Ask HN: How to stop working with someone?
Right now, I'm subcontracting on an iPhone project, to free up time for the original freelancer to work on another project. However, there's a few things worrying me. It's a cryptography-heavy project, but the original freelancer seems to have significant holes in his crypto knowledge, to the point where he can't even recognize when something is unspecified. (As in, he doesn't even know high-level details about how public key crypto is supposed to work.)
Instead of recognizing his need to ask questions, it seems like he's chalking it up to my being stupid. Since I'm supposedly going to be responsible for turning the project into some kind of super-framework that can instantly adapt to future projects, I feel kind of uncomfortable, as he's the one who's going to be getting the requirements.
Do I talk to him up front about this, risking offending him, or fade away quietly and come off as flaky? Neither option looks good to me, and may negatively affect future freelance work in my town.