[wewewedxfgdf]

Be paid or don't work.

I am so deadly serious - do not continue working if your invoices are late.

You don't have to be a jerk about it, just explain to your primary contact that you need to be paid and you pick up tools again when the money has arrived.

BUT it is on YOU to properly negotiate reasonable payment terms. And if you don;t know or don't trust the client then require payment in advance until a stronger commercial relationship can be settled in. Do not be a baby - go research business contracts and payment terms.

Do not be afraid to lose business from companies that are squeamish about paying you - in fact actively avoid such companies.

[DataDaoDe]

Sadly this is true and lesson anyone who has worked freelance has probably learned - either that or I'd wager they no longer do freelance.

Its easy to say don't be afraid to lose business, but when you're starting out, the economy is rough or all you have are the one or two clients, that's a different matter entirely.

One thing I've learned is that you always have to do the leg work, you can't assume someone will do the right thing or keep their word.

Develop a system where even bad clients, can't do too much damage i.e. upfront deposits, milestone-based payments. You have to control cash flow risks, if you are gonna take risks know what risks you're taking and when to get out.

[bluGill]

There are also bad suppliers who don't do their leg work. I've "fired" some companies who did great work for me because they couldn't be bothered to send a bill - I know I owe someone some money, but I don't know how much as despite begging they won't tell me how much or where to send it (I only have a phone number) - this bill could get larger, and they can come after me at any time for it...

Please don't be them. If you do good work make sure that you get your bills sent on time.

[stronglikedan]

> Sadly this is true and lesson anyone who has worked freelance has probably learned - either that or I'd wager they no longer do freelance.

Sadly, while this is true, there are plenty of folks still doing freelance who have not learned this, and there always will be. It's just one of those lessons that quite a lot of people have to learn from experience, even after reading posts like this. The exact same reason why companies will continue to get away with taking advantage of freelance work.

[ProllyInfamous]

>>companies will continue to get away with taking advantage of freelance work.

Think of ¡all the exposure! doing this free labor for us will give you! /s

or:

I'll cook you dinner if you do this days of work for me /serious?!

[magicalhippo]

> Do not be afraid to lose business from companies that are squeamish about paying you - in fact actively avoid such companies.

My boss said that the ones who have negotiated the best deals are the ones that are late paying, complain about just about every bill and will write angry letters when my boss index adjust pricing.

He said it taught him to never offer a really good deal for a regular customer (ie where the upside isn't very obvious).

[stavros]

I'm not sure that's the best takeaway here, in that it gets the causation wrong. It's not the deal that made the customer bad, it's that the bad customer insisted on getting a deal, whereas a good customer usually knows what quality costs and is prepared to pay.

The takeaway here is probably that the fix isn't just "never discount", but it's to screen for the kind of customer who treats a good deal as an invitation to strengthen the relationship.

[mikepurvis]

> strengthen the relationship

This is really the key. The "deal" has to have something for both parties. The vendor gets some kind of lock-in, prepayment, guarantee of future business, whatever it is, and in exchange the purchaser gets a discount.

The discount doesn't just come out of nowhere.

[magicalhippo]

> It's not the deal that made the customer bad, it's that the bad customer insisted on getting a deal

That was indeed the point, guess I conveyed it in a poor way.

[stavros]

That's OK, it's clarified now.

[danesparza]

This. A bad customer made a desperate situation worse because of their inexperience, neglect, shady motives, or a combination of the three.

[brabel]

Where I live the phone companies do this: you can get a discount every year by calling them and saying you will change companies unless they give you a better price. They always do and the only people paying normal prices are the ones who can’t be bothered to call them every year to request the discount!

[ghaff]

And dealing with a lot of that crap is more trouble than many of us want to be filling our days with. Micro-optimizations I might have done as a student I mostly don’t do today.

[busterarm]

In order to make out on this at my hourly rate, I would have to cap my phone time with the company to minutes. Single digit.

It's literally just not worth it. Time is the most finite resource that we all have.

[fn-mote]

These companies are scum. I don't want to be part of this march to the bottom of caring for your customer. Big companies are also different because of the firmness with which they are locked in to the purchasing infrastructure (among other reasons).

[nradov]

Sure, all major US cellular carriers are scum and abuse customers in similar ways. So you'll be part of the march to the bottom whether you want it or not.

It is possible to switch to a smaller VNO with better customer policies. But then your cellular data gets dropped during heavy network congestion, which is probably worse for most of us.

