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A french freelancer's nightmare

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Re: A french freelancer's nightmare

#11
post #6
post #3

It kind of sounds like this guy took an agreed upon amount of money to do a project and then kept trying to charge more and more for it while only sort of working on it, and then just bailing and never delivering the final product. I'm not sure what he did deliver but it sounds more like he owes the company all the money he has been paid so far since he didn't deliver the product. I mean really the nightmare of this…

That's a bit harsh. Granted I bailed at the end because of exhaustion and I didn't reach the expected goals. And sure the company did some gestures over those 7 months that were in my favor. I totally understand the decision to withheld the money of the hours of work done those past couple of months since the project is not delivered (I would probably do the same myself). But you got to agree those hours of work dese…

Did you ask them that you planned to clean the code before hand? Take the case of the company: they must be thinking something like "this guy decides to clean the code and this delays the project for ages". If you are freelancing (I am not, so take this with a grain of salt), isn't the best strategy to deliver first?

Having say that, I know how terrible it is to work on some crappy legacy code and can certainly understand your decision. Good luck!

Re: A french freelancer's nightmare

#12
FWIW, when you want to quit a job in France and you agreed with your company (the hard part;) ), you can leave and get unemployment benefits.

That said, burnout + having to look for a place in Paris without steady employment, it must have been hard.

Re: A french freelancer's nightmare

#13
Having done a bit a of freelancing, to me it just sound that at some point in that project you should just have cut your loss and move out of it.

Being a freelancer you get 2 big advantages, you can choose when you take holidays, and you can choose what project you want to work on (it seems to me you failed at taking advantages of either one). Maybe you should have been more direct and say I'm going to take a week off and your project will wait.

What you describe look to me as a typical inexperienced freelancer (don't take it the wrong way, we are all inexperienced when we start) agreeing on deadlines that can't be done, without a good team, and without taking the steps to get a better communication around this company, (your were the lead if I am not mistaken).

You have a lot to think about, a lot to learn from it, try to think at each point of failure and what you would have do different!

But I will agree with the some of the guys here, since this post clearly put you in a bad light, I would not have post it, I would personally remove it.

Re: A french freelancer's nightmare

#15
I can't read this without signing into google. While I know a lot of people would think that's not a big deal, it really irks me having to sign in just to read a blog post, or whatever.

I wish this site had a rule that content behind a login- or pay-wall wasn't allowed.

Re: A french freelancer's nightmare

#17
post #15

I can't read this without signing into google. While I know a lot of people would think that's not a big deal, it really irks me having to sign in just to read a blog post, or whatever. I wish this site had a rule that content behind a login- or pay-wall wasn't allowed.

At the time of my previous comment, 3h ago, it was freely available (I always access Google in incognito mode).
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