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client: i want to make an e-commerce site.
.
.
developer: how much are you willing to spend?
client: i'm on a tight budget, as cheap/low as possible.
.
.
web development on a budget y'all :------)
34 -
I absolutely HATE "web developers" who call you in to fix their FooBar'd mess, yet can't stop themselves from dictating what you should and shouldn't do, especially when they have no idea what they're doing.
So I get called in to a job improving the performance of a Magento site (and let's just say I have no love for Magento for a number of reasons) because this "developer" enabled Redis and expected everything to be lightning fast. Maybe he thought "Redis" was the name of a magical sorcerer living in the server. A master conjurer capable of weaving mystical time-altering spells to inexplicably improve the performance. Who knows?
This guy claims he spent "months" trying to figure out why the website couldn't load faster than 7 seconds at best, and his employer is demanding a resolution so he stops losing conversions. I usually try to avoid Magento because of all the headaches that come with it, but I figured "sure, why not?" I mean, he built the website less than a year ago, so how bad can it really be? Well...let's see how fast you all can facepalm:
1.) The website was built brand new on Magento 1.9.2.4...what? I mean, if this were built a few years back, that would be a different story, but building a fresh Magento website in 2017 in 1.x? I asked him why he did that...his answer absolutely floored me: "because PHP 5.5 was the best choice at the time for speed and performance..." What?!
2.) The ONLY optimization done on the website was Redis cache being enabled. No merged CSS/JS, no use of a CDN, no image optimization, no gzip, no expires rules. Just Redis...
3.) Now to say the website was poorly coded was an understatement. This wasn't the worst coding I've seen, but it was far from acceptable. There was no organization whatsoever. Templates and skin assets are being called from across 12 different locations on the server, making tracking down and finding a snippet to fix downright annoying.
But not only that, the home page itself had 83 custom database queries to load the products on the page. He said this was so he could load products from several different categories and custom tables to show on the page. I asked him why he didn't just call a few join queries, and he had no idea what I was talking about.
4.) Almost every image on the website was a .PNG file, 2000x2000 px and lossless. The home page alone was 22MB just from images.
There were several other issues, but those 4 should be enough to paint a good picture. The client wanted this all done in a week for less than $500. We laughed. But we agreed on the price only because of a long relationship and because they have some referrals they got us in the door with. But we told them it would get done on our time, not theirs. So I copied the website to our server as a test bed and got to work.
After numerous hours of bug fixes, recoding queries, disabling Redis and opting for higher innodb cache (more on that later), image optimization, js/css/html combining, render-unblocking and minification, lazyloading images tweaking Magento to work with PHP7, installing OpCache and setting up basic htaccess optimizations, we smash the loading time down to 1.2 seconds total, and most of that time was for external JavaScript plugins deemed "necessary". Time to First Byte went from a staggering 2.2 seconds to about 45ms. Needless to say, we kicked its ass.
So I show their developer the changes and he's stunned. He says he'll tell the hosting provider create a new server set up to migrate the optimized site over and cut over to, because taking the live website down for maintenance for even an hour or two in the middle of the night is "unacceptable".
So trying to be cool about it, I tell him I'd be happy to configure the server to the exact specifications needed. He says "we can't do that". I look at him confused. "What do you mean we 'can't'?" He tells me that even though this is a dedicated server, the provider doesn't allow any access other than a jailed shell account and cPanel access. What?! This is a company averaging 3 million+ per year in revenue. Why don't they have an IT manager overseeing everything? Apparently for them, they're too cheap for that, so they went with a "managed dedicated server", "managed" apparently meaning "you only get to use it like a shared host".
So after countless phone calls arguing with the hosting provider, they agree to make our changes. Then the client's developer starts getting nasty out of nowhere. He says my optimizations are not acceptable because I'm not using Redis cache, and now the client is threatening to walk away without paying us.
So I guess the overall message from this rant is not so much about the situation, but the developer and countless others like him that are clueless, but try to speak from a position of authority.
If we as developers don't stop challenging each other in a measuring contest and learn to let go when we need help, we can get a lot more done and prevent losing clients. </rant>14 -
This is kind of a horror story, with a happing ending. It contains a lot of gore images, and some porn. Very long story.
