Freelancer and customer. Interaction
Everyone who is dealing with IT in one form or another has somehow come across / heard that there is such a thing as freelancing. As it may seem at first glance, freelancing carries some advantages. Neither you are an employee in an office for whom you need to organize a workplace, nor are there any problems with arranging him for a TK and subsequent dismissal (if you hire a clearly defined amount of work). Also, the cost of a freelancer, as a rule, is 2 to 20 times less than that of a firm offering the same services.
Nevertheless, there is a huge amount of negative experience with freelancing. About his priines and possible solutions - under the cut
')
And why, in fact, should I read all this, you ask me? Because in this area I work for the fourth year, having gained a decent experience in work as a freelancer and a project manager, and then as a team leader of programmers. Everything I write will be a squeeze from my own experience, which, as we know, is the son of difficult mistakes. In addition, I will try to evaluate the work at each stage from two sides - from the customer and the freelancer. I hope that this will help, on the one hand, to replenish the number of professional performers, on the other - to get more thoughtful projects.
This stage is more for the customer than for the freelancer. First of all, forget that your relatives are able to do something. I worked in two different areas - autoservice services and programming, and from both I made an iron rule - from relatives either for free or not at all. The same applies to friends, to build a business with them competently - a huge science, which is not subject to everyone. The history is replete with examples when working with a friend brought only disappointment and a project piled up with zero.
The second thing to think about is whether you want to control this process yourself, or want to entrust it to the manager. If you decide to go the first way, then get ready to spend time on it. At least an hour a day, but better a couple. Work on the project, controlling the result once a week will not work. Even a business card site requires attention to itself for at least half an hour, not to mention larger desktop projects.
Here, by the way, it will not be superfluous to dispel the myth of the managers. In small firms / freelance communities, the manager performs a lot of roles — he is usually familiar with programming and can even play the role of application architect. It lumps in sources that come from different artists, solves internal conflicts, which, if there are more than 1 programmers, are inevitable, it is a buffer between programmers and you as a customer, because programmers are not always great people in communication with customers. find out the questions so do not lovers. He will monitor the progress of the project, handing out tasks (one thing is to write “I want a program” and another is to break the Wishlist into the correct sequence of interrelated tasks). Also, as a rule, with experience in working with customers, the project manager is able to ask questions that you don’t even think about, but programmers think. If you work directly with the programmers themselves, they will perform these questions as not covered as they see fit, which may adversely affect the important characteristics of the application. So a manager in small freelance communities / firms is an important element of the process that is not busy shifting papers. This is not Gazprom. And if you meet this item of expenditure in a commercial offer, you don’t need to cry out that this is a waste of funds. Estimate the hour of your work, take the approximate number of people involved in the development process, multiply this number by 1 hour, and multiply by the number of days during which the project will last - I'm more than sure that if you value your time, it will convince you in need of such a person in the team.
Then sit down and imagine in detail what needs to be done. If you already made TZ - this is gorgeous. If not, then try to describe what you would like to see in the project, free form. Then go to the next stage.
In this article, I consider only the Russian major stock exchanges. The choice, of course, is yours, the rating of the exchanges is easily googled.
After that we publish the project. What you need to specify in the project?
Title. As a rule, no one sits on the sites and does not press F5. All sites have an RSS API. through which any program with this function, be it a mailer or special means, can pick up projects. As a rule, in such programs projects are displayed as a list of titles. Even if this is not the case, here is a simple example - working with 6 exchanges brings about 2 thousand projects per day. Naturally, everyone will not be able to read physically. Accordingly, they are all viewed by title. Give up such an uninformative feces as a “project”, “requires a performer”, “urgently”. The chances of finding the artist you need will rise dramatically if you specify the subject of the conversation. “Business card site”, “software for clinics”, “coursework required” :))) is much more informative and will allow at least to understand whether it is worth viewing the message.
The body of the message. Do not write war and peace. Do not copy the TOR into the request body. If you have it ready - attach it with a separate file to the project - who are interested - download and view themselves with great comfort. The message should briefly describe the essence of what you want to see.
Contacts. This is a moot point. As a rule, all sites provide an opportunity to communicate in the form of a chat, which is convenient and understandable, and to always have all the correspondence with everyone on hand. Pointing the same contacts. Especially for a “site required” project, guaranteed to bring 30-40 people to you on the very first day. And then this bother will continue. until the project is withdrawn from publication. communicate with such a handful of people in ICQ / Skype is much more inconvenient, but this is my IMHO. On the other hand, if the project you need to do now, then specifying contacts is one way to speed up and simplify the procedure.
