10 ms·
Should I Work for Free?
- yetanotheracc 11y agoI wish they expanded the family / "mom" branch a bit.
- busterarm 11y agoRight! My brother has never let me work for free for his business, but there were times where he way overpaid me and I made sure to make it up to him.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y agoAt this point in world history, the money flow goes from me to my mom, I'm not going to accept any cash from her.
- spacecowboy_lon 11y agoNO
- rayiner 11y agoOne of the first bits of advice my old boss gave me: never work for free. I was surprised because I'd never even considered doing that. But it must be common enough for him to have mentioned it.
- busterarm 11y agoDepends where you are. In creative fields in NY, there is tons of free labor, or people getting paid on a scale of Net-180 to Net-Never (proportional to how many times you say "Fuck You, Pay Me"). As well as a load of illegal "internships". Outside of finance, businesses here are often extremely cheap to the point of being dishonest. I really don't understand why people put up with it. Nobody has any ethics either.
- Eric_WVGG 11y agoAs a note of perspective, this comes from a graphic designer (Jessica Hische), and their work has an even greater tendency to be devalued by potential clients. Just spend a few minutes browsing the Clients from Hell tumblr to get an idea their typical business relations… Many graphic designers consider a little free work in exchange for future work or references as a good way to get one’s foot in the door. This usually backfires.
- SilasX 11y agoTo clarify, this was lawyer work? And if so, doesn't the ABA recommend some pro bono work every year?
- rayiner 11y agoNo, when I was working as an engineer. Charity work is of course different regardless of your profession. Nobody is making money off your labor.
- SilasX 11y agoThe model "never work for free" doesn't capture that nuance, which is the whole point of flowcharts like the linked one :-p
- rayiner 11y agoYou're right. You should also work for your mother for free. I also fix my wife's computer for free, bu
- rayiner 11y agoYou're right. You should also work for your mother for free. I also fix my wife's computer for free, bu
- rayiner 11y agoYou're right. I also fix my wife's computer for free, but not anyone else's.
- SilasX 11y agoAnd that's why I don't throw around "never work for free" as actionable insight :-p
- teekert 11y agoI swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine. -John Galt (Ayn Rand)
- sfk 11y agoDid John Galt use free software?
- lqdc13 11y agoFree software in its current state is basically communism.
- teekert 11y agoYou are mixing up economical and personal benefits, here's what Linus has to say about this philosophy: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18419231 http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18419231 To me Ayn's philosophy fits perfectly to this graph, it all boils down to this: Is there anything to gain for me (or my loved ones.) Imo Ayn's one-liner captures the essence of this graph. Edit: Of course loved ones or just 'a good feeling about yourself' are perfectly good reasons (the best?) to do something for someone else. This is not selflessness. Going to Africa to help children while every fiber in your body hates them, that is selflessness: the total disregard of what you yourself desire.
- lqdc13 11y agoYou can view communism in terms of "selfishness" like this too. Everyone selfishly wants bread and the only way they can get it is by contributing their labour. I think "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" fits much better. Everyone is contributing what they can for free to the common knowledge base and can use everyone else's stuff also for free. You can view it as "prestige" currency too, but that doesn't break the paradigm.
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- pmhpereira 11y agoLast submission was 2 days ago... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9787328 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9787328
- madaxe_again 11y agoStreamlined version: Should I work for free? -----> No. Not even if they're your bestie, a charity, or your mother - unless you want an unpaid support gig from here until the end of time, or want to never speak to them again. Free is not a sustainable dynamic for non-transient (I.e. Serving soup) tasks. Imagine if you were to work in a soup kitchen as a volunteer, but the terms were that you'd be liable for any food poisoning, and you have to come in at 3am on Sunday because the stove isn't working, and someone there thinks you looked at the fridge once, which is close enough.
- lqdc13 11y agoThis might be a cultural thing, but I think everyone should help their close relatives with computer problems. Sometimes when their relatives need help, people literally give up everything and live with them and help them with everything. Spending 20 minutes to sign them up for email is not the biggest investment. Basically if you think of yourself and your family as one entity, it makes sense to minimize overall wasted time. Since you are most efficient at computer-related things, it makes sense to do those things for them.
- icebraining 11y agoI think the problem madaxe_again is underlying is that the 20m task often leads to the person assuming you're the culprit of any possible problem the computer might have in the future. I still help friends and family with computer problems, but I try to avoid friends-of-friends and such. By the way, the idea of considering myself and my family as a single unit is bizarre to me, unless you're talking about just the immediate relatives. Each branch of my family has at least two "sub-branches" who don't speak to each other :)
- lqdc13 11y agoWell, I understand where he's coming from. But if you follow this line of reasoning further, you basically say that you should never help anyone - including your immediate family - with anything because they might think you ruined it for them. I'm not saying you should be Mother Teresa, or even help people you don't like, but iff you like someone and they need help, just help them out. They might help you out later with something else they can do better than you.
