[tptacek]

There are worse things that can happen to you when you work without a contract than simply not getting paid. Contracts also set up liability and contract termination terms, and without that stuff in writing, you can end up in a he-said she-said situation over these issues.

You should always work under a contract. I have a hard time seeing why anyone wouldn't.

[fat0wl]

Eh, I appreciate the effort that is being put into this argument but the reality of it is that it's not for me. If I have to drive an hour to see my client or send a lot of things back & forth in the mail it's really just time wasted.

A good professional relationship & a couple of emails is all I need for freelance. If you're talking about a long-term high dollar amount thing then sure, I understand.

& the reason I don't use one is simple -- I have an hourly rate. Whatever contract we come up with would look like this: "__ is my hourly rate. You will pay __ times the number of hours I worked." This has long been established since the first 1 or 2 interactions with any client and I think is obvious for any hourly service worker. Within the tech industry this is even standard for a lot of corporate consultants (I happen to be one).

For freelance, I provide work estimates but things change. All the comments I see on this thread are like "write a change order for each change, make sure you keep a record of scope". No thanks, not for me. I just give estimates, tell the client when we're going over-budget. If they seem concerned we can talk about it if they say "Keep going no worries" then I keep going, no worries.

I'm not at all saying that contracts aren't useful, it's just that the tech industry is really fast-paced and often involves remote work. If you're really concerned about stuff getting ugly, ask for a contract, sure. But I would do contract with 50% deposit because who actually wants to deal with going to court. At least you'd have 50% to sit on & think.

To each his own but I'm a programmer not a businessman. I net way more money streamlining my coding process than I do thinking about stuff like this.

[larrys]

"but I'm a programmer not a businessman"

Actually don't short change yourself just because you might not have gone to "business" school. (Did you?)

For example:

"If I have to drive an hour to see my client or send a lot of things back & forth in the mail it's really just time wasted."

Which makes a lot of sense. You have to factor in the pros and cons of all of this which you are clearly doing. What do I stand to gain? What do I stand to lose?

"I just give estimates, tell the client when we're going over-budget."

Exactly. State the framework "$x per hour" and keep them informed of any changes. Super easy to do with email as well. Communicate. I would also argue that getting people to sign things each and every time will get you less revenue because it gives them an opportunity to focus on the dollar to much. Once again, depending on the dollar amount and who you are dealing with. All situations are different.

[fat0wl]

heh thanks for your vote of confidence... I've been getting a lot of flack on this thread for apparently having a controversial view but it's something I've reached through years of freelance in NYC & long-term contract work with a couple of major corporations. No business school, just easy-come-easy-go focus-on-the-bigger-picture engineering gigs.

I say I'm not a businessman not because I don't do business, but because I just try to keep my focus on my skills that are actually generating revenue. In the end we're all at the will of the market and my personal belief is that the more pressing need is to understand those ebbs and flows rather than trying to build a safe-room. Chomsky I think said something about how 9/11 couldn't be a conspiracy because it would involve too many irrational actors working in concert. We must assume man to be rational. Kindof a non-sequitur, I know, but I approach business with this attitude. Assume you are dealing with rational actors, be a good judge of character (don't do a ton of work on spec for a business that is clearly failing, for example), and ride the wave. With this approach, the potential for gains is great and the losses are there but can easily be left in the rear-view mirror. Otherwise you will spend your week working and your weekends doing pro-bono bookkeeping for your own ventures. Seems we are very much in agreement here, hah.

[mechanical_fish]

Assume you are dealing with rational actors, be a good judge of character…

You work for corporations, right?

It's never a good idea to bet big money that a human being who is rational and classy today will remain so for months or years in the future. (After you've lived with a few Alzheimer's patients, you'll know what I'm talking about.) But corporations aren't even human. Their character is literally for sale. The honest and rational person you worked for on Monday could be bought out and replaced by a knuckle-dragging troll before the week is out.

Seven years from now, when one of your customers has been acquired by some new company that has never heard of you, and that new company's East Texas-based law firm decides to make some easy money by sending out letters like this:

"We had a software problem last month that we believe cost us $1 million and which we traced to a line of code that you committed eight years ago. Would you like to pay us $200k, or defend our incipient lawsuit?"

What are you gonna do? My plan is to take the problem to my lawyer, who will say: "Can you give me a copy of the signed contract that, together with an hour of my time, will make this problem go away forever?" And I will say: "Yes".

And it's not like this contract took months of my time to create. If you're not picky, you call up a lawyer, you say "I need a boilerplate consulting contract," they pull one out of the files and hand it to you.

[fat0wl]

I work for corporations through a consulting firm. Most won't let you deal with them directly. But I get a paycheck every 2 weeks, I can't really see them being able to take that away from me retroactively...

But trust me the corporations (the one I work for is an international electronics manufacturer) are very polite and respectful and very much understand the realities of risk/reward, and that you have to spend money to make money. And they all have an army of QA engineers double-checking work because they will not allow $1 million dollars of business to be dependent on a single point of failure. Even if they bring you to court (they never would) I'd assume its VERY difficult to get compensation. If you hire an employee and he does a bad job, do you get to sue him for damaging your profit margins? Hell no, you just get to fire him and hire a new guy. If everyone were legally on the hook for the work they produced, it would be like assuming that everyone you ever hire is required to be omniscient. The reality is, you can't hire someone with a 50 IQ and then sue them because you believe one of their lines of code hurt your profitability. It's your fault for hiring them.

I gotta say a lot of these responses I'm getting are very paranoid. When a company pays you for work it's really hard for them to take that away from you. The most that's ever really at stake is your current paycheck and not even that really because the department of labor is VERY harsh on reputable employers who deny paychecks.

It seems like your point is more of a fantasy scenario where they give you a billion dollars & 5 years of unsupervised time to design a huge blackbox program that has to do X, then find out it doesn't do X. The software industry is simply not like this. All tasks are broken up into discrete components and if you're not doing a good job they'll fire you and bring in a new team to finish the job.

The ONLY way I've actually heard of an employee losing $$ is when they have a long-term employment agreement and they break it. It's kindof like an athlete signing a 10-year deal & walking off the field after 6 months. Then, yes, you're liable.

Otherwise being a paid consultant is pretty much the same thing as being an employee. Also, I doubt that companies will sign some "boilerplate contract" that absolves you of all liability. They'd rather hire someone who is more confident. That's not a dig, I really mean that sincerely. Over-negotiating and specifying a bunch of "unrealistic-covering-my-ass-terms" can come off as amateur.

[tptacek]

To add to this: I would guess that the majority of our contracts are boilerplate, and executing them involves no additional legal expense.

[larrys]

Side note from when I was in the printing industry and handled forms and contracts..

You stand a better chance of getting something agreed to (in some contracts) if you are using a pre-printed form with fill in the blanks or a form that appears to be a "standard" form. (Like a lease etc.)

A "standard" form is more likely (once again by certain parties) to just get signed and not questioned because it appears to be "the way things are done". Presenting someone with a 10 page microsoft word document screams "shit I'd better read this".

Car dealers do this as well. They have forms where the have pre-printed in the gotcha fees (title transfer etc.) as if to say "hey this is the way it's done and everyone is charged that way".

[tptacek]

I don't write fiddly "change orders" either. I still work under a contract!