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I regret my website redesign

mtlynch.io

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Re: I regret my website redesign

#751

Post by cool_scatter »

2143 wrote: post #742
suction wrote: post #741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I should have said "as a person being used to German standards of doing business", would that have made you less defensive?

> would that have made you less defensive? Loaded question fallacy [1]. Can't say yes or no without putting myself in a bad light. I know I was the one who brought it up (and I'm sorry), but I won't make further comments about the "German standards of doing business", because I suspect it'll not lead to any productive discussion. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question

Is this how you talk to people in real life?

Re: I regret my website redesign

#752

Post by zmix »

2143 wrote: post #733
suction wrote: post #666

As a German person, this and so many other stories about customer - business relations gone awry or lost in miscommunication, I sometimes want to scream at the monitor, "why the hell wouldn't you get that in writing???" The same goes for many work situations where the boss suddenly lowers the pay or fires someone for not filling in last minute for another employee calling in sick on a weekend. How is that possible? D…

> As a German person It's not about anybody's nationality. If one does good work, one does good work. In any country, there's always going to be lots of smart people and lots of not-so-smart people. Big screw ups happen everywhere, even in Germany [1]. > Don't you Americans value written contracts? Americans value written contacts. A lot of things do go according to plan in America (as well as Germany I hope). [1] ht…

>> As a German person

> It's not about anybody's nationality.

I don't think 'suction' wanted to imply it'd be about nationality, but rather about culture. Germans are known to be very orderly and doing business with Germans often becomes very (!) contractual. And they will happily slap you the contract around your ears, should you miss/neglect the one or other point, that has been written down.

Source: I am from Germany and knew people, who did business with Germans, and that's exactly what they said.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#753

Post by TheCapn »

zmix wrote: post #728
TheCapn wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The reality is, small jobs like this are effectively make-work projects for an agency. They typically don't pay enough to be an effective use of time for the agency, but are a way to stay in the black between higher value projects. Small customers become "nuisance" customers as soon as a something better is landed. The team members being swapped out as they are needed elsewhere and newly joining team members then ne…

Why not have a sister company/branch for the small clients? One they grow, you'd be able to transfer them to the big block?

Yeah, I like the suggestion, I'll preface in saying I'm not in a "Decision Maker" position at my company though so ideas are only so good.

Ultimately it's a management issue. Internally among the techs/engineers we've talked about it but management keeps pushing to satisfy the client and the temporary compromises we make at one moment start to become permanent mainstays of how we operate. I don't have any confidence that if we had a "B-Team" or "Sub-branch" that when a big enough project came along they wouldn't just poach the needed labour and destroy the separation between them.

You could almost say we operate with an "A-Team" and "B-Team" as we have techs split primarily between the Mining and Agricultural clients but they take our techs often from the Agricultural side to fill in on needs of the mining side. There's no shame.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#754

Post by tomaskafka »

TheCapn wrote: post #386
level wrote: post #172

I recently left a boutique agency of 5 years and I can definitely resonate with this one. Our agency aimed to catch big fish, and we did, but since they are hard to land we'd pick up small jobs in the meantime, just like the project that you're describing here. In my perspective, this isn't someone deliberately ripping you off. I imagine they intended to ship at the cost they quoted, but the team didn't adjust their…

>The reality is, small jobs like this are effectively make-work projects for an agency. They typically don't pay enough to be an effective use of time for the agency, but are a way to stay in the black between higher value projects. Small customers become "nuisance" customers as soon as a something better is landed. The team members being swapped out as they are needed elsewhere and newly joining team members then ne…

> Eventually they all grow to realize the same thing: the controls part is crucial enough to the business that it needs to be brought in house.

I think that creates a narrow operating area for almost all agencies - they need to operate in a narrow gap between "work that isn't valuable enough, so nobody pays for it" and "work that is so important for the business, that they bring it in house".

