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I regret my website redesign

mtlynch.io

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Re: I regret my website redesign

#162

Post by runnerup »

philliphaydon wrote: post #108
runnerup wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is universally true. Developers (myself included) often just do what they want regardless of what they're told and in a consultancy it has to be billed somewhere. Here, a client was cost a lot of money. But it might not have been directed by a manager! At large corps like MSFT and APPL, this behavior is often lauded by the hacker community because it leads to wonderful things like PowerToys and Gra…

> Developers (myself included) often just do what they want regardless of what they're told I don't believe this is true for adhoc work. There's often pressure to get a job done under time under budget to maximize profit. It's one reason I much prefer working for a service based company as there IS room to do what you want and push boundries.

I did it plenty when I was working as part of a contracting house where “every hour is billed to a client”. There’s plenty of room to spend time making crazy tools to automate your work or provide internal/external/personal value.

Sometimes these rogue gambits pay off and return multiples of value…sometimes they just waste massive time.

But I can say that I was absolutely a rogue project-doer in an engineering body shop.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#164

Post by saiojd »

RugnirViking wrote: post #22

For what it's worth, the new site does look a lot better. A good read, might come in handy to avoid similar mistakes in the future. Key takeaway I think is the one about avoiding being somebody's smallest client if you can

I agree. In particular the logo is truly excellent, IMO. It feels like the devs know what they are doing but are interested in producing quality, not in budgeting for OP. Meanwhile the management didn't care about squeezing him.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#165

Post by mtlynch »

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #122
mtlynch wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for reading! I have a different philosophy when it comes to hiring in that I assume the people working with me are honest and they're motivated to do their jobs well. I'm paying for their time, and I assume they'll use their time effectively. If they can't use their time effectively, I terminate the hire, but I don't try to fix it with different policies. I agree that there are payment schemes that will cause…

You're getting a little beat up here...I'm not piling on, I am actually interested, because I need to reinforce my skill in this area, do you have any learning to share about how to better assess the character/ethics of whom you are selecting? I do appreciate your honest assessment of your project. One of my investors is pushing me to build a team of outsourced workers; it seems suboptimal to me to say the least. I f…

Thanks for reading!

>do you have any learning to share about how to better assess the character/ethics of whom you are selecting?

I don't try to assess character because I don't think you can effectively. And I know others disagree with me here, but I don't think the agency I hired was lacking in character or behaving dishonestly.

At the end of the day, if I'm hiring someone for $100/hr, they need to produce output that's worth >$100/hr to me. I'm a developer, and I have a sense of how long things would take me. I hire other freelance developers, so I see how long tasks take them relative to their rate. So if someone is charging a high rate but delivering work very slowly, I'd let them go, regardless of whether that's their real speed or if they're padding their numbers.

My typical strategy is to just hire and fire quickly. I don't do interviews, and I just hire someone for a small job (5-10 hours) and see how they do. If they do well, I give them a larger task and then keep going up after a few weeks. I wrote a bit more about my hiring process a different post:

https://mtlynch.io/freelancer-guidelines/

Re: I regret my website redesign

#168

Post by dangus »

mtlynch wrote: post #3

Author here. Happy to take any feedback or answer any questions about this post.

I wonder if you considered whether this agency pulls this exact playbook intentionally and repeatedly?

I don't think they are made up of honest people in the first place.

My personal guess is that this is a perfected game that they play with all their customers:

1. Give a reasonable quote

2. Start the project on a reasonably productive cadence

3. Scope creep, deliver items that are outside of what the customer wanted but proves work is being done. Withhold any deliverables that would end the project.

4. Repeat step 3 until the customer gets fed up

5. Customer terminates the contract, quickly finish the deliverables in the 30 days and wrap it up with a nice bow to reduce the chance of getting sued. Customer got what they wanted – sure, it was over-budget, but we delivered!

This company played you, and it was difficult to read the article because of how I wanted to tell you to stop being so forgiving to them through each step of the process. I think there is a time and a place to be a demanding customer.

I am shocked you had a "postmortem" with Isaac, and that you even said that Isaac was candid! I absolutely disagree: all he had for you was excuses and bullshit. Isaac's kindness, to me, all seems like part of the plan. He's there to make it look like they gave it an honest try.

I don't know why you aren't at your lawyer's office writing some sternly worded letters.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#169

Post by latortuga »

deltarholamda wrote: post #89

You know how, during a big programming project, you have to keep the devs from going "this codebase has a lot of technical debt, let's rebuild the whole thing using Rust and Kubernetes and Deno and move the hosting to Azure and switch databases and use microservices and..."? Designers are exactly the same way. Just as technical fiddling is fun and interesting, making new designs from scratch is just as fun and intere…

I was ready to fire the agency the moment the author mentioned they were going off script and building whatever they wanted. This was a huge, blinking red flag for me. Why would you keep paying someone when they're doing work you didn't ask for, doing work that doesn't align with your goals, and ignoring what you say?
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