Because of the nature of what I do, I often get asked to look over other people’s work. This isn’t always under ideal conditions. Sometimes a company hired a freelancer or employee to do a job but they are unhappy with their progress. I always feel bad for these companies because if they came to me first, I could have saved them a lot of trouble and hardship. To save everyone’s time in the future, I’m listing the two most important things you should arrange before you work with someone to build your software:
contracts
The contractor who doesn’t use contracts
One day I was at a networking event and I bumped into a contractor who had a way of getting paid by clients that I’ve never heard of before. This strikes me as pretty unique, because I listen to a lot of podcasts, read a lot of books, and talk to a lot of consultants. I don’t have an opinion about what I’m about to tell you, I just found it fascinating and wanted to share it with others. If you have an opinion about it, please leave me a comment because I really can’t figure out if it’s a good idea or a bad one.
Before I start, I want to say that he is a DevOp whereas I’m more of a Software Engineer. For all I know, this is a common thing in their circle. The differences between these two specialties may make it possible for him to pull this off whereas it would be unfeasible for me. I’m not sure about that, either.
Here’s how it works: Continue reading