Project's budget. It must be specified if it is defined. Those. in case you are sure that these works will cost exactly that much. On the one hand, it will allow to interest professional performers if the price is adequate, on the other - it will help to avoid unnecessary communication if the budget is too small.
I will not, again, list exchanges and stuff. I will not give you any quick start tips either, a lot has been written about this in the first place, and secondly - everyone has his own way. We proceed directly to the choice of the project, which is worth answering.
For starters, look at the grammar. IMHO - the most serious indicator. If the sentence is all in the mistakes that cheekbones reduce - I prefer not to get involved.
The second point is the project budget. If he arranged for you - go to the next step. If it is too low - take a closer look, it may make sense to make a project and get a profit in the form of a review, or maybe the project is just interesting and will be useful for self-development. If the cost, in your opinion, is high - do not rush to respond to this project and think. Graduality is important in everything. I also initially enjoyed projects for 1 month with a budget of 7 tr, but I was on the path of increasing budgets gradually. If you think that money is paid a lot, it means that:
a) the project must be completed at a level that you may not have reached yet
b) the project will be much more difficult than it seems at first glance
c) the project will be executed with a huge creak, for which you are not ready
In any case, if your usual projects are at the level of 100 TR, and you see the project for 500, then this is a good reason to think. Here, by the way, you can try to reduce the price, but you need to accurately and thoroughly familiarize yourself with the project. Fall in price and find out later that it was in vain - not the best deal.
The next criterion for project evaluation is the task description. If there is a description of the project - read it. The most dangerous thing at this stage is a similar project. If it correlates with what you did earlier, then there is a temptation not to read the TK. And figle, did you? What is fraught with, tell, I hope not)
If the customer has not provided TZ - you can offer him to write it, or to make a prototype, the benefit of the programs and services that present such an opportunity - at least one place to eat.
If everything suits, feel free to write an application. A few rules:
a) do not write the application form "staked out the place." Annoying worse than illiterately written application. If you do not have 10 minutes to write an application, then what for you this project
b) do not write too short or too long application. Comments of the form “I will do it!” Should not occur, as well as the full biography. The ideal answer, in my opinion, can be a response containing a greeting (mandatory!), 2-4 terms with the response to the application, contacts (do not be lazy, not every performer will climb into the profile to see your ICQ or Skype) and signature.
c) it will not be superfluous to ask a clarifying question or a couple in the application (no longer needed). This will help start a dialogue on the project. Beware of illiterate questions, they are different for each sphere.
d) it will be wonderful to indicate the price and timing of the project. You can specify them approximately, as well as what the change in the positive / negative side depends on.
Applies to both the customer and the performer. Now it has become very fashionable to appeal to "you." I was raised this way, but it really bothers me when both the customers and the performers start poking from the first lines. This is perfectly acceptable if you are asked if you can switch to you, it is not accepted to refuse here, but if you started right from the door, you should think about it.
Look at those who responded to your project. If you read the entire article, then you should pay attention to filling out the applications that are described in the second part. If you have seen rudeness in the answers, then it is better not to get involved with such a person - the result will be disappointing.
It is also worth seeing how the freelancer defines professional terms and how much he is ready to explain unclear moments to you. It is not shameful to ask here, but vice versa is welcome, since you pay money. and if you are offered a choice of php or asp, then it is worth figuring out what kind of animals are applied to you. Those. I do not urge to understand the server features of these technologies, I suggest you ask the executor how this threatens me. Answers like "yes, in fact, the same thing" - right there in the furnace. At least, these are different hosting sites, and if you already have a website on some kind of site for php, it’s more likely that you will not be able to add an asp site to it. The same applies to desktop software development technologies. The contractor is obliged to help you make an informed choice, if any.
First of all, starting the negotiations, do not be afraid to answer questions and offer options. And the latter, if there are differences in the implementation, it is not bad to back up with the influence on the timing and cost. For example - “software can be implemented in C #, or in C ++. The latter option will increase the cost by 15 tr. and development time for 2 weeks, but it will give (here describe some kind of buns, for the sake of which you started this conversation) ”. Do not hesitate to answer, only the conversation will strengthen your relationship with the customer. You do not have to laugh at the customer who asked you to explain what html is. He has a task and money, and he does not have to be an expert in this field. The ideal solution is to post on your website a series of articles with simple truths. Then you can always a) not write again mountains of text and b) once again show your site.
At this stage, as a rule, both the customer and the freelancer are already able to communicate by communication whether this person is suitable for collaboration. Again, everyone is concerned - avoid working with those who are not pleasant to you. This is the lot of firms, and we didn’t go to freelancing for this, right? No matter what money the project promises, if there is no possibility to reach an understanding, it will be unnecessary nerves on both sides and dissatisfaction at the end of the project. Do you need it? :)
All with the coming.
