro--2/1 https://creativemornings.com/talks/mike-monteiro--2/1

doctorhandshake 6mo ago
Thanks - still cut my own hair but rethinking after a particularly disastrous one recently!

TravelTechGuy 6mo ago

Sadly every consultant can tell you at least one (hopefully only one) story about clients who refuse to pay. Either outright, or with some excuse about you "not delivering", or they "not liking" what you delivered. I have one of those stories as well. My SO has her own story - she ran into a guy whom she later found out does it as a policy: hires people, never pays, threatens to sue them if they publish their story. Her lawyer told her to just forget about it. It's then that find out the limitations of our legal system: if the client is international, forget about it. If they're out of state, prepare to deal with an expensive legal process taking place where the laws may not always favor you. And even if it's local, and you won in a small claims court - good luck collecting. I have periodic payments built into all my contracts, with the final payment taking place after acceptance tests, but before me surrendering all materials and code. I won't say this is a 100% bulletproof solution, but the alternatives suck.

njovin 6mo ago
> If they're out of state, prepare to deal with an expensive legal process > you won in a small claims court - good luck collecting While these statements are generally true, it shouldn't dissuade anyone from pursuing these remedies. Years back I took a small programming contract with a 'friend of a friend' that ended with me delivering what was asked and them suddenly not having any money, claiming the company was going under. They were in another state. I filed small claims by mail and they never responded, so I got a default judgement without ever needing to travel, for under $500 in total fees. The judgement is worthless though, right? Probably... Fast forward about a month and they had an investor willing to float the company for a while longer, but now my judgement is a giant wrench - the investor won't give them money as long as this is hanging around. I got the cofounders to jointly take on the debt personally (after consulting with a lawyer that this was possible - he didn't even charge for the consult!) and I vacated the judgement against the LLC. A short while later the LLC went under anyway, but since I had both founders' personal finances under my thumb (which would allow garnishing wages, obtaining leins, etc.) I was able to recoup the entire contract amount from them personally. I wouldn't have spent more than about $1,000 chasing that money down, but a few hours of paperwork and a few hundred dollars ended up making it easily worth my while.

andix 6mo ago

In such a situation (startup with unclear financial situation, foreign country) I would demand weekly payments. And if it is more than a week late, I would just leave.

yawnxyz 6mo ago

Very very important to get something up front; sometimes half up front doesn't always work for long projects, but you can scope out tranches where if you dont get paid for the first section of work, you walk away. Has saved me from wasting my time on loads of projects before. Reading the thread, I think most of us who have worked contracts here have been burned one way or another

TheMagicHorsey 6mo ago

I don't know what it is about me, but I have a sixth sense for losers who will not pay. There's been a number of times where acquaintences have taken contracts I've turned down (against my advice too) and have not been paid. There's something about slick communicators that just activates my spidey sense. And TBH, I have also had a few false positives. One contract I did not take (it was for a mix of equity and cash) turned into a 10B+ company, and I would have made enough to retire (again) on it over a 1-year contract. I didn't because the founder who called me just sounded completely clueless and was barraging me with marketing speak instead of explaining what he needed. I was so exhausted from his BS I just decided I didn't need the headache. (This is also a danger of having enough to retire ... you turn down a lot of potentially lucrative work because you just don't think the headaches are worth it). In the grand scheme of things, other than that one big missed opportunity, I haven't missed too much upside by being so picky. And when I'm counseling colleagues about their unpaid contracts and conflicts, I'm always silently thanking the stars I have the luxury to say no. I know that's a priviledge.

TrackerFF 6mo ago

One thing I've learned from working in different fields, which seems to hold true for all business: If a client approaches you with a dumpster fire of a repair job, are too broke to get a real fix, and get agitated (or simply ignore) by the talk of what the job will cost - simply tell them "sorry, I can't help you with this one". 99 out 100 times they will be a hassle, and you'll be lucky if they pay you anything beyond the upfront payment. Even worse if it is another business, as the author writes, those can just declare bankruptcy and walk away.

harvey9 6mo ago

Not really to the point of the post, but how can you deal with parallax error when your users are sitting on bus seats and your display is built into the bus window anyway?

