I lol'd, but to clarify this very accurate point:
* Be reliable (never, ever go dark)
* Be a nice person (polite and upbeat, even if the client isn't exactly deserving)
* Do quality work, regardless of the circumstances (even if you're over budget)
If you hit those three points, you will perform far better, revenue-wise, than the average contractor - I did it for years while I was getting my product business off the ground.
+1 to this point. At a previous agency job I found this to be the biggest pain when hiring/dealing with contractors.
As long as they gave decent notice on days off I never complained about their availability.
It is an attempt to stop employers dodging benefits entitlements by hiring their employees as contractors.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permatemp#Vizcaino_v._Microsof...
In essence it means that you can't take paid leave or sick days, otherwise it counts as "disguised employment". Another interesting requirement is that you must have at lest one other person in your company who can reasonably stand in for you and perform your work, if needs be.
If caught on the wrong side of the law then you must return the tax you've saved along with paying a fine. Not nice.
Generally it's just a matter of how the contract is worded. You need to reserve the sort of rights a business would reserve.
What if you estimated all of the features, built them, and then the client comes back with a bunch of new features and changes that would require a new contract. Do you do them for free?
What about ongoing support? My contracts give the client one week to test any features, and once that week has elapsed without any issues, the contract is considered "complete" and they have to pay the other 50%. Would you be for or against that practice?
I guess I am wondering where the balance lies between protecting yourself and protecting your reputation.
Unfortunately, clients (just like all human beings) are squishy and forgetful. Your reputation can get damaged through no fault of your own. When do you decide to let someone go because their expectations don't match the contract they signed? Is the penalty to your reputation so high that it's never worth the time you would save by doing this?
I am genuinely curious to see how other contractors manage this.
When I said "clearly over budget," I meant in terms of your own estimate. Sometimes feature X takes longer to build out, and there's the inclination to cut corners to get things done so you don't drive your effective hourly/day rate down, assuming that the poor estimate was yours and you'll eat the cost.
But expanding on that, do quality work regardless of the scenario, such as:
* The codebase is already a pile of s* left behind by someone else * They're miserable, complaining, sons a' biches no matter what you do for them A fix could be sloppy and take 1 line of code, or quality and take 10
That kinda stuff.
The businesses have always seemed very similar to me, with the exception that it's easier to find remote computer work and the budgets with the computer stuff are uniformly more sustainable.