This will serve as a reference for a future thread, anyway I think it will be fun to share how working in my region works (or doesn't). The following comes from more than 20 years dealing with diff size clients and companies, from one person business owner to really large companies owning their own buildings, talking with the managers and owners, it's not "
one incident", it's the patterns appearing in most negotiations.
The client is always right. Where I live 99% of people preach this, and when they say it... it's because they messed up and are demanding to get what they want regardless of the circumstances: most times it's badly applied and takes place when the client is actually wrong. The problem is not "
saying it", the problem is how deeply this runs inside my culture, where I live, it means from start most clients have unrealistic expectations and lots of entitlement, expecting to bend the rules to their favor.
The clients are always late. This is no Germany, here people are always late. You can agree to meet at 10:00 a.m. and sadly 90% of the times the client will get there 40 minutes late (30 - 40 is the average but some people can even take 1 hour). Big client? worse, when you have a big client you will usually meet at their own offices or building, but most times they won't be there, and if they are there... they are busy dealing with other things and will make you wait and wait, usually the meetings happen in a hurry, or will tell some worker to get in and inform later. It's ok for clients to be late but not for you, if you get there late they think badly of your business. You already knowing they won't be there in time makes no difference: they expect you to be perfect while they think they can fail on every stage.
Most clients have no ideas, they have dreams. Some people think they can hire a coder to solve how to measure glucose using a smartwatch and that would be an awesome business selling stuff to patients with diabetes. Some will even tell you "
I thought you were good at this now I know you can't code", imagine that.
Unrealistic budgets. It's amazing how many clients expect you to build the next Amazon on Wordpress (free), in two weeks for about US$100 including domain, and many get offended when they get the prices and timeline. Many will even tell you "
I thought you were good at this now I know you can't code", imagine that.
Many won't provide any information about their products. You can't imagine how many times I faced this, people who sell whatever product, want a design, shopping cart, etc, but will provide you no database or listing with names, description and prices of their products, lots of people even fail week after week to provide info about the company and will tell you "
mmm you better write something so we can continue with the project". After you telling them that's not how it works they will even tell you "
I thought you were good at this now I know you can't code", imagine that. [I think you are already seeing a trend on client expectations, don't you?]
No product prices. Around year 2000 most clients didn't want to post their product prices online, why? "
because competitors will monitor our prices". It didn't matter how much you explain people want the information right away, or how a shopping cart MUST include prices, nope: they didn't want to provide them, or... many explained how they offered diff prices depending the situation. It's year 2020 and still many clients refuse to post prices.
Spammers everywhere. It's year 2020 and a client approached me wanting to build a product gallery, again no prices, they just want people to fill a form and provide phone number, name and email so a sales man contacts them eventually, but the story doesn't end there: they want to build databases to spam you or insist on unwanted phone calls. I had clients insisting on spam list (mass mail) and I explained them the negative aspects of it, they insisted and after me denying to provide the platform, they did it anyway. Many times we ended with blocked domains or blacklisted email addressed/domains, then asking people about the brand (client) and customers reacted "
they suck, won't stop sending junk mail". No even explaining Plaza Sesamo style ever worked.
NO CONTRACTS. Agreements? what agreement?. Service providers (you), will have to write detailed papers explaining the prices of everything you do (clients HATE one price for all, they want the specs). Your paper works like a pseudo contract (no, people here don't sign contracts, they hate them), and it is very common for clients to try to negotiate against you because someone else offers cheaper domain names, or cheaper hosting, so it works like this: they want and expect you to lower your whole price based on whats cheaper with another provider. The culture is so bad, many service providers will agree in order to keep the client. Many won't even check the prices, they just respond to the client applying pressure.
Timeline? what timeline? I need it now. They want everything now, "
for yesterday" they say, in fact that's a common expression in my country used during meetings. EVEN if you trace a timeline and write prices on your papers stating that your work proposal is only valid for 15 days for them to decide hiring you, they can call you 6 months later and expect you to be available and offer the same prices you offered before.
Timeline? you can't imagine how many clients I faced extending work that can be completed in one month... but they took 1 year, one in fact took two years. Yes, sounds stupid because it is stupid, eventually I stopped working for them (and yes they got mad). In some stances one year later completing the needed information... they wanted a new design because "
it's one year later you know?", eh... yes, for the same original price.