Nifty3929 6mo ago

Author - I don't think you learned the correct lessons here. The most important thing is that you weren't "ripped off" - you were taken advantage of. Ripped off is when you buy a TV that's supposed to work and it doesn't. Or you just don't get one. You were taken advantage of - which requires your active consent. Nobody made you do all these things for them on faith. You could have left after a few days. You could have demanded payment up front. But you volunteered to continue down this awful path. I hope you learn to value your time, and yourself, higher than this in the future.

doctorhandshake 6mo ago
I’ve worked on these terms or similar ones on every job I’ve ever done, for 20 years. They’re the norm. How do I know? I’ve been in this industry for 20 years. I’ve been on both sides of freelance contracts in that time. I moderate a discord of 8000 of my peers. I speak at industry events. We compare notes. We all work ahead of payment, and honestly nothing about the fact that this was a rescue job was particularly out of the ordinary either. This is the case in which I wasn’t paid. If you’re suggesting we as a labor force attempt to change things en masse, it’s an interesting idea. If you’re suggesting I personally could have succeeded at getting payment up front in this case, you may be right, although I didn’t know how desperate they were until ~2.5 weeks into the run. If you’re suggesting I should demand payment in full before every job, you are suggesting I should win zero jobs. Edit to note: I took the contract’s enforceability on faith. That was not what I thought it was. Had I known the contract gets you jack shit in the way of justice, I’d have taken more seriously the possibility that these guys would rip me off, which they did.
- interstice 6mo ago
  The difference between armchair pricing advice (and the advice of literature on the subject) vs the actual experience of trying to action said advice has lead me to question my sanity more than once.
- komali2 6mo ago
  I agree with you on all points, but I'm surprised you come with that much experience but also faith that contracts are enforceable, especially when dealing with PRC clients. I understand you had a California based entity you were dealing with but even then, I've experienced first hand the worth of a contract in California very early in my career and it's the same as in the PRC: toilet paper. I guess maybe you've just been lucky to go this long without finding that out?

3abiton 6mo ago

Man that was an awful read (but well written). As someone who is starting to slowly work on my own consulting activities, I feel I am up against a world of "ripping-off". Thanks for sharing.

hn_acc1 6mo ago

When I was unemployed, looking for a job, living off severance, someone from my previous job contacted me to do some consulting work "for a friend". Initial terms were for some kind of stock in the company. It seemed shady from the start, but since it involved python, something I had very little experience with, I decided to try it. I worked like 15-20 hours per week for a few months, learned enough python to be comfortable with it and some other APIs as well (being a little vague on purpose). Later said they could maybe afford to pay me some $$ due to another company they had founded being sold (I verified this much, the person had founded and sold a few companies). It eventually fell apart after my first deliverable (as I expected, mostly). I used encryption to send python files that would only work for a couple of weeks. Not sure if they ever did anything with it (it's been a few years). Oh well, it ended up helping me get another job where python was a good skill to have. The biggest loss was that of losing all trust in the person setting things up.

nightrate_ai 6mo ago

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gverrilla 6mo ago

It's a scam economy.

iamleppert 6mo ago

I once worked for a founder who gave me a “raise” from a W2 to a 1099 contractor. Except the raise was just not deducting any of the taxes from my pay. I was 24 and was naive. I sued him, and won reclassification as well as two payments he never paid me, but both the state and IRS could care less that I’d been taken advantage of. They happily added their fees, interest and penalties for something I was the victim of. Years later, the debt resurfaced in the form of aggressive levies directly to my bank account after no contact for over 10 years and no collection activity. By then, the fees and interest were 3x what was “owed” to them. They actually told me it’s standard practice to wait until the debt grows and then collect on it. After so many years I didn’t even have the records from the lawsuit. I learned that the government doesn’t care about you, especially if you’ve been scammed you have to be extra careful because that’s a signal to them you’re someone they can get even more money from. The process of disputing it will waste more of your time and mental health than it’s worth in all but the most extreme cases, and that is 100% by design.

