Not too long ago, I made a living working as a contractor where I would hop from project to project. Some were short term where I would work for a week and quickly deliver my service. Others lasted a couple months where I would make enough money to take some time off. I preferred the short ones because they allowed me to charge a much higher rate for a quick job. Not only I felt like my own boss, but I also felt like I didn't have to work too hard to make a decent living. My highest rates were still reasonable, and I always delivered high quality service. That was until I landed a gig with a large company.
Translated in French, Chinese and Russian
This company contacted me in urgency and the manager told me they needed someone right away. Someone who required minimum training for maximum performance. For better or worse, that was my motto. This project was exactly the type of work I liked. It was short, fast, and it paid well.
After negotiating a decent rate, I received an email with the instructions. They gave me more context for the urgency. Their developer left without prior warning and never updated anyone on the status of his project.
We need your full undivided attention to complete this project. For the duration of the contract, you will work exclusively with us to deliver result in a timely manner. We plan to compensate you for the trouble.
The instructions were simple: Read the requirements then come up with an estimate of how long it would take to complete the project. This was one of the easier projects I have encountered in my career. It was an HTML page with some minor animations and a few embedded videos. I spent the evening studying the requirements and simulating the implementation in my head. Over the years, I've learned not to write any code for a client until I have a guarantee of pay.
I determined that this project would be a day's worth of work. But to be cautious, I quoted 20 hours with a rough total of $1500. It was a single HTML page after all, and I can only charge them so much. They asked me to come on site to their satellite office 25 miles away. I would have to drive there for the 3 days I would be working for them.
The next day, I arrived at the satellite office. It was in a shopping center where a secret door led to a secret world where a few workers where churning quietly in their cubicles. The receptionist presented me with a brand new MacBook Pro that I had to set up from scratch. I do prefer using a company's laptop because they often require contractors to install suspicious software.
I spent the day downloading my toolkit, setting up email, ssh keys, and requesting invites to services. In other words, I got nothing done. This is why I quoted 20 hours, I lost 8 hours of my estimated time doing busy work.
The next day, I was ready to get down to business. Armed with the MacBook Pro, I sent an email to the manager. I told him that I was ready to work and that I was waiting for the aforementioned assets. That day, I stayed in my cubicle under a softly buzzing light, twiddling my fingers until the sun went down.
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