Good to see that other webmasters are dealing with the same, mind-blowing, muppetry that grinds us down on a daily basis.
http://www.makeuseof.com/tech-fun/get-off-google-or-i’ll-sue/
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Oh reader, poor reader, have more than three months genuinely passed since I last communicated? I could make all kinds of excuses, some would obviously be cleverly woven into the painful previous six tales that I have shared… but in all honesty, I just haven’t managed to get around to documenting more devious ways to piss off your web developer. Don’t fret, I am here now with an update.
We probably send out around three or four proposals for new work each week. We strongly believe in transparency, so go into as much detail as we can in our quotes, it means that they can see exactly why they are paying the requested amount.
The down-side to this is when the client decides that the quote is too high and he wants to spend a smaller amount. Instead of reducing scope and receiving a website with fewer functions, they tend to ask that some quoted items are eliminated.
That’s fine, it’s his cash and if he wants to go against our advice, that’s up to him. However, once, JUST ONCE, I’d love it if our clients were able to admit that they made a mistake instead of scaping our goats.
The bottom section is from around last Christmas-time.
Client: We’d like a web site built please.
Us: No problem Mr Client, we’ll get a quote over to you.
Client: Got your quote, thanks. We see that there’s four day’s work in there for cross-browser testing and fixes. It’s for an intranet, so we only need it to work in Internet Explorer. It’s too costly to have it work in all browsers.
Us: OK, that’s fine we will only develop for Internet Explorer.
…. much later…. and I’m sure you’re way ahead of me here
Client: I have a client with me that I’m demoing the site for. There is a bug that’s stopping me from using it on a Mac.
Us: It won’t work very well at all for a Mac.. we didn’t put the site anywhere near one during development.
Client: So your saying it won’t work on a Mac? WHY IS THAT?
Us: Because you went against our advice. In fact you have consistently said from the start of this project that it is too costly to have us develop for all browsers.
Client: So you’re telling me it only works for Internet Explorer? Well that’s pretty poor isn’t it when I have my client with me?
So there you go, clients of the world, don’t worry about any poor business decision you make, in the future they may all be blamed on your web developers.
This post is dedicated to all web developers out there who have been receiving unmerited kicks in the balls since 1992.
Dear irregular reader, I can only apologise for the sparseness of my updates. You see, our clients are busy providing us with new examples of their ineptness, and I’m really struggling to catalogue and report on them all so that you may then use them to properly piss off your own web developers.
However, we have a bit of a gem for you today.
To make this one work properly, you have to secure access to the server where your website lives. Then you should find an unsuitably-qualified member of your family to start tinkering with the files. When we go to update your site, hilarity will surely ensue.
Me: We have finished your new development, it’s been tested and all parties are happy with it. When shall we put it on your live site?
Client: Great, can we put it live early in the morning tomorrow.
Me: Not a problem, it has been scheduled in. Pleasure doing business.
… next day
Me: We have just finished releasing the latest development version to your live site. We’ve tested our bit and it’s working beautifully.
Client: Why have all the styles on pages x, y, z changed?
Me: These pages are styled just as the development version, also we didn’t do anything to these pages as part of the work. Can you be more specific about what has changed?
Client: My son’s been helping us by editing the style sheets and adding images on the web server. We can’t believe you have overwritten our work!! DO YOU NOT have any processes in place to make a site live?
Luckily we back everything up before doing any live changes. To this day they still edit live files, don’t tell us anything about them and then complain when they are gone after an update.
Client, “Do you have a high-res version of my logo? I’ve been asked by a magazine to send it in for print.”
Us, “No.”
Client, “Why not? I said when I wanted my logo that I needed a high-res version.”
Us, “You definitely didn’t tell us that.”
Client (slightly irate), “Yes I did, I remember it clearly. Can I either have a high-res version to send to the printer, or my money back for the logo design?”
Us, “You probably can, but if I were you, I’d go to the company you used to make your logo, not us.”
From my archives, September 2005 to be exact.
Client, “This email you sent, the link doesn’t work.”
Me, “Let me take a look,” (pause), “seems fine to me.”
Client, “I can’t click on it.”
Me, “But you can see the address, right?”
Client, “Yes, but it doesn’t work when I click on it. And it isn’t underlined. I can’t forward this email onto my customers, it’s not working. Resend a new one.”
Me, “Can’t you copy and paste into your web browser.”
Client, “They won’t be able to do that.”
Me, “If they can’t then they really shouldn’t be using computers.”
I have kept notes and journals over the last 15 years in this job. Sometimes when I re-read entries, I have to wonder why the hell we persevered with some clients. This project was an absolute beauty, and the client is thankfully miles and miles away from me now.
We had completed two pieces of work for him, and he approached us with a third. The first two were rocky, but successful… however, enough had gone wrong in the client’s eyes for him to start to pull in the slack on the client/developer rope. Unfortuantely he forgot to stop pulling at a safe level, and dragged us all the way over to him so that no-one could move for fecking rope.
The fun we had with him could be padded out for an entire blog, but I’ll put this project under, “Blame everyone but yourself.”
- He got his nephew to do the designs. It was his first design. He didn’t know how HTML worked.
- He insisted on navigation that was fundamentally flawed and was unscalable.
- He insisted on making the look and feel of each individual page different.
- He went agaist our advice to rebuild his database.
- He insisted on mechanisms so complicated that they needed elaborate Javascript . And this was way before the Godsend that is jQuery.
- He constantly changed his mind through the project.
- He refused to read any of our documentation. He preferred to call twice a day to speak to the lead developer working on the project, normally to complain for an hour at a time about us missing deadlines.
- His solution was around 20 pages in size. He only wanted to talk about the three or four pages that he was most interested in.