renewiltord 6mo ago

Hmm, definitely an unpleasant lesson in lead qualification. Lots of clients aren't worth it. Good learnings to trust your gut. Especially with places that are in bad shape income-wise.

marcus_holmes 6mo ago

> A contract is toilet paper A contract is an entrance ticket to a court case. If you can't afford to fight the court case, the contract isn't much use. If the other party aren't in a jurisdiction that the court can enforce in, the contract isn't much use. If the other party can just vanish and when you try to take them to court, the contract isn't much use. A contract doesn't stop other people from doing things (or make them do things that they would otherwise not do). It just specifies that if they do those things (or don't do them) then you can take them to court. You still need to be able to take them to court for any of this to work. Contracts aren't toilet paper. But they also aren't the magic solution to all problems that they are sometimes held up to be.

elwray 6mo ago

Tried freelancing for a bit. Thought being my own boss might give me better mental health. I couldn't have been more wrong. The better part of my time was spent on convincing the clients, what is built is what they had described.

anovikov 6mo ago

In atheist cultures with no concept of sin, people see obeying contracts as being sheep, it is in fact looked down upon. People will pay you only when they need something else from you, so solution is to frame a contract in a way they won't be able to make do without your final deliverable - and assume that final deliverable will never be paid, just price that in. It's not a pleasure to work like this, but it can be done.

oerdier 6mo ago
Dutch culture is primarily atheist, yet it's considered virtuous and goes-without-saying to uphold agreements . A common saying any child would have heard is "afspraak is afspraak": an agreement is an agreement, period. Atheist doesn't mean amoral or unreliable. Individual businesses may be different, of course.

NeoBild 6mo ago

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fencepost 6mo ago

Doesn't China have that whole "social capital" thing where defaulting on debts and other bad behavior can have real long-term consequences? Or does that not apply if you're defaulting on debts to non-Chinese?

deleted 6mo ago

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gaws 6mo ago

> I’ll happily tell you who they are - get in touch Don't be a coward. Name and shame.

kjlldld 6mo ago

I'm sorry that this happened to the author... but I can't help but wonder if any western business or contractor will ever learn that this is a very likely outcome of doing any kind of business in China. "The faith was that if they didn’t pay, the legal system would enforce our California-law contract and make them pay." Like come on dude. You left your wife and 2 year old child to fly across the world do this project on the faith that some random AR bus company would honor their word and pay you 35k? How did you think this contract would be enforceable? I've got a bridge to sell you if that's all it takes to get you to go all in. Business in China does not operate the same way that it does in western countries. Period, end of story. If my California based AR bus company hired this person, agreed to pay them this amount in writing, signed the contract, then bailed. I would get sued and have to either pay this person or spend more money hiring a legal team to draw it out long enough to where this person quit trying to sue me. Either way thats not a great outcome, it makes my business look bad, there are repercussions so I would rather just pay this person the agreed amount. In China they will just walk away and dissolve the company if you come after them hard enough (like the author mentions) and start working again under a new company name. They know this too, and they know that western businesses (Americans especially) are operating under the assumption that there will be penalties for not following through on something you said was going to happen, so they take advantage. I guarantee that all this company intended to pay the author was the initial amount they gave to him in the upfront fee, knowing full well they would eventually leave the country once the work visa ended or the project time was up and they would never see them again / be able to just send a canned response back to any follow up about paying the full amount. The company in China will sign whatever you want them to, you could ask for the moon in return if they don't deliver on their side of the agreement and they would happily sign it knowing that you won't be able to do anything but make a blog post about it if they don't. When are we going to learn this?