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Poll: What Do You Hate About Contracting?

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Re: Poll: What Do You Hate About Contracting?

#51

Post by tptacek »

drewcrawford wrote: post #50
tptacek wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How big a problem is that variant of qualification, really ? Why don't you just approach these things as if there's no real business there? I may be jaded about this because so many of our bids are competitive, and even a simple bid takes a couple hours to put together. We win most of them, but you get used to sinking time into deals that don't pan out and build it into the process.

> How big a problem is that variant of qualification, really ? I think there's a little bit of culture shock going on here between our particular contracting fields. If you're doing enterprise-ish security contracting, you're not going to get an unemployed person in your lead pile by accident. I get three e-mails from unemployed people a week. I get 20+ leads a month from questionably-funded "startups". The number of…

Why do you entertain any of those projects? Why don't you just ask "is this a budgeted project? What is your allocated budget?"

(Seriously asking because I'm curious).

Re: Poll: What Do You Hate About Contracting?

#52

Post by gruseom »

orthecreedence wrote: post #21
gruseom wrote: post #3

Not owning the product and lack of creative control.

This was a big one for us too, which is why we did half and half. We contracted enough to get by, but also spent a lot of time working on our own projects on the side. What eventually happened though is the contract work slowly took over most of what we were doing. It's hard to strike a balance here.

I tried that too and found it useless. The product work got starved and ended up receiving far less than the half that was supposed to be its share. But I admit to sucking completely at divided focus.

Re: Poll: What Do You Hate About Contracting?

#53

Post by drewcrawford »

tptacek wrote: post #51
drewcrawford wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How big a problem is that variant of qualification, really ? I think there's a little bit of culture shock going on here between our particular contracting fields. If you're doing enterprise-ish security contracting, you're not going to get an unemployed person in your lead pile by accident. I get three e-mails from unemployed people a week. I get 20+ leads a month from questionably-funded "startups". The number of…

Why do you entertain any of those projects? Why don't you just ask "is this a budgeted project? What is your allocated budget?" (Seriously asking because I'm curious).

There are three reasons:

1) The sort of people who pass through the existing filters I have in place (I show some prices on the contact form) who have unfunded projects will claim that they are funded. The question has a shannon entropy of zero.

2) Everyone, funded or not, is cagey about the actual budget. In the iOS world, "funded" can mean anything from $500 to $500,000. If I say "So, what are you looking to spend?" they will reply "I'm not really sure what the project will cost, can you estimate it for me?" You get this line the same from a CEO or from an intern, from a bank manager or from an unemployed person calling on a payphone. If I say "Our average project cost is X", I am turning away some projects we could legitimately do for less than X with a very comfortable margin while accidentally dangling a carrot in front of a client who has a project that's really 3 * X. The former is an invisible cost, the latter may mean lots of time spent on useless estimates instead of actual billable work.

3) I used to have an e-mail autoresponder that would inquire about budgets, but on a typical day I started spending more time reading replies to my autoresponder than writing actual code. asking the question isn't scalable.

Re: Poll: What Do You Hate About Contracting?

#54

Post by aantix »

tptacek wrote: post #38
aantix wrote: post #28

The paperwork, namely creating detailed line-item invoices. That's why I created this gem, Big Bucks No Whammies, to automatically generate my invoices from my git commits. https://github.com/aantix/big_bucks_no_whammies Here's a sample invoice : https://github.com/aantix/big_bucks_no_whammies/blob/master/...

I'm not sure providing detailed line-item invoices like this is a win. How are you getting cornered into pricing on a commit-by-commit basis?

It's not a commit by commit basis. Time is tracked on a daily basis using a 3rd party program called Timesink. The directions are outlined on the gem's README. https://github.com/aantix/big_bucks_no_whammies

Re: Poll: What Do You Hate About Contracting?

#55

Post by cperciva »

tptacek wrote: post #39
cperciva wrote: post #12

Getting paid. I finish work; I send an invoice; I get an email back saying "thanks, we'll process this right away"; and I wait. A month later, I send another email and get told that it "slipped through the cracks" or "got lost", and a week later I get a check in the mail. I think I'm batting roughly a 50% average on getting paid without sending the "uh, where's my money" email. I always get paid eventually and withou…

Welcome to life in the big city. Your most lucrative clients are likely to end up being the biggest pain to handle receivables from. There's not a whole lot you can do about it, is there? It's usually not your direct contacts who have anything to do with it, so it harms the relationship to complain to them about it (they have better things to do). Tracking down the right person in accounting or purchasing to get thin…

It's not that I care about the time; I'm not so close to the margin that it really matters whether I get paid this month or next month.