Clients now refuse to pay, they want you to pay for everything. Year 2005-7 felt like changing everything. Before that, clients used to hire you and pay you a percentage of the whole budget for you to start coding, etc. In some cases clients would agree on paying stages, chapter after chapter, but around that year most clients started expecting you to agree and work for free, and getting paid when the project was completed. If the project lasted one year and involved cost beyond US$500? it didn't matter, and remember the client is always right. Even if you were lucky, they wouldn't pay you the whole sum of money, instead they will THEN offer you a payment program (6 months usually, or more).
Big clients are the worst (taxes and legal issues). And yes, taxes. Here if a BIG company wants to hire you, they expect you to provide a "factura", that's like a receipt but with tax and legal value, it's useful for them to deduce taxes, the problem is they want it when you start coding, that means you have to provide the "factura" on January even if the project ends on December. Your project might cost US$2,000 and you have to provide it, this means you have to pay your own taxes even if they haven't paid anything to you. Then companies begin a slow process of paperwork, and usually the payment is released in stages, won't transfer, won't pay in cash, you will have to be there picking a check on specific dates and hours. Many times I had to deal with big clients and TRY to get my check always on Thursdays from 14:00 to 16:00, no other day, no other hours. And most times after waiting there will be nothing there (I would waste my whole afternoon there). IF... you experienced issues and wanted to give up the client or project, remember you already provided a legal payment document, and so they could treat you as responsible for not completing the project.
Small clients: I love them. Big companies? I avoid them. I thought I was doing great when got my first big client, I was wrong. Most experiences with big clients have been absolutely terrible, and I needed one after another to really learn my lesson. Most times you won't deal with the person making decisions, and most times you will have to face their spoiled attitudes just like when they go to restaurants and expect free stuff and special treatment because "
they are so big", wrong, you get what you paid for, simple as that. Big companies have provided terrible issues during work, I know it, I also worked for years inside a big company and got to see the other side of it, there are so many power struggles inside, dept against dept and having many managers trying to appear powerful on meetings were they are not needed.
LIES and more lies. Simple as this, a client might want a simple "hand craft" website with 10 informative pages and 15 specific product pages with prices, no shopping cart, instead come to our hotel at X town. I learned to ask them several times "can you provide me with pictures next Monday?" yes. "Do you have the information for the 10 pages? next Saturday?" yes. "Can you provide the final prices of your 15 products next Friday?" yes. Then you would find yourself dealing with missing data 2-3 months later. Remember YOU can't do that, only the client can fail to deliver, the client is always right.
Over the years I moved away from big clients learning to say "NO" or just pricing my work so high they wouldn't hire me. A few times someone insisted because I was mentioned as "someone who finishes what he starts", but I would again increase the prices using excuses only to avoid working with them. Instead moved to serve small clients and business owners. The experiences would be better, serious, formal and honest, not to mention they would pay in time and usually cash.
People from other countries were also better as clients, specially Germany and Canada, there would only be few meetings and each one would be really productive. Local clients were the worst, but small businesses were way better, probably the smaller the better. LATER I was contacted by advertising agencies to provide some service and the agents would say themselves "
I know this is impossible but our client wants a quote for this and that for next week, if they say yes we can deal later with the delivery dates".
A week ago I was approached, big company (sadly), wanting a website with product gallery (no prices) they wanted the whole thing ready in ONE WEEK, no, they don't have databases of any kind, no pricing, no pictures, no information, no text. And NO I'm not kidding. When talking they said "mmm yes" to most things but it's not true, they had nothing, and it was later revealed they have been attempting to post this online for ONE YEAR, no failure from service providers, only theirs being unable to sit and agree on something.
Year 2018, started feeling absolutely free to say no to clients and started selling stuff made with wood (yes, woodworking), every working hour would be WAY more efficient and productive in cash compared to coding, imagine that. Since 2019 I don't make noise about doing webwork, in fact people talk to me and I tell them "
You know I don't do that anymore", sometimes someone insist and I just ask questions, I tell them IF (and that's a big IF) you can provide me this and that for next week -
then we can talk-, and they always say: YES WE CAN, nice, we will work together. Then the weeks go by and they excuse themselves, another week, one month, and then I often tell them "I told you, I already know you are a mess", no I'm not afraid to tell that to people anymore.
And so, year after year learned my lessons and moved away from coding and web work in my country, instead focused on manual stuff (feels great) and some work on my personal web projects (feels good). I love coding, but the client culture here is toxic, very toxic.
Feel free to share.
