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Comment by jiggy2011 | Hacker News Reader

jiggy2011

I don't see it as a big problem to change plans somewhat at the start of a project, this is certainly better than doing it half way through. As long as it's not a strategy to get a contractor to do extra work for free.

If you are charging a higher rate, part of the value associated with that is a certain degree of flexibility.

Also don't see the problem with the client wanting a cell number, if you don't want calls on your personal phone just get a cheap second phone + SIM for business. Make it clear which hours you will be available, put the phone on silent during family time and check voicemail periodically. I would be sceptical of giving somebody $20K who won't give me a "real" phone number.

I always find that speaking to somebody on the phone or in person regularly leads to a much better long term working relationship than simply email or IM. It's much easier to trust someone when you can associate them with a face or voice.

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It is not the universal expectation of clients that they be able to reach consultants on the telephone if they have $20k invested in that relationship.

n.b. For many consultancies that is near or below the effective floor number to get them in the door, rather than being a huge anchor account.

I guess those are cases with larger or more established consultancies where there is already a reputation and probably at least a switchboard number.

If you're just hiring random freelancers who advertise on job boards there are quite a few fly-by-nights.

  > If you're just hiring random freelancers who advertise 
  > on job boards there are quite a few fly-by-nights.

Please stop making up a scenario that is different from the one outlined in the article. It's causing you to come across as argumentative.

Actually the article seems very close to that. The person mentions having only their cell phone and Google Voice. I doubt they work for a large consultancy. You tend to have office managers/assistants/schedulers/etc. after the first 5 people or so if not sooner. It doesn't make sense to waste high paid consultant time on things they can do and calls they can take.

The specifics are not made very clear in the article, so there are many possible scenarios.

A higher rate is commensurate with a higher end product. It does not give the client license to change the scope of the project every other day.

Cell phones are for emergency access (the site is down, etc) and only given in specific situations for specific rates. That does not sound like the case here. The client was given a phone number that would go to his cell at specific times which was more than sufficient.

Having regular phone contact is perfectly fine and can be scheduled for regular meetings. Weekly status meetings on ongoing work. Pre and post-launch meetings for specific milestones. Things like that. A client that wants license to call your cell whenever they think of a random bit of information instead of sending it in an email or saving it for a scheduled phone meeting (or scheduling one specifically for it) is not a client you want to have. They clearly don't value your time or the fact that you have other clients and responsibilities.

A higher end product will be something that fits requirements well, and sometimes those requirements will change; better to get those changes out of the way to the extent possible before you have written any code.

I agree that giving a personal number and letting people call you at any time should not be necessary but having a business number and email are fairly standard if you are a full time contractor.

I am also in favor of getting requirements change in the start but the client should be willing to renegotiate if they change the scope too much.

A higher rate is commensurate with a higher end product.

This is definitely not axiomatic. I've encountered plenty of high-rate consultants and consultancies that consistently deliver sub-par work; for various reasons (often favoritism and excellent marketing), this ends up working well despite low-quality deliverables.

Also, I've found that there is very little similarity between what a client thinks is a large change and what actually is.

That is, when a large client I work with called me with one-off requests, I usually just fulfilled them. It made me look helpful and not standoffish, helped our relationship, and the changes rarely took more than a few minutes to implement even though the client thought the changes were a huge deal.

Obviously this can vary. In the cases where the changes were more involved, I simply told him so and told him that I would need to create a quote for the work. This never caused any problems.

I agree with you, but I've learned that most programmers don't. Many times I've taken over a client from someone else who warned me they were horrible to work with, and I found they just wanted fast turnaround (i.e. within a couple days) for very small changes (15 minutes to 2 hours), maybe 2-3 such changes a week. I did the work, billed them, and they paid. If it was a bigger change I'd tell them that up front, and they'd okay the work and accept a later delivery, or work with me to change the scope. It makes the client happy and wins you all kinds of good will. With a good relationship, these "unreasonable" clients were all quite reasonable if I occasionally had to tell them I was booked and needed an extra week or so to get to something. I've really only had one true problem client, and with him it was more because he wanted to change the project scope repeatedly without changing the cost. I think a lot of programmers in client-facing roles would benefit themselves (or their agencies) if they prioritized client satisfaction as highly as technical excellence.

Exactly. Treating every interaction as a business transaction is off-putting and can have negative effects with the only positive being that you might make a bit more cash for some small changes.

The bonuses to agreeing to make smallish changes on the fly (for free or pay depending on your style) without acting like it's a pain in your ass are goodwill and a strong working relationship which results in a happy client which results in more work from that client as well as probable referrals to people that client knows.

As the saying goes, you can sheer a sheep many times but skin it only once.

> That is, when a large client I work with called me with one-off requests, I usually just fulfilled them. It made me look helpful and not standoffish, helped our relationship

Until it becomes a pain when your client stops recognizing it as favors and perceives it as your obligation. Being the nice guy can come back to bite you in the ass.

Maybe, but I've never experienced it myself, which is why I still do it.

It's worth pointing out that the work isn't really free. I still include the changes in future quotes and mark them as no charge to remind him what I did. This gives me leverage in negotiating fees on larger changes.

He do give his Google Voice number, it's literally a phone number. He said that he is more comfortable with that because he can turn off the number whenever he want. This is exactly what another cellphone would do.

A google voice number would feel less "concrete" to me, since it's tied to a google account rather than a physical sim card/phone.

Do you routinely exercise purchasing authority on $20k consulting engagements? If you do, your preferences are anecdotal evidence of the business practices of one client firm. If you don't...

Not personally, but I have worked with people who do. There is always some measure of due diligence performed where "this guy only has a google voice number" would be unlikely to pass.

How do they perform this due diligence? Is there a way to tell if a number is a Google Voice number?

This seems like an insane way to vet potential developers, by the way. Someone who bases a hiring decision on what brand of phone service your employee/contractor has chosen is probably not looking at the right metrics.

I haven't used google voice, but since the article mentioned that the client was not satisfied with a google voice number I assumed they must have had some way of knowing.

You can take all sorts of little clues from these kinds of things. For example if a website is phrased and designed to look corporate but the only number published is a mobile and the email address ends in @hotmail.com then you know you might be dealing with a single freelancer.

How would you know?

And furthermore, since numbers can be ported around to different providers, how would you continue to know?

I have a Google Voice number that used to belong to a real actual cell phone.

  > I don't see it as a big problem to change plans 
  > somewhat at the start of a project, this is certainly 
  > better than doing it half way through.

There's a lot hiding behind that word "somewhat".

In his book Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art [1] Steve McConnell says that most project schedules can tolerate around a 20% change in delivery time without too much distress. So if the "somewhat" is within the manageable +/-20%, then the project can move forward. If the change is bigger than that, it almost certainly means that the project deliverables, schedule and fees need to be renegotiated. And if a client is constantly causing a project to be renegotiated, are they really a client?

[1] http://www.stevemcconnell.com/est.htm

Hardly even feels like a real story, but I'm not unsympathetic to the client absent more details (how much of a premium does the author's charge, scope of the project in question, nature/timing of phone calls).

EDIT: has anyone noticed, "About the Author: Brian Morris writes for the PsPrint Design & Printing Blog. PsPrint is an online commercial printing company. Follow PsPrint on Twitter @PsPrint and Facebook." That trips some alarms for me, it doesn't sound like a freelancer's CV. It sounds like a social marketer's.

Yep , the story is vague but specific enough that a real client would know that it was written about them and probably find it quite unprofessional.

The submitter is the founder of the site hosting the post, so I don't think any of this passes the smell test.

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