Comment by mjolk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mjolk | Hacker News Reader

Eek. First off, joelx, sorry about the painful process. If things are truly as presented here, I hope things turn out in your favor.

I'm inferring that the post is being polite in leaving off some of the challenging aspects of the client, but as someone that's run a little consulting shop, this alarmed me:

> <Client> at this point began to make lots of requests for out of scope items not included in the contract. My team bent over backwards to accommodate him and finish these items...we had gone far beyond what he had paid for. Our team had racked up 294 hours of work on a project that TheClientCompany had only paid 116 hours for.

Why wasn't this contract closed, and a new one opened, before the 150% work overage mark?

Obviously, sometimes you need to eat a bit of work due to misestimation/unexpected-unexpecteds/reputation/keeping your client happy, but with the estimation of $12k@116 hours, this is $30k worth of work on a $12k agreement (assuming the estimation didn't account for legal/accounting/insurance/pre&post-sale time/expense, which are a bit more static in my experience).

Was the client not politely informed that the requests were going well beyond the scope of work? If you're beyond 2x of the agreement, I can understand that the client started to think of the contract as inconsequential. When dealing with customers without a technical staff (or experience in managing or running something technical) that are asking you to over-deliver, it's often just an issue of not knowing which asks are time-consuming/expensive -- and if you're making it look easy, the client will think it's easy.

> Our contract requires that before a website launches, final payment must be made. My team launched despite this and continued to work on it for him.

When you flagrantly break the parts of the contract that protect your business and interests, it's somewhat understandable that the client would expect to be able to sign-off the work before payment.

Just my two cents, but I'm positive that those two pennies have saved me a ton of money in walking away from certain clients during the negotiation phase.

> I ran right up to both of them, and punched him in the nose. I got in big trouble, but I thought it was worth it.

This metaphor, coupled with the story, makes it seem as if it's "worth it" to hit a client back in front of a judge. Super weird, IMHO.

> This metaphor, coupled with the story, makes it seem as if it's "worth it" to hit a client back in front of a judge. Super weird, IMHO.

It is an analogy. One should not copy exactly what happened in an analogy literally to a situation (what I call "greater example"); instead, one should apply the lesson of the analogy.

The situation of the analogy ("small example") was at elementary school, where someone got hit, and wanted to get justice ("an eye for an eye"). He got justice, but at a steep price. Standing up for oneself ensures they are not (or at least less likely) becoming bullied again, but it has its price (e.g. you may lose a teeth or 2, get reprimanded by school, get in contact with police or sued, etc). The goal of eye for an eye might appear as self gratification. That is perhaps part of the goal, but its a rather pointless and -to put it friendly- unintelligent one. Another, far more important part of the goal, is to ensure the other party realises (knows & feels) they were wrong so that the other party does not resort to this behaviour again. Not necessarily solely to the victim. Rather just to any potential future victims as well with whom the victim [would] share empathy and sympathy. One could regard justice as a reaction of the autonomous system (in the "greater example", called "society"), trying to correct its inhabitants/hosts, with the goal of improving the autonomous system at a whole.

Yeah, analogy -- thanks (was running on no sleep from travel).

I just don't think it fits the situation, even though I know what he was trying to say. Submitting proof to authority that you had done nothing wrong (as a defendant) is not the same as exacting revenge, even if the authority didn't see the initial harm. Along with the other descriptors of his ex-customer, it comes across as unprofessional.

> Submitting proof to authority that you had done nothing wrong (as a defendant) is not the same as exacting revenge, even if the authority didn't see the initial harm.

Its not about revenge, it is about justice. I explained revenge is not so much about the person who experienced the initial blow, more so than potential future victims.

> Along with the other descriptors of his ex-customer, it comes across as unprofessional.

I understand you feel that way but I disagree. It comes across as someone who stands up for his right when put in unjust situations. A potential customer should not need to fear him, as he is normally a solid business partner, and may even work hard in your advantage (for free). He mentions he goes out of the way for his customers, and his very example even proofs this. The people who read his blog regularly supposedly know his personality better. There's a conundrum in the fact that blog posts might be written for people who are more in the know, whereas everyone in the world can read it. We see the effects of that issue more regular, this is'd merely an example of the effect (is there a name for it?).

He is also not posting personal details of the plaintiff. Not enough to identify them. That is professional.

Then again, I am biased. I got bullied at school, and I generally didn't end up returning physical violence. I wish I did. I'd be more mentally resilient now. Not all is lost though.

> This metaphor, coupled with the story, makes it seem as if it's "worth it" to hit a client back in front of a judge.

The point I get from that is that it was worth it to him to stand up for himself even though it was costly to do so. In both cases, just letting it go would have been the easier option, but he didn't. A little stubbornness can be a good thing.

> The point I get from that is that it was worth it to him to stand up for himself even though it was costly to do so.

He was the defendant:

> A few weeks later I received a small claims notice in the mail that I was being sued for $10,000 (the small claims maximum) by Donald Deep

Not being part of the process would have come with the risk of a default judgment and the ex-customer demonstrated that he's litigious -- the "he hit me, so I hit him back in front of authority" doesn't fit when the scenario is "show up or lose more money and maybe he'll kick me."

What I got from the article is that the design firm can be manipulated into doing twice the work for the same pay as long as you're okay with the CEO vaguely mocking you later on his personal blog.

He appealed and went to court again after losing the first time. It is the appeal that corresponds to hitting the other kid in front of the teacher. He could have walked away with only a 10k instead of 100k lesson, but then Deep would have gotten his $10k. In both cases he took a loss rather than let the other party get away with something.

As with the playground games, the point is to be seen as crazy and/or principled enough that other people are incentivized to care about your principles and show you respect. That's also the message he is sending by publicizing it. The story doesn't exactly make him look like a legal or a business genius, but it shows determination and willingness to fight, which may deter others.

> doing twice the work for the same pay

Yes, hopefully he learned a lesson there. His company did extra work but resented it, and once that happened the rest really isn't surprising. It was at this point:

> Our contract requires that before a website launches, final payment must be made. My team launched despite this and continued to work on it for him. When I reviewed the situation, I was quite frustrated at having lost money on this project.

Sounds like his team didn't understand the contract, or he wasn't involved enough in the process. Either way it's his fault this happened, but it sounds like because of his frustration he took down the work already done on the client's site, which is when all the real trouble started. In hindsight it's obviously that point where he should have eaten the loss, either renegotiated a new contract or exited gracefully, and then fixed his process to make sure this didn't ever happen again.

I think it's great the author published this and we can all learn something from it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com