[righthand]

100% agree, and to add it can be tough sometimes to walk away from a cool project. I had worked on a project building scientific trial software, an app to review 3D lung scans, and an ML model to detect lesions in lung scans. It was really empowering, but after the first scientific trial the customer stopped paying their bills and ended up in back payment of $1M. My boss closed the project which sucked but it ultimately cost the company and people’s jobs. Just not worth interacting with bad people if they stop the agreement. There is most likely more money later but there is also money that is on time with other customers.

[the_snooze]

A professional knows what they're worth and what they need to deliver. On-time payment according on an agreed-upon schedule is table stakes. That's the most fundamental requirement. Nothing happens without that.

[brobdingnagians]

So true. And I'll add, no matter how trustworthy you believe the other party to be based on reptutation, relationships, or otherwise-- they should understand requiring assurances. The worst backstabs are from the people you know and who should know better. And a lot of people will justify it to themselves if they get in trouble. They will continue telling themselves that they are fundamentally good people and it just didn't work out as they rip you off for a lot of money. If they say the equivalent of "why don't you trust me?" that's a red flag.

[moduspol]

And also: political organizations and churches always must pay up front.

[TravelTechGuy]

Agreed. Another important lesson I learned when delivering code to a non-profit org, and them asking me to convert my final invoices into "donations" to the org.

[awongh]

I feel like it's easy in hindsight to say some tough sounding advice in the form of "be a hard-ass", but idk, I feel like there are plenty of real life cases that contradict this advice- taking a chance on a referral to work on something you find interesting. Of course the big-money clients will be fine with a hard-line stance and they have money to pay at the end, but that work tends to be less interesting.

OTOH, one other clear subtext of the story is the "savior" attitude of a lot of tech people, who think that, if they weren't using version control before, think, "oh, I'll just tell them about this great thing, and because it's much better they will definitely listen to me and implement it - it's only logical". But the harsh reality is that "better" things won't affect an org that went along that far and dug themselves that deep.

Never underestimate an org's ability to shoot itself in the foot, even if you think you know better. That includes getting your money from them.

[ivraatiems]

I guarantee you that if OP said, sorry, do this or I am going home, they would have done what needed to be done. Both in terms of payment, and in terms of getting their software and hardware houses in order.

It might have involved OP getting a taxi to the airport and being chased down at the gate, but it would have worked.

And even if it didn't, they would have saved themselves enormous time, money, and stress by following through on their threats if it didn't work out.

[ProllyInfamous]

>Be paid or don't work.

As an electrician currently self-stopped (for both non-payment & absenteeism, two months no contact, so far) I'm not budging. When you didn't show up for our last two on-site meetups (and still haven't contacted), I thought about filing a lien... but decided to just keep you from having tenants (by not finishing AC/water/electric). You'll get around to it..?

When I told this LLC/owner "you obviously aren't in a rush because you obviously aren't visiting the jobsite/me" I sort of expected him to show within a few days. Then a few weeks. And now we're entering a few months.

You have weeks of my punchlists (unresolved to do), I have weeks of questions (what do you want?) and you won't even do simple things like turning on power/water.

Fuck you, pay me.

[•] <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U>

[veunes]

This is all correct in principle, but in practice it's a lot messier

[nradov]

It doesn't have to be messy. A lot of the messiness is self inflicted by contractors who are desperate for work and would be better of just getting a regular employee job instead.

[notnaut]

I can imagine the type of work you do heavily influences the chance of begin paid during/before work finishes too…

[danesparza]

And for a rush job, don't be afraid to demand half the payment up front, or some other good-faith gesture on the client's part.

[01284a7e]

Your business is getting the money. Your business is not to fly around the world trying to engineer-mog the client. The OP has a bad ego.

"They don't even use version control..." Yeah? Get the money. The client are "carpetbaggers", yeah okay... get the money.

It's implied that they hired you because they need the help. But they also may have hired you because they need the help and you seem like a sucker they can stiff.

[gcr]

What if you’re a cofounder or founding engineer and the company hasn’t raised yet?

[jt2190]

Unlike in the article where a contractor was promised payment and no payment was made, the cofounder here knows already that the company can’t pay until they raise funds, and has planned for this accordingly, by living off of personal savings or contract jobs. They also understand the risk they’ve taken on and are comfortable trading their time for possibly zero returns.

[gcr]

Thank you. (FWIW it was an earnest question)

[jt2190]

You’re welcome!

Cofounders and founding engineers just don’t talk enough about how they model the financial risk of investing in a high risk asset like a startup, and how they make sure that they’re not taking on more risk than they can personally manage if things don’t work out. Approaches will vary by person and personal circumstances, so it’s also helpful to know what constraints they’re working with (like needing to house and feed their family).