TL;DR Network upgrade
Once upon a time, there were two companies HA and HP, both owned by HC. Many years went by and the two companies worked along side each one another, but sometimes there were trouble, because they weren't sure who was supposed to bill the client for projects HA and HP had worked on together.
At HA there was an IT guy, an imbecile of such. He's very slow at doing his job, doesn't exactly understand what he's doing, nor security principles.
The IT guy at HA also did some IT work for HP from time to time when needed. But he was not in charge of the infrastructure for HP, that was the jobb for one developer who didn't really know what he was doing either.
Whenever a new server was set up at HP, the developer tried many solutions, until he landed on one, but he never removed the other tested solutions, and the config is scattered all around. And no documentation!!
Same goes with network, when something new was added, the old was never removed or reconfigured to something else.
One dark winter, a knight arrived at HP. He had many skills. Networking, server management, development, design and generally a fucking awesome viking.
This genius would often try to cleanse the network and servers, and begged his boss to let him buy new equipment to replace the old, to no prevail.
Whenever he would look in the server room, he would get shivers down his back.
(Image: https://i.bratteng.xyz/Ie9x3YC33C.j...)
One and a half year later, the powerful owners in HA, HP and HC decided it was finally time to merge HA and HP together to HS. The knight thought this was his moment, he should ask CEO if he could be in charge of migrating the network, and do a complete overhault so they could get 1Gb interwebz speeds.
The knight had to come up with a plan and some price estimates, as the IT guy also would do this.
The IT guy proposed his solution, a Sonicwall gateway to 22 000 NOK, and using a 3rd party company to manage it for 3000 NOK/month.
"This is absurd", said the knight to the CEO and CXO, "I can come up with a better solution that is a complete upgrade. And it will be super easy to manage."
The CEO and CXO gave the knight a thumbs up. The race was on. We're moving in 2 months, I got to have the equipment by then, so I need a plan by the end of the week.
He roamed the wide internet, looked at many solutions, and ended up with going for Ubiquiti's Unifi series. Cheap, reliable and pretty nice to look at.
The CXO had mentioned the WiFi at HA was pretty bad, as there was WLAN for each meeting room, and one for the desks, so the phone would constantly jump between networks.
So the knight ended up with this solution:
2x Unifi Securtiy Gateway Pro 4
2x Unifi 48port
1x Unifi 10G 16port
5x Unifi AP-AC-Lite
12x pairs of 10G unifi fibre modules
All with a price tag around the one Sonicwall for 22 000 NOK, not including patch cables, POE injectors and fibre cables.
The knight presented this to the CXO, whom is not very fond of the IT guy, and the CXO thought this was a great solution.
But the IT guy had to have a say at this too, so he was sent the solution and had 2 weeks to dispute the soltion.
Time went by, CXO started to get tired of the waiting, so he called in a meeting with the knight and the IT guy, this was the IT guys chance to dispute the solution.
All he had to say was he was familiar with the Sonicwall solution, and having a 3rd party company managing it is great.
He was given another 2 weeks to dispute the solution, yet nothing happened.
The CXO gave the thumbs up, and the knight orders the equipment.
At this time, the knight asks the IT guy for access to the server room at HA, and a key (which would take 2 months to get sorted, because IT guys is a slow imbecile)
The horrors, Oh the horrors, the knight had never seen anything like this before.
(Image: https://i.bratteng.xyz/HfptwEh9qT.j...)
(Image: https://i.bratteng.xyz/HfptwEh9qT.j...)
(Image: https://i.bratteng.xyz/hmOE2ZuQuE.j...)
(Image: https://i.bratteng.xyz/4Flmkx6slQ.j...)
What are all these for, why is there a fan ductaped to on of the servers.
WHAT IS THIS!
Why are there cables tied in a knot.
WHY!
These are questions we never will know the answers too.
The knight needs access to the servers, and sonicwall to see how this is configured.
After 1.5 month he gains access to the sonicwall and one of the xserve.
What the knight discovers baffles him.
All ports are open, sonicwall is basically in bridge mode and handing out public IPs to every device connected to it.
No VLANs, everything, just open...10 -
This is how I feel most of my client proposal start:
* It's simple, I'd like to re-invent <the wheel>.
* All I want to do is use <rocketship engine> on <old typewriter>.