And you get to play outside this envelope only by finding clients so slow that it takes them years to realize they need an in house team. Now you have a different problem - working for a slow client doesn't push you to get much better.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#755

Post by einpoklum »

cozos wrote: post #705
einpoklum wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a lot of technical debt ... let's rebuild the whole thing using Rust and Kubernetes and Deno and move the hosting to Azure etc. For me, I'm the dev who says: "This codebase has a lot of technical debt. Let's get rid of all of the containers and VMs and kubernetes and artificial servicification, take it off the cloud, and refactor it into smaller programs which do the work efficiently and which can be built and run…

> which can be built and run on basically any machine(s) So like containers?

Uh... no. Try: Build configuration and dependency management tools.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#756

Post by __derek__ »

mtlynch wrote: post #562
__derek__ wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ability to write a bad review that's upvoted and read on HN.

If they thought I had a wide reach with my blog, why wouldn't they do good work from the start? My other blog posts about freelancers [0, 1] are to say that they did a good job and other people should hire them, so I'd imagine if they were thinking about the writeup, they'd want it to put more effort into making sure it's positive. [0] https://mtlynch.io/how-to-hire-a-cartoonist/ [1] https://mtlynch.io/editor/

The sibling comment captured what I would have written, so I'll just note that this submission has ~10x more points/comments than the one about having a positive experience hiring an editor.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#757

Post by XCSme »

I hired someone to create a basic one-page landing page on WordPress, my suggestion was: buy any theme and just change the logo/text/colors. Three months later, they just published a page that only has the hero section and an empty footer...

The problem: there was no deadline imposed and payment was done per month.

Solution: Define a VERY STRICT scope/tasks list and (short) deadline. If the deadline feels too short, reduce the scope instead of extending the deadline.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#758

Post by queuebert »

solardev wrote: post #128
queuebert wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I liked your original design. Simpler, to the point, and lower contrast so my eyes don't bleed. Also I am utterly floored at how long programming a web page takes even for these "professionals". Yet another profession that pays way better for way less work than mine (scientist).

> Also I am utterly floored at how long programming a web page takes even for these "professionals". Yet another profession that pays way better for way less work than mine (scientist). Opinion from a web dev who has great respect for scientists: Our work isn't easy, but what you're seeing here is less reflective of the difficulty of the task than the insane variability in web dev pricing. This same body of work from…

What an excellent amendment to my comment, thank you for this.

I think your last two paragraphs comprise one of the most succinct and on point descriptions of the current major pathology that I've seen.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#759

Post by astura »

suction wrote: post #666

As a German person, this and so many other stories about customer - business relations gone awry or lost in miscommunication, I sometimes want to scream at the monitor, "why the hell wouldn't you get that in writing???" The same goes for many work situations where the boss suddenly lowers the pay or fires someone for not filling in last minute for another employee calling in sick on a weekend. How is that possible? D…

>work situations ... Don't you Americans value written contracts?

No, certainly not for employment.

Employment in the US is, by in large, "at will." This means either the employer or the employee can terminate the relationship for any [non-illegal] reason or no reason at all. Literally at any time.

In practice this means the employee just has to deal with the whims of the employer.

Re: I regret my website redesign

#760

Post by suction »

2143 wrote: post #742
suction wrote: post #741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I should have said "as a person being used to German standards of doing business", would that have made you less defensive?

> would that have made you less defensive? Loaded question fallacy [1]. Can't say yes or no without putting myself in a bad light. I know I was the one who brought it up (and I'm sorry), but I won't make further comments about the "German standards of doing business", because I suspect it'll not lead to any productive discussion. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question

OK, apology accepted. To address your url, I am not sure how the disastrous execution of the Berlin airport construction is a counterpoint to my claim that there is very little legal work going on here (and surely other EU countries) without detailed, written contracts. Whoever was at least partly responsible for the Berlin problems was or will be sued, be penalised, and have to suffer the consequences of their mistakes or shortcomings. Because whoever worked on it had to sign binding contracts. This isn't the wild west, after all.
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