- dvirsky 11y agoOne branch that isn't covered here is joining a non-funded startup as the technical co-founder.
- pc86 11y agoBut then it's not free. Just because most equity is worthless doesn't mean the work is done for free.
- dvirsky 11y agoTrue, but you still bet your future and work many many hours for no pay, and in some cases it never even gets seed funding, so you end up just wasting a ton of time, even though no one profited from your work. Also it should be mentioned for young/inexperienced people, that you do this only if the equity is significant (don't join if they have 5 non technical founders, no product and offer you like 5%), and if the founders are not idiots, assholes and/or dodgy.
- dagw 11y agoThe pay doesn't have to be in cash. If you're joining as a co-founder and aren't offered at the very least a decent chunk of equity with a nominal non-zero value, then you probably should say no.
- franze 11y agoi have a one hour free for (early stage) startups. and it's great. i give them all the input (i'm a consultant, so basically i talk smart) i can in one hour. hold nothing back. sometimes it's all they need. a push in the right direction. i don't want to sell them anything (yet). sometimes i don't hear back from them for months, years. sometimes never. why do i do it: reason 1) data - (in my case access to their google search console and google analytics). this helps me to adjust my benchmark of how i see the different verticals / businesses. reason 2) leads over time 2a) most startups fail. the people move on. this is how i got a "foot in the door" to germanys biggest media-houses. 2b) some startups succeed. if they do, the usually come back to me. quite often for very different topics than the one we actually talked about. reason 3) ideas it's great to talk to people with a fresh perspective. it's a give and get. they learn something from me, most of the time i learn something from them. all of this together is worth something. in my case: 1h of my time, 1h of their time. so is it really "1h free" well, more like "1h non monetary" but that doesn't sound as catchy! is there a second-hour free? no is there a one hour free for big companies? no, because it costs already lots of time to sell big companies anything. is there a one hour free for assholes? no
- carlmcqueen 11y agoThis makes a lot of sense but I would argue that having access to their data no longer makes it an hour for free. Data is a major currency.
- crusso 11y agoYeah, but so are experience, connections, and ideas - and they're all of varying values depending upon one's lack of (and ability to utilize) each.
- martin-adams 11y agoI really like this and have thought about doing something like this myself. Not really to drum up new business, but to have an inspirational chat about what they are doing and help them get pointed in the right direction.
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- iolothebard 11y agoMisses a huge point, if you're doing a startup with friends, typically you're all working for free. Keep your day job, do some work on the side, retain all rights to your code. Make sure the person or people you're working with are equally dedicated. Have clauses that cut people out for non-delivery on their parts. A startup is only 25% the code in my experience, it's the most critical part (unless you're selling vaporware) but it's just ahead of sales which then quickly takes over. Unless you're doing the facebook model (which I've never been able to grasp personally).
- pc86 11y agoThe company (because there is a legal entity, and not just three guys hacking in a garage, right?) absolutely needs to retain ownership of the code. If the CTO decides he'd rather work for Microsoft 6 months in you can't have a legal structure that allows him to take all the code with him and dump everyone else back to square one. If you've got two or more people working on a business/startup/project, everything done toward that goal needs to belong to that entity, not the person that created it.
- tokenizerrr 11y agoYou have licenses and contracts for that.
- nvader 11y agoI think the original article deals with working under contact for a start up, not as a founder. The context seems to be people with specialised skills who are approached by start ups for specific items of work (graphic design projects), with an expectation of free our cheap labour. I agree with other commenters that if you are a cofounder, the situation is different. Since you are getting equity in consideration, as soon as it matters to get these legal protections, you must provide a license, and preferably, attribute ownership of the software to the company.
- theorique 11y agoThe context seems to be people with specialised skills who are approached by start ups for specific items of work (graphic design projects), with an expectation of free our cheap labour. What's the potential benefit to the contractor, to do free work for a startup? Is it an actual thing to ask service providers or solo practitioners to work for no cash and no equity?
- marknutter 11y agoI learned this the hard way in my early days of freelancing as a web developer. The main reason I think it's important not to work for free isn't the fact that you're not being compensated for your time (which of course sucks) but that your client doesn't actually feel comfortable giving you honest feedback about the work your producing because they know you're doing it for free. So what happens is you end up with a sub-par delivery because the client often feels too guilty to look a gift horse in the mouth and you're not properly motivated to make it better than you might if you were being fairly compensated on top of it.
- marvel_boy 11y agoGood point
- didgeoridoo 11y agoHowever, it's often better to work for free than for peanuts. The client who's paying you a few tens or hundreds of bucks will often treat you like garbage, AND give you poor feedback. Stick with your rate (if you don't have one, decide what you're "comfortable" charging... and triple it) and explicitly provide a "one-time discount" for the client to land on what they can pay. Clients treat you better the more "expensive" you seem — which seems to hold true even if they aren't actually being charged all that money.
