[engineer_22]

The author could improve their communication skills. Specifically, without more details, it seems like their negotiation was weak. Good negotiation get's you an amount you're happy with. If you aren't happy then you shouldn't take the work, full stop. The story should have ended there.

[emodendroket]

"Quit your job and do months of work for us for $10k" is not actually a position that anybody in their right mind would bother negotiating with.

[engineer_22]

I know.

So let's assume (as a good faith actor would) that the counter party doesn't know what this undertaking really entails. It's a lot of work - so a better response might be something like "the amount of work we are talking about would take a good engineer approximately 4 months. let's start the negotation there"

Maybe the author is new to business, but there's a lot to be desired in their communication. The screenshots of their communications only emphasize my take on it.

[emodendroket]

He describes that offer coming after his estimate, so no.

> As evidenced by the continuously slipping timeline in mGBA, I’m not very good at estimating timelines, so I gave a (very) rough estimate of 2 to 4 months. A reply affirming that that sounded reasonable, with an estimation of 300 to 400 hours of work, with a price tag of $10,000 was what I got back (assuming the project didn’t run seriously overtime).

> $10,000.

[sumtechguy]

25-35 an hour for that sort of work is absurdly low. Especially for someone who has an established emulator in their resume. Then on top of that the author had an existing job in SV so they knew about what sort of hour range they should be getting. They doubled it but then bumped out the time from 4 to 6 months of work. They still have not shipped 2 years later. Now taking pre orders, which I personally skip because of the possibility of them not ever shipping. So it would have dragged on. Then the ask for delaying the emu itself until they shipped. If they had agreed to that they would have had to sit on a release for nearly 2 years at this point. There is quite the cadre of hucksters in that area of software/hardware. Also I would posit that the task for 300-400 hours was probably under estimated by a factor of at least 3x, probably more as it was 'part time'.

I have seen this sort of thing before in the 'real' industry. You work for a hardware company and they see the software work as a 'extra' that you just bash something out and hope for the best. I have went out of my way to not work for hardware companies anymore. Many do not 'grok' software. That the hardware and software have to work together or they both fail.

This sort of story is probably better on r/choosingbeggars.

[sneak]

Yes, but the author continued anyway.

They could have ghosted. They could have made a reasonable counter.

Instead they decided to sling mud.

Childish and unprofessional.

[emodendroket]

Obviously he was excited about the opportunity and not walking into it with both eyes open, but they continued springing new terms on him after he'd accepted a weak offer. And what he talks about at the end affects others, not just him.

[engineer_22]

That's right. Author has a lot to learn.