Nevertheless, there is a huge amount of negative experience with freelancing. About his priines and possible solutions - under the cut
')
Foreword
And why, in fact, should I read all this, you ask me? Because in this area I work for the fourth year, having gained a decent experience in work as a freelancer and a project manager, and then as a team leader of programmers. Everything I write will be a squeeze from my own experience, which, as we know, is the son of difficult mistakes. In addition, I will try to evaluate the work at each stage from two sides - from the customer and the freelancer. I hope that this will help, on the one hand, to replenish the number of professional performers, on the other - to get more thoughtful projects.
Stage one. Formulation of the problem
This stage is more for the customer than for the freelancer. First of all, forget that your relatives are able to do something. I worked in two different areas - autoservice services and programming, and from both I made an iron rule - from relatives either for free or not at all. The same applies to friends, to build a business with them competently - a huge science, which is not subject to everyone. The history is replete with examples when working with a friend brought only disappointment and a project piled up with zero.
The second thing to think about is whether you want to control this process yourself, or want to entrust it to the manager. If you decide to go the first way, then get ready to spend time on it. At least an hour a day, but better a couple. Work on the project, controlling the result once a week will not work. Even a business card site requires attention to itself for at least half an hour, not to mention larger desktop projects.
Here, by the way, it will not be superfluous to dispel the myth of the managers. In small firms / freelance communities, the manager performs a lot of roles — he is usually familiar with programming and can even play the role of application architect. It lumps in sources that come from different artists, solves internal conflicts, which, if there are more than 1 programmers, are inevitable, it is a buffer between programmers and you as a customer, because programmers are not always great people in communication with customers. find out the questions so do not lovers. He will monitor the progress of the project, handing out tasks (one thing is to write “I want a program” and another is to break the Wishlist into the correct sequence of interrelated tasks). Also, as a rule, with experience in working with customers, the project manager is able to ask questions that you don’t even think about, but programmers think. If you work directly with the programmers themselves, they will perform these questions as not covered as they see fit, which may adversely affect the important characteristics of the application. So a manager in small freelance communities / firms is an important element of the process that is not busy shifting papers. This is not Gazprom. And if you meet this item of expenditure in a commercial offer, you don’t need to cry out that this is a waste of funds. Estimate the hour of your work, take the approximate number of people involved in the development process, multiply this number by 1 hour, and multiply by the number of days during which the project will last - I'm more than sure that if you value your time, it will convince you in need of such a person in the team.
Then sit down and imagine in detail what needs to be done. If you already made TZ - this is gorgeous. If not, then try to describe what you would like to see in the project, free form. Then go to the next stage.
Stage Two. Selection
Customer
In this article, I consider only the Russian major stock exchanges. The choice, of course, is yours, the rating of the exchanges is easily googled.
After that we publish the project. What you need to specify in the project?
Title. As a rule, no one sits on the sites and does not press F5. All sites have an RSS API. through which any program with this function, be it a mailer or special means, can pick up projects. As a rule, in such programs projects are displayed as a list of titles. Even if this is not the case, here is a simple example - working with 6 exchanges brings about 2 thousand projects per day. Naturally, everyone will not be able to read physically. Accordingly, they are all viewed by title. Give up such an uninformative feces as a “project”, “requires a performer”, “urgently”. The chances of finding the artist you need will rise dramatically if you specify the subject of the conversation. “Business card site”, “software for clinics”, “coursework required” :))) is much more informative and will allow at least to understand whether it is worth viewing the message.
The body of the message. Do not write war and peace. Do not copy the TOR into the request body. If you have it ready - attach it with a separate file to the project - who are interested - download and view themselves with great comfort. The message should briefly describe the essence of what you want to see.
Contacts. This is a moot point. As a rule, all sites provide an opportunity to communicate in the form of a chat, which is convenient and understandable, and to always have all the correspondence with everyone on hand. Pointing the same contacts. Especially for a “site required” project, guaranteed to bring 30-40 people to you on the very first day. And then this bother will continue. until the project is withdrawn from publication. communicate with such a handful of people in ICQ / Skype is much more inconvenient, but this is my IMHO. On the other hand, if the project you need to do now, then specifying contacts is one way to speed up and simplify the procedure.
Project's budget. It must be specified if it is defined. Those. in case you are sure that these works will cost exactly that much. On the one hand, it will allow to interest professional performers if the price is adequate, on the other - it will help to avoid unnecessary communication if the budget is too small.
