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.
And yet, somehow, you gave them the most important time you had for their promises.
This wasn't because of the customer or not getting paid. This was the author's choice.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
That was indeed the point, guess I conveyed it in a poor way.
This is really the key. The "deal" has to have something for both parties. The vendor gets some kind of lock-in, prepayment, guarantee of future business, whatever it is, and in exchange the purchaser gets a discount.
The discount doesn't just come out of nowhere.
Its easy to say don't be afraid to lose business, but when you're starting out, the economy is rough or all you have are the one or two clients, that's a different matter entirely.
One thing I've learned is that you always have to do the leg work, you can't assume someone will do the right thing or keep their word.
Develop a system where even bad clients, can't do too much damage i.e. upfront deposits, milestone-based payments. You have to control cash flow risks, if you are gonna take risks know what risks you're taking and when to get out.
Sadly, while this is true, there are plenty of folks still doing freelance who have not learned this, and there always will be. It's just one of those lessons that quite a lot of people have to learn from experience, even after reading posts like this. The exact same reason why companies will continue to get away with taking advantage of freelance work.
OTOH, one other clear subtext of the story is the "savior" attitude of a lot of tech people, who think that, if they weren't using version control before, think, "oh, I'll just tell them about this great thing, and because it's much better they will definitely listen to me and implement it - it's only logical". But the harsh reality is that "better" things won't affect an org that went along that far and dug themselves that deep.
Never underestimate an org's ability to shoot itself in the foot, even if you think you know better. That includes getting your money from them.
> 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.
Also, mandatory: https://creativemornings.com/talks/mike-monteiro--2/1
Choice quote from the linked talk (aptly titled "F*ck you, pay me").
The weirdest part to me, receive a call and just get up and go? Priorities? Did you write this blog post from the doghouse?
Or... maybe he needs income to exist.
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.
Because they could just dissolve the entity and get away with it. Did you even read the rest of the article?
- 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.
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.
In a different domain, this is the painful lesson of almost anyone who tries to help people in a bind -- you can try to help, but yours is unlikely to be the advice that sets them straight, so you shouldn't get too invested with unproven or, especially, proven unreliable actors.
Neatly distilled I believe you are correct
Why ironically? Isn't that exactly what you'd expect?
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.
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.
this is only getting worse with ai.
all the artifacts of good work are there but none of the depth.
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.
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.
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)
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.
Be pleasantly surprised when a poorly run project is being run by nice, honest people. Prep for the opposite.
Often paid late, but FIVE times, I never got paid at all, one time it was several thousands over the course of months and I almost pursued it in court, but in the end I took the L.
It's always these incubator types, they're the absolute worst clients. They have the cash in the bank too, they often just forget or feel entitled and don't want to back down.
NEVER work for a YC founder.
HockeyStack, Greptile, Velt all had problems paying me and all required 7 day a week, overnight, etc.
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.
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.
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
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.
for_i_in_range•1h ago
dspillett•1h ago
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•50m ago
> I’ll happily tell you who they are - get in touch
sva_•51m ago