4 ms·

I have a question: if bug fixes shouldn't be free, then why are clients able to take freelancers to court under lost revenue due to "errors and omissions"? I us

I have a question: if bug fixes shouldn't be free, then why are clients able to take freelancers to court under lost revenue due to "errors and omissions"? I used to think that bugs could/should be billed until I had to deal with a horrible client that threatened litigation under E&O and breach of contract. Going to court would put me into debt, so I really felt screwed into working for free. Super bitter about it and thinking about giving up on self-employment altogether because of that guy.

duncan_bayne 12y ago
My first ever client did that to me, many years ago. Fun aspects of that engagement included: - I ignored a great big warning sign up-front ("our previous developer abandoned the project, refusing to work with us again") - I offered fixed-price (a horrible mistake for a variety of reasons, including that it was explicitly a 'learning project' for all of us) - I didn't mitigate scope creep ("I know we said we'd hire a designer, but can you style the UI as well?") - when we ran into obvious deadline and quality issues, I should have fixed it by re-evaluating things with the client; instead, I tried to "work harder" - finally, when everything went south and the client refused to pay (and in fact demanded their deposit back!) I didn't take them to court for the money they owed me All in all it was a horrible engagement for everyone involved, but a great learning experience for me at least. I hope the clients (quite reasonable people I think, just as domain-clueless as I was at the time) learned from it too. Don't give up though. I continued contracting, and used those experiences to build a simple set of practices that made future engagements a lot more pleasant and productive for everyone involved. One of these is to be super-explicit up-front about how bugs are tracked, resolved and billed. Something to consider: as a software professional, part of your job is to help your clients learn how to engage software professionals. Many clients are either new to the field, try to bring odd expectations from other fields into it, or have been burned by bad engagements in the past and are 100% in CYA mode. Help them get past that :)
- rmrfrmrf 12y ago
  WOW. This is word for word exactly what happened to me. The worst part is that I KNEW better than to accept this guy as a client, but I was so excited to get a client and get a deposit check that I convinced myself that I could blast through the project.
  - duncan_bayne 12y ago
    Well, if it's any consolation, if you use that as a conscious learning experience, you'll come out of it a far more effective contractor than you went in. I didn't let it discourage me, and I benefited from it in the long run. Another suggestion: do a thorough post-mortem with each client. Go over what you did, what you learned, what you'd improve and so forth. I.e. not a retrospective of the work you did (which is also important and worth doing), but a retrospective of your business relationship with your client.
  - woah 12y ago
    I think it's happened to everyone in this business.
  - dlevine 12y ago
    Yep. Me too. It's funny how common this story is...

duncan_bayne 12y ago

My first ever client did that to me, many years ago. Fun aspects of that engagement included: - I ignored a great big warning sign up-front ("our previous developer abandoned the project, refusing to work with us again") - I offered fixed-price (a horrible mistake for a variety of reasons, including that it was explicitly a 'learning project' for all of us) - I didn't mitigate scope creep ("I know we said we'd hire a designer, but can you style the UI as well?") - when we ran into obvious deadline and quality issues, I should have fixed it by re-evaluating things with the client; instead, I tried to "work harder" - finally, when everything went south and the client refused to pay (and in fact demanded their deposit back!) I didn't take them to court for the money they owed me All in all it was a horrible engagement for everyone involved, but a great learning experience for me at least. I hope the clients (quite reasonable people I think, just as domain-clueless as I was at the time) learned from it too. Don't give up though. I continued contracting, and used those experiences to build a simple set of practices that made future engagements a lot more pleasant and productive for everyone involved. One of these is to be super-explicit up-front about how bugs are tracked, resolved and billed. Something to consider: as a software professional, part of your job is to help your clients learn how to engage software professionals. Many clients are either new to the field, try to bring odd expectations from other fields into it, or have been burned by bad engagements in the past and are 100% in CYA mode. Help them get past that :)

rmrfrmrf 12y ago
WOW. This is word for word exactly what happened to me. The worst part is that I KNEW better than to accept this guy as a client, but I was so excited to get a client and get a deposit check that I convinced myself that I could blast through the project.
- duncan_bayne 12y ago
  Well, if it's any consolation, if you use that as a conscious learning experience, you'll come out of it a far more effective contractor than you went in. I didn't let it discourage me, and I benefited from it in the long run. Another suggestion: do a thorough post-mortem with each client. Go over what you did, what you learned, what you'd improve and so forth. I.e. not a retrospective of the work you did (which is also important and worth doing), but a retrospective of your business relationship with your client.
- woah 12y ago
  I think it's happened to everyone in this business.
- dlevine 12y ago
  Yep. Me too. It's funny how common this story is...