* I'm too cheap to hire a full-time < DBA, DevOps engineer, development team>. Can I pay you pennies?
* I'm poor and broke, can you do this for free?
* I'd like to <commit illegal act> and be <legal compliant standard>.
* I heard it was possible to <fly 30 people to the moon> using <Ford Model-T>. Please do this for us.
* I <sold my house>, but now <I'm locked out by the new owners>. Please help.11 -
Client: We are really happy with your work and enjoy working with you!
Me: Thanks, happy to hear that! I appreciate our collaboration as well.
Client: Great! So... can we get a discount?
Why do people think that being nice also means being cheap!?14 -
Gotta love when a client uses "small" to describe anything they want to make themselves feel like it'll be quick and cheap.
"Can you also add a small system that reads people's minds?"1 -
3 rants for the price of 1, isn't that a great deal!
1. HP, you braindead fucking morons!!!
So recently I disassembled this HP laptop of mine to unfuck it at the hardware level. Some issues with the hinge that I had to solve. So I had to disassemble not only the bottom of the laptop but also the display panel itself. Turns out that HP - being the certified enganeers they are - made the following fuckups, with probably many more that I didn't even notice yet.
- They used fucking glue to ensure that the bottom of the display frame stays connected to the panel. Cheap solution to what should've been "MAKE A FUCKING DECENT FRAME?!" but a royal pain in the ass to disassemble. Luckily I was careful and didn't damage the panel, but the chance of that happening was most certainly nonzero.
- They connected the ribbon cables for the keyboard in such a way that you have to reach all the way into the spacing between the keyboard and the motherboard to connect the bloody things. And some extra spacing on the ribbon cables to enable servicing with some room for actually connecting the bloody things easily.. as Carlos Mantos would say it - M-m-M, nonoNO!!!
- Oh and let's not forget an old flaw that I noticed ages ago in this turd. The CPU goes straight to 70°C during boot-up but turning on the fan.. again, M-m-M, nonoNO!!! Let's just get the bloody thing to overheat, freeze completely and force the user to power cycle the machine, right? That's gonna be a great way to make them satisfied, RIGHT?! NO MOTHERFUCKERS, AND I WILL DISCONNECT THE DATA LINES OF THIS FUCKING THING TO MAKE IT SPIN ALL THE TIME, AS IT SHOULD!!! Certified fucking braindead abominations of engineers!!!
Oh and not only that, this laptop is outperformed by a Raspberry Pi 3B in performance, thermals, price and product quality.. A FUCKING SINGLE BOARD COMPUTER!!! Isn't that a great joke. Someone here mentioned earlier that HP and Acer seem to have been competing for a long time to make the shittiest products possible, and boy they fucking do. If there's anything that makes both of those shitcompanies remarkable, that'd be it.
2. If I want to conduct a pentest, I don't want to have to relearn the bloody tool!
Recently I did a Burp Suite test to see how the devRant web app logs in, but due to my Burp Suite being the community edition, I couldn't save it. Fucking amazing, thanks PortSwigger! And I couldn't recreate the results anymore due to what I think is a change in the web app. But I'll get back to that later.
So I fired up bettercap (which works at lower network layers and can conduct ARP poisoning and DNS cache poisoning) with the intent to ARP poison my phone and get the results straight from the devRant Android app. I haven't used this tool since around 2017 due to the fact that I kinda lost interest in offensive security. When I fired it up again a few days ago in my PTbox (which is a VM somewhere else on the network) and today again in my newly recovered HP laptop, I noticed that both hosts now have an updated version of bettercap, in which the options completely changed. It's now got different command-line switches and some interactive mode. Needless to say, I have no idea how to use this bloody thing anymore and don't feel like learning it all over again for a single test. Maybe this is why users often dislike changes to the UI, and why some sysadmins refrain from updating their servers? When you have users of any kind, you should at all times honor their installations, give them time to change their individual configurations - tell them that they should! - in other words give them a grace time, and allow for backwards compatibility for as long as feasible.
3. devRant web app!!
As mentioned earlier I tried to scrape the web app's login flow with Burp Suite but every time that I try to log in with its proxy enabled, it doesn't open the login form but instead just makes a GET request to /feed/top/month?login=1 without ever allowing me to actually log in. This happens in both Chromium and Firefox, in Windows and Arch Linux. Clearly this is a change to the web app, and a very undesirable one. Especially considering that the login flow for the API isn't documented anywhere as far as I know.
