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What being ripped off taught me

belief.horse

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101–110 of 247 posts

Re: What being ripped off taught me

#101

Post by veunes »

apt-apt-apt-apt wrote: post #40

Sometimes you just have to get scammed to be able to recognize scams. Seems obvious to outsiders, but can be hard to see when you're in it. Some favorites: - No way they would actually screw me over! We're buds/they got me tiger balm/they paid some/I did them a solid - Thin veneer of safe fallbacks that doesn't hold up under scrutiny. Legal or other 'repercussions' - Endless delays and excuses (though it's usually to…

Yeah, a lot of it only becomes obvious in hindsight because each individual signal is easy to rationalize away

Re: What being ripped off taught me

#102

Post by gcr »

wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #11

Be paid or don't work. I am so deadly serious - do not continue working if your invoices are late. You don't have to be a jerk about it, just explain to your primary contact that you need to be paid and you pick up tools again when the money has arrived. BUT it is on YOU to properly negotiate reasonable payment terms. And if you don;t know or don't trust the client then require payment in advance until a stronger com…

What if you’re a cofounder or founding engineer and the company hasn’t raised yet?

Re: What being ripped off taught me

#103

Post by Aurornis »

InMice wrote: post #17

> I missed the month of May with my 2-year-old kid. My wife cared for a 2-year-old alone. The weirdest part to me, receive a call and just get up and go? Priorities? Did you write this blog post from the doghouse?

> The weirdest part to me, receive a call and just get up and go? Priorities?

The author does contracting in niche topics. When your contracting domain is uncommon you have to go where the work is.

You can charge higher prices for niche work and therefore tolerate more time in between contracts. This person may be spending more time not working and with his family than the typical FTE in this arrangement, even if the jobs occasionally require them to fly somewhere for a month.

Re: What being ripped off taught me

#104

Post by Aurornis »

Good lessons in here, but the part about giving up on legal action because they told him they’d dissolve the entity is questionable. This is where it pays to have a good relationship with a lawyer who will be up front about your chances and the cost of legal action. The sum discussed falls into the difficult range where it could take enough hours to try to collect that you’d be worse off than where you started if the lawyer can’t deliver anything.

However them dissolving the entity and moving their assets and IP around is also not free and will incur overhead, if they actually did it.

Threatening to dissolve the entity seemingly admits that they do have something worth collecting against. In my experience the companies who run out of money just tell you that they’re out of money and they also start losing key employees and your email contacts because they’re not getting paid either. If the company continues to exist and they’re threatening you to not sue, that might be a sign that they do have the money but they’re relying on intimidating contractors to not try collecting it.

Legal action is not free, so all of this has to be weighed.

EDIT: I should explain how I know this. Younger me took a job with a startup that got in over its head with spending but the CEO didn’t want the party to stop. His strategy was to stop paying any vendors and use the remaining cash flow to only pay past invoices for vendors that we needed something from (more work, more product) or anyone who looked like they were going to sue us. If someone got lawyers involved, they got paid. Needless to say I didn’t keep that job very long.

Re: What being ripped off taught me

#105

Post by brabel »

magicalhippo wrote: post #14
wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #11

Be paid or don't work. I am so deadly serious - do not continue working if your invoices are late. You don't have to be a jerk about it, just explain to your primary contact that you need to be paid and you pick up tools again when the money has arrived. BUT it is on YOU to properly negotiate reasonable payment terms. And if you don;t know or don't trust the client then require payment in advance until a stronger com…

> Do not be afraid to lose business from companies that are squeamish about paying you - in fact actively avoid such companies. My boss said that the ones who have negotiated the best deals are the ones that are late paying, complain about just about every bill and will write angry letters when my boss index adjust pricing. He said it taught him to never offer a really good deal for a regular customer (ie where the u…

Where I live the phone companies do this: you can get a discount every year by calling them and saying you will change companies unless they give you a better price. They always do and the only people paying normal prices are the ones who can’t be bothered to call them every year to request the discount!

Re: What being ripped off taught me

#106

Post by alsetmusic »

The page is actively hostile to me using reader mode on my phone. It keeps resetting my scroll progress to the top of the article. This is the second time I’ve run into this (first was within the last two weeks).

I hope this is a bug in my phone’s handling of something and not intentional. Until I know otherwise, I’m treating sites where this happens as deliberately hostile for the same reason as always: ads. I use reader mode to escape ads that my ad blockers miss but also to avoid poor design or hard to read fonts and the like. My response is the same as ever: I closed the article.

Re: What being ripped off taught me

#107

Post by jt2190 »

gcr wrote: post #102
wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #11

Be paid or don't work. I am so deadly serious - do not continue working if your invoices are late. You don't have to be a jerk about it, just explain to your primary contact that you need to be paid and you pick up tools again when the money has arrived. BUT it is on YOU to properly negotiate reasonable payment terms. And if you don;t know or don't trust the client then require payment in advance until a stronger com…

What if you’re a cofounder or founding engineer and the company hasn’t raised yet?

Unlike in the article where a contractor was promised payment and no payment was made, the cofounder here knows already that the company can’t pay until they raise funds, and has planned for this accordingly, by living off of personal savings or contract jobs. They also understand the risk they’ve taken on and are comfortable trading their time for possibly zero returns.

Re: What being ripped off taught me

#108

Post by uxcolumbo »

Your blog is a treasure trove - thanks for sharing.

Do you still cut your own hair ;) ?

But yes us folks in the creative world can learn a few things from the corporate world when it comes to contracts and payment schedules. Mike Monteiro's talk 'F*ck you, pay me' comes to mind.

---

https://www.mikemonteiro.com/

https://creativemornings.com/talks/mike-monteiro--2/1

Re: What being ripped off taught me

#109

Post by notquitebuddy »

freediddy wrote: post #84
notquitebuddy wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot the middleground where there are thousands of laid off people who can do your exact job and undercut you etc. These founders hire/fire through hundreds of us, they don't give a shit. If you say 1 thing they don't like they go to the next.

That's not the middle ground. That's the other extreme, where people are desperate for work so they will say they can do anything in order to get work.

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Re: What being ripped off taught me

#110

Post by theredones »

dangus wrote: post #81

OP wasn't ripped off, OP just forgot to define their contract. Like, entirely. Nobody forced OP to work 11-14 hour days. Contracting 101 stipulates that you define your hours ahead of time. You come in, you provide your expertise, and you leave at the end of the day. Let the client's junior employees work long hours. Not your problem. OP brought their own equipment, which is totally fine but "who provides equipment"…

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