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Comment by ila | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately I've interacted with the author of this project, Zander Brade, and he turned out to be one of the most untrustworthy designers I've ever encountered. Due to my past experience with him I have no intention of touching this site/project. Sorry, but I had to say it.

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Just a little perspective: The only people who never fuck up are people who never try.

I don't know him or you and it's not an excuse, but if you hire a 17 year old you can't expect the same level of experience as working with a freelance designer.

I've done a lot of very stupid things in my career. Only 17, still learning. I'm super sorry though that you feel this way:( Maybe mail me zander.brade AT gmail.com and I can try make it up.

Everyone makes mistakes - you probably won't be able to make up too well with this guy in particular since negative reactions are very hard to shake. However, there are luckily tons more people and good work is good work, so keep it up!

I signed up on your site.

Thanks dude. In this case it's likely my fault but your kind words mean a lot. Hope you enjoy Analog!

I agree with Ryan here, I signed up as well, your site fills an important need that developers and designers have and I am looking forward to this. The one point I wanted to criticize is that there was no validation on your form , i made a typo in developer and managed to get through. Also I didn't receive any email confirmation.

Sorry, I just found out who this was, and personally what you consider to be worthy of 'one of the most untrustworthy designers I've ever encountered', I find somewhat offensive.

What happened: I missed a Skype call, and wasn't interested in working with you on a potential project. No contracts signed, 8 emails exchanged - just a sign from you that you might be interested in hiring me; and I wasn't into the project.

Hardly a crime in my eyes.

Also, this means I just shared a different story where I actually messed up.

What happened?

Without knowing who this is, I can't say. I know I've only done one terrible thing as a designer, which was with a really friendly dude, I was 15 at the time and just fucked up horribly. I'm pretty sure this is the incident as I've had few other big hiccups.

How'd you fuck up?

He was 15 - does it really matter?

"I got in over my head in deliverables"

vs.

"I totally flaked on talking with the client"

vs.

"I took his advance and blew it on hookers and blow"

Yes, it matters.

No matter what it was, did he learn from it? That's what matters in my book. If he was older, I might care more about the specifics of what he did since I think a lot of people get too comfortable with the lies they build around themselves and appearances they need to keep up, especially professionally. But he's young and he's learning how to hack it in two industries where going at it alone is both rewarding and daunting, and of course you'll mess up somewhere, especially when you have much less experience, both professionally and in life.

That said, if it was something more malicious than what you mentioned, then it would be worth looking into.

A payment I owed him was late by 2/3 months. I have a lot of shit excuses as to why I didn't pay him on time but it was just a bad mistake.

Fair enough--been there myself.

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