So, can this update to the web app be rolled back, merged back to an older version of that login flow or can I at least know how I'm supposed to log in to this API in order to be able to start developing my own client?6 -
This will be a long rant.
Met this person through my brother's friend. He wanted a cheap static website with a few products images for his handicraft store. I agreed as it would not take much time. He paid me in full upfront.
I registered the domain and created all the page templates with dummy contents. I uploaded the site under a staging sub-domain and asked him for the contents, but he said he was a bit busy and would give them to me later on.
After almost 2 years, out of nowhere, he got back to me and told me he didn't want that old website anymore but he wanted a new personal website. What shocked me was that he told me that he would only pay me for the domain and space but won't pay me for the website as his pervious work was never complete. I denied straight forward and told him I would keep the 80% amt for my work done but he kept telling me I hadn't done anything except place a few images in some html files. Hahaha, After a few in and out mails I told him I didn't wanted his money and would refund all of it, but this shitty guy had a messed of mind. He started posting messages of my fb wall about how i was a fraud and I had taken his money. Things got intense. I had decided to sue this cheap minded asshole but after my brother's friend convinced me not to and apologized on his behalf. He told me not to worry about it and move on.
Haven't heard from him till now.
Thank you for reading till this far.11 -
Would the web be better off, if there was zero frontend scripting? There would be HTML5 video/audio, but zero client side JS.
Browsers wouldn't understand script tags, they wouldn't have javascript engines, and they wouldn't have to worry about new standards and deprecations.
Browsers would be MUCH more secure, and use way less memory and CPU resources.
What would we really be missing?
If you build less bloated pages, you would not really need ajax calls, page reloads would be cheap. Animated menus do not add anything functionally, and could be done using css as well. Complicated webapps... well maybe those should just be desktop/mobile apps.
Pages would contain less annoying elements, no tracking or crypto mining scripts, no mouse tracking, no exploitative spam alerts.
Why don't we just deprecate JS in the browser, completely?
I think it would be worth it.22 -
I would like to invite you all to test the project that a friend and me has been working on for a few months.
We aim to offer a fair, cheap and trusty alternative to proprietary services that perform data mining and sells information about you to other companies/entities.
Our goal is that users can (if they want) remain anonymous against us - because we are not interested in knowing who you are and what you do, like or want.
We also aim to offer a unique payment system that is fair, good and guarantees your intergrity by offer the ability to pay for the previous month not for the next month, by doing that you do not have to pay for a service that you does not really like.
Please note that this is still Free Beta, and we need your valuable experience about the service and how we can improve it. We have no ETA when we will launch the full service, but with your help we can make that process faster.
With this service, we do want to offer the following for now:
Nextcloud with 50 GB storage, yes you can mount it as a drive in Linux :)
Calendar
Email Client that you can connect to your email service (
SearX Instance
Talk ( voice and video chat )
Mirror for various linux distros
We are using free software for our environment - KVM + CEPH on our own hardware in our own facility. That means that we have complete control over the hosting and combined with one of the best ISP in the world - Bahnhof - we believe that we can offer something unique and/or be a compliment to your current services if you want to have more control over your data.
Register at:
https://operationtulip.com
Feel free to user our mirror:
https://mirror.operationtulip.com
Please send your feedback to:
feedback@operationtulip.com44 -
me: the source code is currently store on GitHub and we use GitHub Actions after each updates to compile your code into binary before deploying to your servers
client: storing source code on GitHub (external server) is insecure and breaks compliance
me: so i guess you will need to have a copy of the source code on all your servers and build them directly there (too cheap to have a separate build server) instead of using GitHub Actions
client: yeah
me: keep in mind that all your certificates and tokens are going to be store as plain text in all your servers so if a hacker gain access to anyone of your servers, they will have access to everything.
client: yeah, this is in compliance to our security policy4 -
Client: But why is it so expensive to host a website? I mean you could host Wordpress on a cheap like 10$/month webspace, right?
