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My customer wants me to record a video of how I develop his software product

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Re: My customer wants me to record a video of how I develop his software product

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FFMPEG is the key, here: http://superuser.com/questions/343955/converting-images-to-v...

Ooh, shiny. I had been using MonkeyJam, which has no CLI and an annoying user interface. Out of curiosity, using ffmpeg, do you know how one would both combine a series of still images and add an audio track to it?

two steps: once to create the video; twice to mux the audio in. ffmpeg can do both, possibly in one step, but start here.

Re: My customer wants me to record a video of how I develop his software product

#162
post #88
post #44

This is something I actually offer to my clients, and I do it for fun. I guess I was inspired by watching some of Notch's screencaps over a few days. So I capture it with RecordMyDesktop (I run xubuntu), and run through an ffmpeg script ( https://github.com/choptastic/watchmecode ) that resizes the video to be the same length as an MP3, and makes an X minute screencap montage for the client. Then it produces somethin…

ODesk have time tracking software. This system makes screenshot every minute I guess. It's very helps when you working with new developers. And you want to know for sure that he works on your project.

I've used oDesk as well and although I feel the feature is useful it also feels very invasive. Not knowing what it will capture (looking up something on SO, checking email, writing code) has caused me to have to delete a 10 minute time slice on multiple occasions just to avoid sharing a picture of my email index or similar.

Re: My customer wants me to record a video of how I develop his software product

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happiness isn't the only thing we care about. With enough money, I'd start thinking about optimizing the world, or at least give something to the most efficient charities out there.

With enough money, I would do the same. With too much money (say in the billion range) I think I would go all well-intentioned super villain on the world.

Seriously, if you're careful enough, that could be a good thing.

Re: My customer wants me to record a video of how I develop his software product

#164
post #138
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is always some amount of money BS. Happiness as a function of wealth is not a linear curve. After the first few millions, a hundred millions or a billion isn't that a big deal. Therefore, if the price to justify some headache or discomfort is above a million or so, just getting rid of the headache is more valuable.

Hundreds of millions is two orders of magnitude more money than "the first few millions." To me that seems pretty significant. And even more so when you factor in how many more things (or even classes of things) you can buy with $10E8 vs. $10E6.

There's nothing I want to buy that a few million won't cover.

Re: My customer wants me to record a video of how I develop his software product

#165
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd definitely accept toilet jobs for $5,000/hour, then subcontract out to a plumber for their going rate, and pocket the difference. IMO a bad example.

Yes, but what if they demanded that you do it, personally. While wearing a French maid costume.

$10k per hour, $20k if they want anal.

Re: My customer wants me to record a video of how I develop his software product

#166
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With $50k on the line, you collect upfront.

And then they'll sue you after the work is done to get it back. I don't think it's worth it.

If the contract is tight, let em sue. Big companies get sued all the time. Who cares.

Re: My customer wants me to record a video of how I develop his software product

#167
Experience says the only solution to a situation like this is to fire the customer and likely refund any money taken already, no matter how much sunk cost you have.

Long-term, purging yourself of a toxic customer is at least as valuable as gaining a new one. For added points, direct him to your competition.

Re: My customer wants me to record a video of how I develop his software product

#168
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to give them one attempt at education as to why software development isn't off-the-shelf if it seemed reasonable that they might simply be new to that sort of project. In practice, though, it was almost always the case that they were simply being unrealistic and hoping to find someone new / desperate who would give them more than what they paid for.

How well do those projects go? I've had bids rejected for being too high, even when other developers failed to deliver due to underbidding. Some people never learn.

In a couple of cases, it went well – there are people who genuinely appreciate being educated about what they as a businessperson need to know about approaching software dev. Sadly, it's a definitely not a high success rate: if you don't get an impression that the conversation is going well, there's probably a good reason for that.

Re: My customer wants me to record a video of how I develop his software product

#169

In this case, it's probably a good idea to fire the customer. These types of outrageous requests don't exist in a vacuum. People like this are very difficult to deal with, tend to be very miserly, and will be a non-stop headache. The customer will question everything you do, why you did certain things a certain way (even if he or she has no idea what they are talking about), etc. Drop kick this customer from your lif…

It may be a difficult client, but I can also see someone doing this out of curiosity: would it work? In a freelance relationship that is just beginning, there is not much to lose.

Historically computers have made micromanagement easier. Think about company vehicles being tracked by GPS. It also enables managers to manage more people more effectively, have a flatter organisational structure. IT people are doing this to others, there is no reason to expect it wouldn't happen to us :)

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