It seems like you are using an ad blocker. To enhance your experience and support our website, please consider:

  1. Signing in to disable ads on our site.
  2. Sign up if you don't have an account yet.
  3. Or, disable your ad blocker by doing this:
    • Click on the ad blocker icon in your browser's toolbar.
    • Select "Pause on this site" or a similar option for lancecourse.com.

Avoid intermediates for your jobs

zooboole

Published By zooboole

photo credit: IMG_1938 via photopin (license)

As developers/designers, we are somehow called to do some business because we are assets, services, and products we can offer to anyone or to any other business.

Alas, it happens today that getting clients for yourself has become more complicated than any other task in business, even for giant companies. It may not even be for yourself, no matter your position in the deal, if you are the one who stands to get them to purchase your services and products, this task is the hardest ever.

We, freelance developers and designers, must, unfortunately, face this task ourselves even if we are busy working on a different job. You need to survive.

We are therefore forced to collaborate with any person who could possibly help us have some deals. These people can be friends, other developers, old clients, or simply new prospects, etc. And here is where I am coming. People we meet, who are supposed to help you, are usually the ones who kill you and the market at the same time.

Calm down I will explain that.

Recently I had a discussion with a Nigerian friend. I was helping him with some code and he said this to me:

  • Ahmed, after school, when I reach Nigeria I will get you markets.

  • And I said, well I will be glad for that. But unfortunately many said the same thing to me and once in Nigeria I don't here from them again. Since 2012 only two people contacted me regarding that, and I never got the deal.

  • Oh don't worry with me it will be different, we are brothers: He said.

  • I added, the thing is that I don't believe these things will really work. I don't blame them for not sending me deals. The problem is I don't like intermediates because they will never allow you to make your money as you were supposed to.

  • He said noo! why not. I will negotiate with the clients, then you do the job.

  • I replied, *Yes. That's the problem. Why don't you simply connect me with the client?

  • And he said, ahh, me too I need to make something inside.

  • And I told him, this is exactly the reason why the two other guys never come back. At first they come and ask for the price for me to create so so website. Once I tell them, they will never come back. Because I understood that their are going to make their own business on my own, so I usually charge the amount I think is fine for me, and that doesn't help them and they go.

From this dialog, you can see how people think. Although he's is not the first person with who I had such talks, even companies come to us with deals like that and behind they do their own businesses.

Another experience I had with one of my own brothers from Benin was that since last year he was chasing a client. The first time he told me about it I was like I will take $500 for the job.

He replied me: Ah if you are going to charge such an amount how am I going to add my own?

I finally said yes for an amount of $350. I told him I agree with it because I want him to make his own.

Until last week he was still on that same deal. He was requesting my company certificates, my passport, my birth certificates, and so on and so forth. Pfff. Francophones love paper than anything, Hahaha.

I told him, today that you are going to pay me $350 you are asking me for all this. Besides, what does that have to do with my code, or does the bank need all this before sending me the money, or you just forgot me as your own brother right way?

And he said the company needed to know the people involved.

I asked him, for more than a year, they have been running asking papers for people's papers. What if they rather focus on how their website is going to look like, or what if they were writing their content down since they had that problem and needed us to do so for them?

As I told you the other time, this type of client is something to avoid. It's already a great source of a headache and trouble.

I simply replied him: I am sorry. I am no longer interested in doing the website. My Apology. The time I will take to gather these papers could be useful to some other things.

Short, among us(human beings) this isn't that bad to make some money by helping someone to have a deal, but for business and development sack, my question is simply:

"As an intermediate, what is your use in that job?"

You will probably say I am insane for asking such question. I agree because I am the only programmer who has never been unemployed. Hahahaha.

Yes, joke aside. To be honest, these people to me are just the ones killing the market for some reasons:

  1. You are not probably a coder/designer, or you are not probably the one who will do that

  2. You don't probably have a deep knowledge of the job the client wants

  3. In most cases, you don't even know how a website is really made from A-Z. So you cannot know its real value and decide of an adequate price.

  4. You will always delay the communications between me and the customer

  5. You will make the client pay, either higher for a job he would probably get for half price.

  6. You don't help me make the money I deserve for that job

  7. You don't encourage yourself to learn how to do that because you make easy money.

  8. You limit our(all of us) level of expression because we are all holding some secrets we don't want others to know, which can limit our level of creativity.

  9. You would never ask the correct questions I would ask the client directly, and you would be tempted to forge your own answers every time I needed help.

  10. Since communicating constantly is important, you will still be a big wall for that.

These are just ten reasons so far. There is no go out of that. You are not useful, as far as I am concerned. I suggest in such a situation people simply connect the two main entities and humbly ask for a little something for their presence. In that case, both sides can even do that for you. But don't be a curtain for the work. You are not really helping.

Also to companies who are looking for human resources, I advise you really check very well before giving out jobs. If people have to be between you and your workers I am not sure that will help much. Because sometimes intermediate might even be your employees. When you are looking for new talent, instead of them connecting you with the right people, they will look for cousins, friends, etc, just to make some share. Or they can pretend they know the job and go and look for people for it. At the end your company looses in time and quality.

Bottom line

This may sound weird to you that someone cares about it. Such relations might have been normal for you up to now. Don't worry, we have all been there before.

When you are a developer, no work is little. All jobs(tiny or huge) naturally cost you some effort. And when people don't see that and rather tend to increase the duty, it pains a lot. I intend to follow developers up on such situations for you to be aware and know how to see them and make your decisions accordingly. The examples I gave here are too few, and I know many of us even saw the worst. That's life.

Thanks for reading. If you loved this please help me share it with others. Love is about sharing.