Inner me: Bitch, you have a fucked up Symfony 2.1 website that only runs on PHP 5.3 plus a Wordpress site, with a lot of updates not done, plus you have a huge traffic at peak times, like once a week
Me: Well you know, the services you are running require a lot of resources...3 -
That awkward moment when you email a quote to your new client and he responds with "Why so expensive? Wix is so cheap"
* Kill me*5 -
Client : I have a big budget for this Project
*delivers price*
Client : We have to go lower with the Price or I see myself forced to hire an indian developer
background : Client wasted over 70.000£ in the last 10 years on his Logistics Website. Why ? Kept hiring cheap "global leading it companies" from India3 -
When the client asks you to build him a website "like" booking.com but his budget doesn't even pay a weekend on a cheap hotel...6
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Be me.
Be making webpage for local osu! tournament.
Assume you are doing it for free.
Get told to ask for payment.
Tell the client the price(with >45% discount) that is getting really close to your hourly wage.
Get told that it is too much to ask for that webpage.
Ask client to propose a price that he is willing to pay.
Never hear back drom the client.
I just don't get it... Why are people expecting that webpages are cheap? I mean, 6-7 years of experience are worth something, right? I also have to pay rent, buy food and components for my PC that break while working...3 -
Fuck. I can't take this shit anymore.
There was a project where we had to implement third-party system for government agency processes management. For some reason, probably because my work is cheap for my boss, the task was assigned to me. Just as a reminder, I'm a .NET Dev. Zero experience in server management. Zero experience in external services implementation.
Anyway, system producent, also an government agency, got angry, becasue they can only earn money on implementation. They have to give the software to other agencies for free. Because of that I've got client program, incomplete documentation and broken scripts for database creation. It took me 2 months to get it all to work but at the end client was happy, my boss got paid and I've got 500 PLN (~130 USD) bonus.
Everything was fine for a while, but after a month server has started freezing everyday, some time before 7 am. The only way I found to make it work again was to restore snapshot made everyday at 10 pm. For a month I was waking up earlier and restored snapshot, and after that my boss took it upon himself. I tried few times to find a bug and fix it, but to no effect. Even person with much more experience with it tried to help but also couldn't find anything.
My solution? Copy all the data and configuration, create new machine, copy everything and check if the problem persists. If not, kill old server. Client won't even notice. But nooooooooo... It would cost my boss a bit of money and I'd need to work on it and he can't let it be, because I'm the only developer working on his flagship product. He'd rather wake up everyday and restore snapshot. Okay, as you wish.
And today, finally, everything went downhill. Snapshot wasn't created, server froze, backup can't be created. Nothing can be done. Client is furious, because they have had reported this problem and a few times restoration was too late and they couldn't work. No one knows how to fix it, I'm not working today (I'm still studying and am available only 2 days) and situation is really shitty.
BUT SURE. ITS BETTER TO RESTORE SERVER EVERYDAY THAN JUST FUCKING FIX IT.
Oh, also, there's no staging or any other real backup. We have snapshots for each day and that's that. Boss' order. Why do I even care...7 -
Got pretty peeved with EU and my own bank today.
My bank was loudly advertising how "progressive" they were by having an Open API!
Well, it just so happened I got an inkling to write me a small app that would make statistics of the payments going in and out of my account, without relying on anything third-party. It should be possible, right? Right?
Wrong...
The bank's "Open API" can be used to fetch the locations of all the physical locations of the bank branches and ATMs, so, completely useless for me.
The API I was after was one apparently made obligatory (don't quote me on that) by EU called the PSD2 - Payment Services Directive 2.
It defines three independent APIs - AISP, CISP and PISP, each for a different set of actions one could perform.
I was only after AISP, or the Account Information Service Provider. It provides all the account and transactions information.
There was only one issue. I needed a client SSL certificate signed by a specific local CA to prove my identity to the API.
Okay, I could get that, it would cost like.. $15 - $50, but whatever. Cheap.
First issue - These certificates for the PSD2 are only issued to legal entities.
That was my first source of hate for politicians.
Then... As a cherry on top, I found out I'd also need a certification from the local capital bank which, you guessed it, is also only given to legal entities, while also being incredibly hard to get in and of itself, and so far, only one company in my country got it.
So here I am, reading through the documentation of something, that would completely satisfy all my needs, yet that is locked behind a stupid legal wall because politicians and laws gotta keep the technology back. And I can't help but seethe in anger towards both, the EU that made this regulation, and the fact that the bank even mentions this API anywhere.