- He constantly neglected to give us further information on the ‘reports that he wanted out’.
- He didn’t heed our warnings that there were huge grey areas in the site that he hadn’t worked on.
- He employed a contractor when all was going wrong and HE managed his work and coding, not us.
- He constantly put us under time pressures so spectacularly great that we couldn’t slam the brakes on the project. It was a three-month long fire-fight.
- He never, ever, ever listened to us. He, “knew what he wanted,” and bullied his way through.
- He blamed us 100% when the project didn’t succeed.
As true an account as I’ve ever typed.
Mr Web Developer Pisser-Offer, you are a busy man. You have lots of clients to service, and sometimes make promises that you can’t possibly deliver (and by that second you, I mean we). Sometimes you want a job done quickly, sometimes you want a job done less expensively.
So you come to us with a problem, and…
Client, “I want to build a new section on our website. It has to take inputs from our users and then show it pretty on the screen. It’ll have lovely reports and everything. “
Me, “That’s fine – let me write up a quote for you.”
…….later
Me, “Here you go – I’ve specced up all the important parts and cross-referenced them with the problems you may face if they aren’t implemented to this level, or in order. The total’s £15,000.”
Client (scanning the list), “FIVE THOUSAND FOR A DATABASE RESTRUCTURE!!!! I’m not paying that, use the same database.”
Me, “No, we can’t.”
We then had a technical discussion which, despite being in layman’s technical terms, he didn’t understand. This is probably due to the fact that his listening chip is broken. When you speak, instead of listening, you can see him thinking about what he’s going to say when you shut up and he gets his chance to talk.
Client, “No, use the same database – just bolt the extra bits on. If you don’t do it, we’ll cancel all our work with you.”
Me, “Look, we really, really, really don’t recommend that you do it this way. Down the line you will get problems.”
Client, “Just do it.”
Down the line: Bring bring
Client, “The website’s broken. YOU put a bug in it, YOU’RE fixing it for free. YOUR SHODDY WORK IS RUINING MY BUSINESS”!
Me, “Oh FFS”
It’s a known fact that web developers love their job so much that they are willing to do it for free for you, our client overlords. I have lost count of the number of websites that I’ve been asked to build for free with the vague definite promise of riches once the site climbs the heights straight to the stratosphere.
Publicity is not a substitute for pounds. Neither is the guarantee1 of a billion users by the end of the month. Like you, I have a mortgage and kids to feed… how dare you assume that the finite amount of time in the day where I can provide for my family be given to you for free.
Not paying us, Tactic One – be up front about it
Car salesman, “Could you do me a website.”
Me, “Of course, what’s the scope and budget.”
Car salesman, “Oh, I was hoping that you’d do it for free. We’d link to you on all of our pages and when the site takes off, you’ll get lots of new work.”
Me, “More free work! Hurray!”
Me (again), “In fact, tell you what, can I have a car for nothing? Then I can drive around with your logo in the back windscreen and when people see it think of the customers you’ll have banging down your door.”
Car salesman, “I’ll do it myself then.”
That was four years ago. Site is now hosted on Google Pages and has animated gifs.
Not paying us, Tactic Two – ultra sneaky
It’s well known that web developers have poor memories, and even poorer timesheet completion skills. One of our clients regularly tries to use this to their advantage and uses the slightest niggle to get out of paying an invoice.
The trick is to keep the invoices nice and bloated. If they can get all £20k for a month on a single invoice, then they are happiest. They then argue about the stupidest, niggliest aspect of the list of items we’ve invoiced for and demand evidence that it was done as they wanted. All the while, ignoring the 99% of the invoice amount that is entirely correct, and our children are circling the bin for scraps to eat.
And most of the time, this is made all the more difficult when they’ve already procrastinated for a few months, and we’re dealing with May’s invoices in September.
Guess who now receives lots of individual invoices – surely an administrative nightmare for them. Oh well.
Not paying us, Tactic Three – seriously, this fecking happened
One of the advantages of having a small company (we have around 15 employees) is that we can make some very quick decisions. This maneuverability is one of our selling points and a main advantage when we pitch against larger organisations. The disadvantage is that many decisions are verbal and we rely on the trustworthiness of all when it comes to billing time.
Client, “I desperately need this done by next Wednesday and your capacity issues are getting in the way.2“
Us, “Eh? I thought that the deadline was next Friday.”
Client, “Yes, but it’s vitally important that we have it on Wednesday now for a meeting.”
Us, “There’s no way that we can do that, and I’m sorry, but you can’t just shift deadlines without consulting us.”
Client, “Look, I’ve promised a client and I need this done by Wednesday. What can you do?”
Us, “The only thing would be to get a contractor in to help and you pick up his tab.”
Client, “Fine, do it.”
Fast-forward to the end of the month. A phone call.
Bring bring
Us, “Hello, HTPoYWD Ltd”
Client, “What’s this bill for £4k?”
Us, “That’s for the contractor that you agreed we’d get in to finish your project. You said you’d pay for him.”
Client, “I DID NOT . Besides, my meeting was on Wednesday, I didn’t have enough time to prepare. I’m not paying extra for that, no way.”
In the end, we were blackmailed into paying for him (we were partnering for a huge tender that would have kept the company going for a long time). Lesson learned for us, but there are many more web developers out there who will fall for this con should you fancy trying it.
Until next time.
1 Not a guarantee
2 True – but show me a small company who isn’t operating at full capacity, and I’ll show you a small business that’s carrying too many people.
Right, I’ve had this idea in my head for about four years now.
I am a web developer, there’s more about that in the About page, and I’m very pissed off with the crap that we have to endure on a day-to-day basis. This blog is a quick guide for you, our web development clients, to give you tips on how to treat us even worse than you are doing already.