The thing which annoys me is that I get paid promptly... after I nag. And it seems that 50% of the time, if I don't nag, I don't get paid at all. (I once had an invoice go unpaid for 6 months because I lost track of which ones were still outstanding. Invoices I sent to the same client in March, April, May, and June had been paid, but the invoice I sent in February hadn't.)

Re: Poll: What Do You Hate About Contracting?

#56

Post by cperciva »

phamilton wrote: post #43
cperciva wrote: post #12

Getting paid. I finish work; I send an invoice; I get an email back saying "thanks, we'll process this right away"; and I wait. A month later, I send another email and get told that it "slipped through the cracks" or "got lost", and a week later I get a check in the mail. I think I'm batting roughly a 50% average on getting paid without sending the "uh, where's my money" email. I always get paid eventually and withou…

In accounts receivable, the employee who gets work done quickly gets promoted. In accounts owed, the opposite is true.

... and the employee who "forgets" to pay invoices until he gets an email reminding him gets promoted even faster?

Re: Poll: What Do You Hate About Contracting?

#57

Post by cperciva »

aantix wrote: post #28

The paperwork, namely creating detailed line-item invoices. That's why I created this gem, Big Bucks No Whammies, to automatically generate my invoices from my git commits. https://github.com/aantix/big_bucks_no_whammies Here's a sample invoice : https://github.com/aantix/big_bucks_no_whammies/blob/master/...

Your clients ask for details invoices? I rarely get more detailed than consisting of " Software development @ = " and nobody has ever complained.

Re: Poll: What Do You Hate About Contracting?

#58

Post by jaz »

drewcrawford wrote: post #4

Source: I've run an iOS contracting company for the last three years. Here are some big problems: * Lead qualification. This is an enormous problem. Lots of people want revenue sharing deals, etc., and it takes too long to work out whether they're serious about the project and whether I'm the right fit. What do they do for a living? Is this a corporate or personal project? etc. * Client acquisition cost. Most of the…

On the slow client problem, how did you tighten up your business process to remedy this?

Re: Poll: What Do You Hate About Contracting?

#59

Post by thaumaturgy »

cperciva wrote: post #55
tptacek wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welcome to life in the big city. Your most lucrative clients are likely to end up being the biggest pain to handle receivables from. There's not a whole lot you can do about it, is there? It's usually not your direct contacts who have anything to do with it, so it harms the relationship to complain to them about it (they have better things to do). Tracking down the right person in accounting or purchasing to get thin…

It's not that I care about the time; I'm not so close to the margin that it really matters whether I get paid this month or next month. The thing which annoys me is that I get paid promptly... after I nag. And it seems that 50% of the time, if I don't nag, I don't get paid at all. (I once had an invoice go unpaid for 6 months because I lost track of which ones were still outstanding. Invoices I sent to the same clien…

The 6-month-old invoice aside, we've been running into many more cases since last November of clients "stretching" their invoices -- waiting until the due date before mailing it, waiting until we contact them, that sort of thing. Like you say, they're usually quick once we (politely and gently) ask again.

I've also been hearing of this from my other clients who are running their own businesses. It seems to be endemic at the moment.

Re: Poll: What Do You Hate About Contracting?

#60

Post by superkinz »

rpwilcox wrote: post #42
tptacek wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How big a problem is that variant of qualification, really ? Why don't you just approach these things as if there's no real business there? I may be jaded about this because so many of our bids are competitive, and even a simple bid takes a couple hours to put together. We win most of them, but you get used to sinking time into deals that don't pan out and build it into the process.

I have a policy in which I don't estimate jobs where my gut says will take more than 40 hours worth of work. Beyond that it's Agile style iteration work. I think this has two advantages: I don't put that much time into "no real business here" leads, or (if there is business there), there's no way I know the whole scope of a large project in one conversation.

That's interesting. So when you say that it's more than 40 hours (at least $X cost), do you still give a high end range or just say "we'll see how it goes?"
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