Seriously, if 99.9% of programmers would never ever get access to that API, why bother mentioning it on your public main API page?!
It... It made me sad more than anything...6 -
Absolutely hate these "moving up", "stairs of success", "we are so diverse!" stock photos all over the internet.
You feel like you are being subtle, fuck no. Unless your target audience is stupid as as fuck, this photos looks dumb and over the top. And what is up with this "diversity" all over the place? don't get me wrong, I am all for diversity. But learn how to apply it properly.
"Looks like we need a picture of a student. Oh no, we need to be diverse. Add 15 kids of 15 different ethincity in the same picture to make sure we looks diverse. Phew!"
And the animations. Holy fucking shite. Why is it that a cheap website immediatly means that your website needs to have 100 different animation in the front page.
Seriously, picture rolling from here and there. Text coming out of nowhere.Everything being squeezed and rotated. God damn it!
This is another reason I fucking hate these 1 click websites and shite like that. This fucking website was created with WiX and my God, it's a fucking nightmare.
Good news is client is recreating the website.3 -
You know the worst thing about being a freelancer? You're expected to wear every fucking hat and you don't get normal hours.
Over the past few days I have been working with a client of a client attampting to fix his server. He's running CentOS on VMWare and somehow ended up breaking the system.
Upon inspection there was no way to fix his system remotely. It wouldn't even boot in recovery mode. So we've been attempting to recover his data so that we can reinstall CentOS and not have to start completely from scratch.
So for the past 3 days straight I have been remotely logging in to a Debian Live CD and manually sending folders to a FTP server of his. He has somewhere close to 30 sites on this server, and upwards of 1 million files in total.
Yesterday either the system freaked out or he did something, but the entire fucking system stopped responding which forced me to reboot it, reinsert the live CD, reinstall evertything, and re-mount his broken systems drives.
Here we are 3 days in, we're still not done, and I'm getting slightly pissy because if you don't know Linux well enough to fix this shit yourself, you shouldn't be acting as your own sysadmin for 30+ sites.
Also, backups are a thing right? VMWare also has snapshots. I know the extra storage isn't cheap, but it's a hell of a lot cheaper than paying soemone like me $35/hr to go and fix all of your shitty mistakes.2 -
Last I started my new job, and I got 2 new laptops (one from my job, amd a separate from the client, as I'll be there full time for at least a year). The work one was pricy af imo (P50, ~2500$ ex. VAT), then I got the client one... wtf is wrong with these people, the laptop cost fucking 6000$ (again, ex. VAT).
Now on the personal side I'm cheap as fuck, and the current laptop I use is one that was meant to be scrapped at my old job that I took home to fix. While it's fun getting those laptops, my brain cannot stop thinking "why the fuck do I need 64 gb ram, 2tb storage and 500gb NVME ssd to basically write text?"16 -
Two years and a lot of money my company has been building a peice of software for a client, I spent the day yesterday talking and watching the client, our software doesn't even come close to matching their requirements. It barely matches the brief my boss wrote and *never showed me*.
The following isn't necessarily a lesson I've learnt, but rather solidified it very much: FOLLOW THE SODDING BRIEF AND ACTUALLY LISTEN TO THE CLIENTS.
Also don't hire low paid devs just because they're cheap because they WILL produce shocking, unmaintiable and unchangeable code.
I honestly think starting this again will be much faster.2 -
I may have over delivered my service to this first customer i got.
It doesn't help that pricing was dirt cheap and i over promised in a bid to make it attractive.
But in my hurry to please the client, I've been feeling so much stress since last 24 hrs. Dealing with customers suck. I hate this.
They can be little dumb and doesn't think much before blaming you if something's not working as expected.
I hate this feeling and now i remember why my initial business model was designed such that I wouldn't have to deal with clients.
But somewhere along the way, i forgot about that. :/
I wish I could get rid of this customer.3 -
My business partner and I started working at our new office and this other guy who was our client and provided us Internet connection for very cheap price, asked us if he can come and hangout sometimes
My partner : yeah man, any time !!
That guy : thanks man
Partner : But only when we are not that busy and don't bring any other person unless it's a woman.