- hwstar 11y agoI learned this early on in one of my side businesses: "The one who pays the least complains the most". Charge enough to communicate that you are a professional. Don't take clients who are low bidders. Let your competition take those and watch them suffer.
- tonyedgecombe 11y agoIt's worse than that, most people value things by their cost, if they aren't spending any money then how much will they value your time.
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- Mahn 11y agoWell that was a bit pointless, the whole chart can be summed up as "No, but you may want to consider making an exception for a relative, a close friend, or a non-profit you support".
- michaelgrafl 11y agoA lot of things can be summed up in a boring way. That doesn't make the boring summaries the things.
- chaostheory 11y agoThere's one huge thing that the author missed: working for free on an open source or creative commons project, as well as the advantages of just getting your work out there on those licenses even if it doesn't directly benefit you financially immediately.
- saint_fiasco 11y agoI think that's covered in the non-profit branch.
- chaostheory 11y agoNot really. The non-profit branch implied that the completed work will belong only to the non-profit. With open source and creative commons, ultimately the intellectual rights still belong to you; you're just letting other people use your work for free. You also don't have to release open source or creative commons work for someone else. If you look on github, most projects are the work of individuals, and released & maintained primarily by them and not a separate non-profit entity. TDLR the author has forgotten that you can also work for yourself for free and not just other people
- s73v3r 11y agoThe author is in the field of graphic design. It's not unreasonable that they wouldn't have much exposure to that.
- brentvatne 11y agoI agree that open-source is definitely missing from this if it is considered from the perspective of a software developer. "Should I work for free?" is a simple and easy to remember title but it is an oversimplification when the author actually intended on it being something more like "Should I do design work for free?" That said, this was also made in 2011 and I think a lot has changed since then.
- chaostheory 11y ago
- kefka 11y agoThe real answer is (Fuck you, Pay me)[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U]
- pkaye 11y agoAt times, it feels like, the more someone is paying you, the more they will respect you. Don't work for free unless they have a good respect for you otherwise you will be used. My own experience was trying to help out two non-profits with some IT work and they ask you for the world and treat you like shit.
- hessenwolf 11y agoHe who works for free, never gets thanked, as a wizened truck driver once told me. Your work and your input will not be respected without a consideration.
- aantix 11y agoSpot on. The higher I push my rates, the more respect I get. It's been a surprising finding coming from a programmer that came from a pretty broke family. But it gives me courage to constantly push my rates higher and higher. Courage in that single negotiation moment seems to generate professional respect that even great work doesn't generate. "Here's my rate. It's non-negotiable. <blank, cold stare accompanied by dead silence until the client decides to speak>" I've always found this list incredibly useful when preparing to negotiate with a potential new contract. http://note.liudas.eu/v1/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Negotiation.pdf http://note.liudas.eu/v1/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Negotiat... In an age of where an half-way descent engineer is thrown a job offer, you should be able to generate enough leads to continuously try out new rates. Prepare like hell for the negotiation. Know their favorite sports team. Know that they graduated with honors from Caltech. Tell them exactly how you're going to help their company, unapologetically give them your rate, and then be absolutely quiet waiting for their response. "First person to talk always loses", so STFU. Don't flinch.
- shubhamjain 11y agoThere has been only one time I was willing to work for free, to establish some credibility as a freelancer when reaching out wasn't working that well and I didn't had anything to show in my portfolio, plus I didn't want to go on bidding wars on Odesk, Elance. I think that (desperation) might be one of the major reasons why someone might want to work for free.
- ac166 11y agoI was thinking this was going to be one of those websites that just says NO in big letters. Sadly it's not.
- ac166 11y agoI thought this was going to be one of those websites that just had NO in big letters on it. Sadly it's not.
- cmacpher 11y agothe z-indexing on this is maddening!
- jackmaney 11y agoHere's a simpler flowchart: Start -> Should I work for free? -> No
- dspeyer 11y agoI notice that once you go down the "is it for a legitimate business" branch, the answers are all "NO". They could have omitted all the follow-ups.
- adrusi 11y agoAh, but then you'd lose the explanations for why each scenario is not appropriate to work for free in.
- kirk21 11y agoWe're building an awesome tool for freelancers: Automated invoices for freelancers http://www.recurvoice.com/ http://www.recurvoice.com/
- allendoerfer 11y agoMine is simpler: Is it a project, that you would start by yourself anyway, you do now with partners, who bring value, you trust and give you enough equity? Everything else is a no.
- asgard1024 11y agoYou should work for free as in freedom, not for free as in beer.
- izztmzzt 11y agono.
- jacquesm 11y agoFunny how one of the branches leads to nothing but 'no' and still has a whole bunch of extra questions to ask. That could be optimized!
- anotheryou 11y agowhat I find much more important: don't work for too little money. I help friends for free and do a quick and dirty job, telling them what I have time for and what not. But getting a little money gets you all the responsibility, less thankfulness and still no real money.