Consulting & Freelancing
Asserting your domain expertise and learning to say “no” to your clients
1When talking with colleagues about work, one of my biggest gripes is finding out they couldn’t say “no” to a client and are now stuck doing shit work. Having worked as a programmer and consultant for almost 10 years, I’ve certainly swallowed enough “no”s just to get a paycheck. But as the years went on, I realized that I was really just whoring myself out for pennies on the dollar when it was all said and done. The amount of time I ended up spending trying to implement a fix for that one CEO that refused to upgrade away from IE 6 was just never worth my time, and I get no satisfaction from having to hack up my own code in a less than beautiful way to make it happen.
More recently I’ve grown perversely attracted to the idea that I can say “no” to projects and still make a living. There is an axiom in the financial markets that the deal of a lifetime comes along every day, every week, every month, etc. Saying “no” to a mediocre project leaves you open to take on the great project that comes along right behind it. But even at a smaller scale, such as an enhancement request, it feels really good to not only say “no” to a client, but also back up that response with statistics that make great business sense. It wasn’t always a comfortable thing for me though, and I think it’s a privilege gained only through experience. (more…)