Me : what !!
My partner : what ?4 -
Client: Can I see an update of the work?
Me: Mails the client the first update has been published.
Me: Mails the client the second update has been published.
Client: Can I see an update of the work?
Me: Did you see the last e-mails I sent this morning?
Client: *crickets*
Yet another client that expects we do cheap and fast work, mails us daily he wants to see updates, and constantly requests new features... but can't be bothered to give us the feedback we need for those features, or even read his e-mail.
Next week we'll get an angry mail that the features aren't exactly what he expected, mark my words.2 -
"We don't need to design this page, we'll just wing it in dev. It's not an important page."
result: 47 jiras about choice of fonts, alignment, padding, missing images that were never provided, how it looks shit on mobile and can we make it black instead?1 -
Spend >3 days preparing a proposal to a potential client...made it a bit cheaper to get into the company...
Now I'm too cheap to be good apparently...
FUCK CLIENTS!!!1 -
!rant
When smaller web sweatshops try to under-quote to get your client to jump ship.
Boy, oh boy! They are in for a nasty surprise. Good luck fellas!3 -
Jurassic Park was based on a cheapass client who didn't want to pay the right amount to the. Developer who single handedly protected everyone in the park.
-
Those working as freelancer, how many times has a potential client told you that if you do this job for cheap he would refer you in his business circle and you would for sure get atleast X projects in next quarter ?4
-
Me - "Talks to client about his deliverable"
Him - So when can we show a demo?
Me - On thursday we could show a totally working deliverable.
Him - "Really on thursday? i was hoping to get it done for tomorrow"
My mind - *Dude. do you even know how much time does it takes to finish the latest changes you just asked me today? i mean probably we could get it done if you weren't so cheap at the proposal, you know, when I told you we would take longer if i dropped the price. And I could have a couple more devs working here so we could had the finish product a week ago, and still we are on time... so WTH dude *
Me - No, sorry I wouldn't dare to show you a half baked demo. But ill try my best to show you before that day.1 -
What Git client are you using? Also, what's a freemium Git client that is cheap? Sorry I'm not a fan of monthly subscriptions (hi gitkraken and Git tower) Thanks! 😎23
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> Developer in a company that builds Enterprise Applications with web client and stuff.
> Had an really nice website a which colleague made with joomla as base.
> New CMO thinks it would be cool if he could change more details.
> Company now uses some cheap ugly website builder.
WTF is wrong with u O.o -
Tl;Dr: Client has no idea how much development costs
(Un)potential client has been asking to develop an AV solution for Android phones to sell on the play store. Problem is I know they're cheap fucks and won't pay for a proper development cycle. Just for an exercise I put together the minimum cost they are looking at if they cut back on a lot of things and purchase lots of things off the shelf and gave them a bare minimum cost of £4350. Which is utterly fucking ridiculous to think you could develop something even half decent for that. I mean we all know that AV is a bit of a joke for any serious threat, it just protects from the billions of pests in cyberspace, but I mean come on.
Anyway, they are freaking out because apparently that's a lot. Out of interest, what would be your ballpark figures for this.9 -
This shitty indian development companies should fucking go to hell. So there is a client who approaches me so that I can add new integrations to their web store/platform but the guys who development it wouldn't let me access the backend in any way!!!
Guess I am so mad that I can't even rant well.
But fuck you cheap indian development companies!!!!!!7 -
Had a client whom was using the staging system on my server as cdn, remote computing, etc... because his prod server was a cheap vhost while the vm was a beast compared to it. I shut it down without telling. I just got a call that his site is now slow a f and full of errors.
I kindly told him that there was a recent security breach called dirty cow. Then I told him that I shut the vm down because it would mean security risk for him since there are no patches available yet and only Power on again with there was work for me to do.
If you want resources pay for them -
Has any of your previous client contacted you during covid 19 period hoping you’re out of work and available to work for them for cheap?
The client who contacted me was visibly disappointed to know covid has not affected my work.1 -
Am doing an online shop for some client as a side project. The client never requested a module enabling an admin user to manipulate listed products. Now this cheap genius wants to be able to login as a seller and manipulate whatever products they've listed. So I told the client it's not possible to do that because passwords are stored as hashes. Now, can you Guess who's storing clear text passwords ?