Freelancer
I will not, again, list exchanges and stuff. I will not give you any quick start tips either, a lot has been written about this in the first place, and secondly - everyone has his own way. We proceed directly to the choice of the project, which is worth answering.
For starters, look at the grammar. IMHO - the most serious indicator. If the sentence is all in the mistakes that cheekbones reduce - I prefer not to get involved.
The second point is the project budget. If he arranged for you - go to the next step. If it is too low - take a closer look, it may make sense to make a project and get a profit in the form of a review, or maybe the project is just interesting and will be useful for self-development. If the cost, in your opinion, is high - do not rush to respond to this project and think. Graduality is important in everything. I also initially enjoyed projects for 1 month with a budget of 7 tr, but I was on the path of increasing budgets gradually. If you think that money is paid a lot, it means that:
a) the project must be completed at a level that you may not have reached yet
b) the project will be much more difficult than it seems at first glance
c) the project will be executed with a huge creak, for which you are not ready
In any case, if your usual projects are at the level of 100 TR, and you see the project for 500, then this is a good reason to think. Here, by the way, you can try to reduce the price, but you need to accurately and thoroughly familiarize yourself with the project. Fall in price and find out later that it was in vain - not the best deal.
The next criterion for project evaluation is the task description. If there is a description of the project - read it. The most dangerous thing at this stage is a similar project. If it correlates with what you did earlier, then there is a temptation not to read the TK. And figle, did you? What is fraught with, tell, I hope not)
If the customer has not provided TZ - you can offer him to write it, or to make a prototype, the benefit of the programs and services that present such an opportunity - at least one place to eat.
If everything suits, feel free to write an application. A few rules:
a) do not write the application form "staked out the place." Annoying worse than illiterately written application. If you do not have 10 minutes to write an application, then what for you this project
b) do not write too short or too long application. Comments of the form “I will do it!” Should not occur, as well as the full biography. The ideal answer, in my opinion, can be a response containing a greeting (mandatory!), 2-4 terms with the response to the application, contacts (do not be lazy, not every performer will climb into the profile to see your ICQ or Skype) and signature.
c) it will not be superfluous to ask a clarifying question or a couple in the application (no longer needed). This will help start a dialogue on the project. Beware of illiterate questions, they are different for each sphere.
d) it will be wonderful to indicate the price and timing of the project. You can specify them approximately, as well as what the change in the positive / negative side depends on.
Part Three Communication
Applies to both the customer and the performer. Now it has become very fashionable to appeal to "you." I was raised this way, but it really bothers me when both the customers and the performers start poking from the first lines. This is perfectly acceptable if you are asked if you can switch to you, it is not accepted to refuse here, but if you started right from the door, you should think about it.
Customer
Look at those who responded to your project. If you read the entire article, then you should pay attention to filling out the applications that are described in the second part. If you have seen rudeness in the answers, then it is better not to get involved with such a person - the result will be disappointing.
It is also worth seeing how the freelancer defines professional terms and how much he is ready to explain unclear moments to you. It is not shameful to ask here, but vice versa is welcome, since you pay money. and if you are offered a choice of php or asp, then it is worth figuring out what kind of animals are applied to you. Those. I do not urge to understand the server features of these technologies, I suggest you ask the executor how this threatens me. Answers like "yes, in fact, the same thing" - right there in the furnace. At least, these are different hosting sites, and if you already have a website on some kind of site for php, it’s more likely that you will not be able to add an asp site to it. The same applies to desktop software development technologies. The contractor is obliged to help you make an informed choice, if any.
Freelancer
First of all, starting the negotiations, do not be afraid to answer questions and offer options. And the latter, if there are differences in the implementation, it is not bad to back up with the influence on the timing and cost. For example - “software can be implemented in C #, or in C ++. The latter option will increase the cost by 15 tr. and development time for 2 weeks, but it will give (here describe some kind of buns, for the sake of which you started this conversation) ”. Do not hesitate to answer, only the conversation will strengthen your relationship with the customer. You do not have to laugh at the customer who asked you to explain what html is. He has a task and money, and he does not have to be an expert in this field. The ideal solution is to post on your website a series of articles with simple truths. Then you can always a) not write again mountains of text and b) once again show your site.
At this stage, as a rule, both the customer and the freelancer are already able to communicate by communication whether this person is suitable for collaboration. Again, everyone is concerned - avoid working with those who are not pleasant to you. This is the lot of firms, and we didn’t go to freelancing for this, right? No matter what money the project promises, if there is no possibility to reach an understanding, it will be unnecessary nerves on both sides and dissatisfaction at the end of the project. Do you need it? :)
All with the coming.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/135575/
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