[consulting] Ah, the trials and tribulations of sub-ing - a tale of woe

[Marty Landman]

At 02:07 PM 11/24/2009, you wrote:

>Domenic Santangelo wrote:
>>
>>
>>I cringed a little bit when I read this, thinking "oh boy, his 
>>associate is going to come back and ask...
>>
>>
>>>
>>>He called and asked whether there wasn't something we could do 
>>>about the amount.
>>>
>>
>>...this.
>>
>Yeah. I should point out that he and I discussed --many-- times 
>during the course of it that the $ were accumulating, and I let him 
>know when a couple plateaus where reached, so it wasn't as much of a 
>surprise to him as it might have read.

I know it's counter-intuitive, at least to me, but this doesn't 
always matter in my experience. I worked on a fixed price 
(non-Drupal) project once where the client kept adding stuff. Our 
contract said that I got 1/2 of the bid price up front, and 1/2 of my 
estimate for all add-ons as they were added on although those would 
ultimately be billed by the hour after acceptance of the entire project.

So as the add-ons came, so did my carefully detailed invoices. Client 
never said a word about them, until I started asking why none of 
these invoices have been paid! I think the youtube video someone else 
posted on this thread is right to the point. That's why there are 
mechanic's liens, just for example. And the project never finished, 
cuz the client wouldn't pay anymore. I even offered to back out the 
add-ons and finish the originally contracted job then we could look 
at add-ons after launch. To no avail.

I think from the client's pov he came to realize that the true scope 
of a usable result for his needs was beyond what he could afford. I 
guess that's the con ethic, as opposed to the work ethic.

Marty