May shit never hits the fan.3 -
So I get to work on building a client at work for industrial automation. I am building a mini hmi to show customers how our server works. The code uses opcua. The reason I am making a client is because all the opcua hmis on the market are really expensive. There is nothing less than $600. There are hmis for free out there, but none of them say they support opcua. opcua has become a major protocol in the industrial automation industry.
It took me about 2 days to gin together a client that is pretty much abstracted and will be easy to maintain. A lot of that was just learning the opcua library client code.
Now I want to create servers and clients geared toward home automation for fun and profit. I want to take sensor data from arduinos using a simple serial protocol like modbus or other protocols that are supported. Then have an opcua server that collects this data. Then finally have an opcua hmi that I develop talk to these servers. The security model is much better and would be compatible with other vendors clients/servers. I already have a game engine I want to use for the hmi portion. It has tons of widgets for displaying data, graphs, lists, text, etc. It does both 2d and 3d.
This sounds like a project that could really fun, meshes with my work learning, and provides value to people that want to automate their lives.
The other side effect is that the next time I go looking for a simple and cheap hmi that supports opcua, there will be one. -
Hey, freelancer programmers, web developers, etc. I need your help. I’m writing a “Mother of All Blogs” post about why clients should a) pay you for your work and b) expect to pay you your asking rate. I’m trying to make the argument more forcefully that you get what you pay for with this work and that when you cheap out you only hurt your business bottom line. So, what are your experiences (positive and negative) or points that you would make to a potential client, who wants you to work super cheap or even for free, that you find are irrefutable about this topic? I want to include as many as I can! Thanks.9
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I hate myself. I’m trying to grow my client base by proactively cold-calling and cold-emailing and cold-visiting dozens of likely prospects. There just appears to be no other way to do this in my area. I don’t have the thousands of dollars per month required to get traction in online ads. Why do I hate myself? Because I have to stoop as low as the sales bros I can’t stand to be around. Feeling like a car salesman in a cheap pinstriped suit. I got into tech so I wouldn’t have to do this crap. But how am I supposed to get clients without the shuck and jive of being a salesman? Ugh.2
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PHP features the best of the wicked minds.
In this legacy but still used project just so to save the scourge opening tcp connection (I suppose) some guy wrapped js libs like jQuery, mootools in a script tag.. In individual php files. Then from a main.php include all those libraries. This produces a 2Mb file to send to the client and it's not even compressed. This guy never had any thought about maintenance.
This is one symptom of the problem with PHP that every company developed or have in-house undocumented unmaintained frameworks made by devs without any idea about testing, security and more.
Gosh in a previous work I've seen a PHP cron that used arguments passed to a switch case of 25 cases.
It took 19 years for the language to get a standard, meanwhile leaving the web landscape as a mess of bad coding practices, bad design practices, SQL injections, outdated tutorials and more. PHP is the example that it's not because it's used on almost all the web that it's good, it only means that's it's cheap! Cheap like asking a red neck to build you a car and he tows (deploy) it to your house with his own tow truck he built.
https://blog.codinghorror.com/codin... -
Meet up with a new client, everything looks good feature wise and planning. Then the $ hits & I get hit up the fucking ass again.3
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Client picks Wordpress, and theme instead of a custom built site because it's cheap. I'm fine with that since it will be easy...then criticize the look two weeks later and tells me no offense 😂😂😂😂😂2
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Everyone here rants about clients, and as far as I understand frustration, I understand client's side too.
For 2 years I have developed a tool for our company, my manager was responsible for outcome and was directly accountable to company's management, which made him a client for our product. Of course requirements changed many times, he pressured us much, but he is nice guy and gave us knowledge why we had to change things again. We had meetings with him, HRs, PMs and others to gain requirements for features to implement and that made me better understand client's point of view.
My point is that when you work for external companies, you only see changing requirements, pressure, deadlines, etc, but don't think that your work is just a part of process - your client is responsible for your delivery, wants to make good impression on superiors or company needs some feature ASAP. He does not have to know tech stuff, he wants outcome to be good and to be fast and cheap - that is business.
And yes - we had to tell people that X is impossible many times, had to tell Y people how things work over and over. It may seem easier when it is your own company, but note that every single employee knew that you developed that tool and you have answers for his questions.
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