Sometimes ugly, sometimes winsome / BWE..

In which our Hero discovers that karma isn’t just something to console yourself with

About a year ago, an old friend called me out of the blue, needing help. He bid on a project with a partner and won the gig and lost the partner to health issues. He explained the situation to me asking if I was able to help, and he offered that since the bid was already in, I could take 100% of the project just for getting him out of trouble. Generous, but fair in a way. He explained that he didn’t need the profit, because he had other work with the client, so his main objective was to keep the client happy. Also he was bringing me a project with the deadlines and work already settled which put me under a lot more duress than normal.

At the same time, he was also bringing me a client when I have generally been looking for additional clients. In the tax-man’s war against fraud, they’re keen to identify defacto-employees who are avoiding taxes by contracting, and there things that identify the bad guys. So one of my tasks is to make sure I keep my nose clean as a contractor so it’s clear I’m not cheating. So here he was with some thing I really wanted, a more substantial project I could bill to my expanded client set. Equally, I don’t like duress. I didn’t feel right taking the whole share of the project.

I decided this would be my charity case. Sort of. I’d work for whatever the original developer quoted, however little it must be since my friend felt the need to offer more. The real benefit was extending my client list with a bigger name. And help out my friend, but if that was the only goal I could have just helped him hire a developer.

Regardless, I worked. Turned out to be a lot less trivial than I expected, for a few reasons. Two of those reasons were me not using what I knew and instead working in a language I had no experience with and my choice to build a modern design instead of doing what I knew how to do. The third reason was a genuine mistake, but it cost me two full days of work to recover.

By the end I was pretty grumpy. This was a lot of work for an amount of money I was guessing was painfully low, and I was weighing the merits of going back and asking for a little more. Then the work was done, the client got to see what I’d done, heck my friend got his first real look at what I’d done… and they were delighted.

Delivering the first phase of the project, however, also brought us to the awkward matter of the bill. I asked my friend how much to invoice and he was so relieved he just said you tell me. I told him I’m still happy to just take whatever the original guy quoted, and I imagined the number in my head. He told me the actual number which turned out to be the same as my number but with an extra zero on the end.

I never asked the original amount because I was worried that if it was too low I wouldn’t work on the project with any seriousness. I have to admit I dragged my feet anyway. So clearly I need to be a little less reluctant when I’m doing my good deeds so I don’t feel quite so guilty if something nice happens as a result.

Not a great story, but I’m not feeling like I’m a great storyteller right now. So there. 🙂

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