Comment by mcguire | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mcguire | Hacker News Reader

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There is a considerable amount of wisdom in this article. But there's one thing in particular that caught my eye:

"The job ended up being team work, it was way too much for a single person and I’m very fortunate to have found at least one kindred spirit at the company as well as a network of friends who jumped to my aid at first call. Quite an amazing experience to see a team of such quality materialize out of thin air and go to work as if they had been working together for years."

I have done similar sorts of things for my current employer and at previous jobs. One thing we discuss here, since the opportunity keeps popping up, is forming a specific team of people to parachute into a flailing project and get it back on track. That frequently seems to involve taking it away from the then-current developers, paring it down to "the good parts", and then rewriting the rest, but it does yield results.

I try to be as fair as possible to those involved in earlier stages of the project (management is usually not too levelheaded at this stage). In this case the earlier developers for the most part had but one single failing, they didn't put their foot down when they realized things were going pear shaped. If they had done that they might have been able to stop the disaster before it happened, but as it was they were too intimidated to draw a line in the sand. I'm pretty sure they learned a bunch of lessons on this project, they're no angels but they're definitely not the bad guys.

Putting your foot down can end up badly as well, as you simply be removed from the project if you don't agree to deadlines.

Then management wonder why it failed.

I'd rather be removed from a project than to agree to something that can't be done.

I've also come to that conclusion after a number of years of freelancing, but I understand the other point of view as well.

While freelancing, especially for people in another country, it isn't uncommon for customers to just disappear without any trace (or pay) half-way through a project. As such, when confronted with some problem mid-project, finishing the job in a half-assed manner can be a way of ensuring you get paid. Of course, a better method is making sure you have a solid plan before agreeing to the job, and trying to avoid unreliable customers - but accomplishing this can be difficult in any setting, even non-freelancing.

On the customer side, making sure you have a number of reasonably sized milestones and pay for them immediately on delivery can help keep freelancers confident, and thus encourage better quality work.

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