Ask HN: What Do I Do if a Client Refuses to Pay?

I contract for a company that took on a client project that has ended up severely over-budget and over-schedule. The short version of events is that the timeline was quoted assuming 3 developers, but one left a few days in and the other lied on her resume and sucked at everything, including straight content entry - leaving just me to do all the work in a timeline meant for 3 devs. No one else was hired until the past 2 weeks.

Understandably, the client has not paid the company I work for since the start of the project. Meanwhile I've been averaging 80 hour weeks trying to get things done in a rush. I took no holidays, a single sick day, and have completely lost my entire summer to this project.

When it was clear we weren't going to make the second deadline, I started capping my invoices at 40 hours per week instead of the actual time I was working on the project so as not to bleed the company. Soon after that, they began skipping pay days (for me only), or only paying partial amounts.

The company now owes me more than $10,000, my wife is rightly on my case about the whole thing, and they don't seem ready or willing to pay any of the outstanding amount.

Two new people have been hired in the past 2 weeks to help finish this project and handle other work that I literally haven't had time to do on this schedule. One of those people has both tech and management experience and has truly helped me fix the final parts of the project into an actionable plan that the three of us can complete quickly.

I've met with my manager and owner of the company on three separate occasions and I've always come out feeling like they listened and the financial situation would be taken care of. Each time I find myself grabbing my own ankles on pay day again.

So I ask HN - what would you do? I need to fix things, preferably without losing that money (we're broke now).

You work for the company, not the client. The fact that they haven't been paid should be irrelevant to whether you are paid or not.

If this company is living hand-to-mouth for payroll, are they going to be around for a while, anyway?

Honestly, capping your invoices and continuing to work without being paid only enables them to be shitheels.

You need to tell them that you will resign unless you're paid, in full, immediately.

I would also consider talking to a lawyer.

(Please don't take any of this as criticism -- I've been in your place before!)

I'm going to be brutally honest. You have 2 options: lawyer up and sue to get your money or walk away and treat this as a very expensive lesson learned.

Lessons for next time: 1. Never cap invoices. Instead, cap your work. If there's 80 hours of work, and the company is only willing to pay for 40, guess what? You should only do 40 hours of work (and bill for it).

2. Don't worry about bleeding the company. What's the worst they can do? Not pay you? Hell, that's what they're doing right now!

3. If there's a change in the work timeline, the contract should be renegotiated. You mentioned earlier that one of the other developers quit a few days in. That, right there, would have been grounds for a renegotiation. I mean, unless the departure of this dev. was explicitly planned for, it constitutes a fairly radical change in the terms of the contract — you now have to do 50% more work than anticipated.

4. "I've met with my manager and the owner of the company on three separate occasions and I've always felt like they listened and the financial situation would be taken care of. Each time I find myself grabbing my own ankles on pay day again."

Whoa, this should have been a gigantic, enormous red flag. Words are cheap, especially if you're of the sociopathic type that heads all too many companies. What counts is action. I mean, even if the company is in financial trouble, they still have a contractual obligation to pay you. Out and out missing a payment is unacceptable. At the very least, I'd expect a clear warning in advance and a concrete set of steps detailing how and when the make-up payment will be delivered. And even then, if they consistently miss paying you, fire them.

go to the next meeting with a baseball bat