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YMMV, but this is my experience so far: The your contract / their contract thing doesn't worry me, I've never had my own standard contract to begin with. Bigger clients usually have a standard contract, but it is negotiable to some extent. Some potential clients had two hundred page standard contracts where you're supposed to sign away the soul of your firstborn child, and even if those are largely unenforcable, I'm not going to sign it. (If the client isn't willing to budge on this, it'll just get worse later on) Small clients I could visit in person, I've worked with single page contracts and a hand shake, to no ill effect so far. I'm wary of small companies with big contracts, those tend to be the ones who take the first opportunity to screw you. Also, I am always up front about estimates, making it very clear that it might take longer or shorter, and the smallest group of tasks I'm willing to give estimates for is a single day's worth of work. If I had to confer with the client every time some piece of work slips a few hours, I'd never get to the actual work. Also, there might be significant overhead attached to any little task, or simply overhead that cannot be assigned to any particular task, such as keeping documentation and planning up to date, which is invisible to the client if the work is broken down into too many single tasks. For fixed deliverables, I give the client an estimate on the number of days it's gonna take, and we make a contract for that many days to work on the project, with the option to extend the contract at the same daily rate, should the need arise. If the client insists on the fixed deliverable being the subject of the contract, then it won't be a fixed sum of money or number of days; they can chose which way they want it, but can't have it both ways. |