[tptacek]

But you don't have a direct relationship with the actual buyers of your work, so you don't control your project structure, and the middleman business reselling your work presumably needs to be taking a cut. It's no wonder they treat you well, right?

[swader999]

Well for the case right now, I'm building a multi tenant system. Some tenants want features that no others want and they pay for my hours on those. I still have enough control in these cases.

I come up with better lower costing solutions when the stakeholders express WHY the feature is needed, what problem it solves. Then we and I can creatively explore HOW to solve the problem. There's usually several ways to solve anything, many that vary by orders of magnitude in terms of cost or architectural complexity.

If I am dictated always on the HOW, handed fully solutioned work to implement like a monkey I rebel and have a long talk about how this won't work. I never have had to quit over this stance but I would if it wasn't reconciled.

So when I say control, that's really what I specifically mean by that word. The ability to negotiate and explore the HOW with the why being firmly in mind.