[consulting] oDesk

[Ben West]

I would strongly echo the tones of caution spelled out by the original
poster.  Alluding to a previous thread about estimating hours, be as
realistic as possible about quoting the # of hours for projects, and
break down that quote into line items where possible to improve
transparency.  This strategy just helped me retain a job with
unconstrained scope creep and massive schedule overrun, while still
receiving a fair percentage of pay and preserving good relationship
with the client.

On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 9:48 PM, Matt Chapman <Matt at ninjitsuweb.com> wrote:
...
> By the way, I'd strongly advise all freelance developers to demand
> significant up-front payment if you can. In this economy, there are
> companies that will be overly optimistic about their financial state and
> talk you into worthless deferred payment and profit sharing arrangements. I
> just had a company that I had been working with for more than a year
> terminate a contract with ~$10,000 owed to me, and I now realize, they have
> no realistic means to pay it.
>
> In the same week, I had a sub-contractor error cause a client's site to be
> offline for 3 days.
>
> When you're a consultant, it's easy to get screwed from both ends, so yeah,
> I want to be able to monitor my hourly sub-contractors. The only exception
> is when you've earned my trust, usually by performing one or more projects
> for a fixed fee, paid on delivery.


-- 
Ben West
westbywest at gmail.com