Clients be like...

clients union

Well, it happened. The stupidest request, no demand, I have ever, and most likely will ever receive...

Me: So what is it you're looking to do with your website.

Client: We're not showing up Facebook's home page. We need you to fix that. We have a budget of $10,000 to make this happen right now.

Me: As much as I'd love to take your money, that isn't something I can control. Every "home page" is profile-based, which technically isn't a homepage, but a "feed" that changes constantly. So say you create a profile on Facebook, only those you follow, and paid posts show up on your feed. What I can do however is use your budget to create and promote posts from your company page to show on users' feeds. If you're serious about marketing, we can start slow at $250/week, then work our way up or down based on results until your budget is exhausted, then re-evaluate the budget at that time. I can tailor a retainer for you based on the number of ads per week that you'd like to make.

Client: No, this is not what we're asking for at all.

Me: Okay...what is it you're looking for exactly? Run through this in as much detail as possible so I can get on the same page.

Client: We want to be on the main home page of facebook.com. We want our logo on that page when people sign up to make an account, linking to our website.

Me: That's simply not possible. That's Facebook's own home page. Nobody has a right to edit that other than Facebook itself.

Client: Bullshit. There's a Facebook developers section with APIs to edit and view Facebook's entire website. We would do it ourselves, but we signed up and don't understand how to change it in Chrome. That's why we need you and [referring client] said you were the best guy for our needs.

Me: That API has no control over Facebook's corporate data, including their own home page. That API designed ONLY for sections in which you are authorized to access or modify, such as your personal profile or created page for your business.

Client: We know that it can be done. If you don't do it, we'll find someone else who can.

Me: Well good luck with that, because the only way it would be remotely possible to do that WILL involve prison time, since that would be illegal. The only legal way to do it would be to buy Facebook, and they'll laugh you out of the building with that offer. But I'm done with this conversation because I have work to complete from clients that aren't delusional. Have a nice day! [hang up]

----

What. The. Fuck.

This is what happens when you listen to clients

"Like Facebook, but better"

Fucking clients:/

TL;DR: Clients are dumb.

Client IT Lead: "Your code isn't working on our website."

Me: "Because you didn't load our code into your website. Do that, and everything works."

CIL: <proposes terrible alternative>

M: "No fix on my end will matter if you don't load our code into your website."

CIL: <more disagreement>

M: "Let me discuss with my team and I'll get back to you."

... later that day, in a follow up meeting with client's team ...

M: "Load our code into your website as was initially intended and everything works fine."

CIL's Boss: "That makes complete sense, and I'm not sure why we weren't doing that from the beginning. Let's make that happen, CIL."

CIL: "Okay."

——

👨🏽‍💻🤷🏽‍♂️🤦🏽‍♂️

This was my first freelancer project. Just dropped out of school, i think i was 17. No money, no proper hardware, i had a very old laptop & stolen wifi from our neighbor. I lived in a very small room at my mom’s flat, she wanted me out as soon as i turn 18. At the time my plan was to work on freelancer stuff and make my own games. “It will be fine, fuck school, who needs school? 😂“ I haven’t really finished anything back then, so i only had a few wip hobby projects to show ppl as my references. I saw a freelancer job posting. The task was to make a simple quiz game for mobile, it paid 350$. Back then that was a lot of money for me so i took it. I met the client, he said “2-3 week tops, i send you everything, you do the code” Cool. I finally had a “job”😃. The 2-3 weeks turned into a 8 month blur of all-nighting and just implement one more thing and its finished. I did not really have any experience on how to deal with clients and i really needed this project to finally have something on my porfolio. I motivated myself with “if i can finish this i can finish anything”. I think the story of my most definitive all-nighting was 3 months into the development. I finally got everything from the client so it was like just put it together and its done. The client wanted 300 levels, beeing a noob i was i started making all the 300 unity scenes by hand, aligning the pictures, the ui, testing each level, making adjustments to the code, etc.. after a really long night and a fuckton of caffeine i was done. I sent it to the client at around 9 am and gone to sleep. When i woke up i checked my emails to saw this: Cool! But can we do hints? (wich needed a fuckton of rework of my code) I think i had my first mental breakdown while working on the project. After that he wanted more modifications and because i made every level by hand i had to remake all of them like 10 times 😂
But in the end it turned out positive, he really helped me to start my carrier, we became sord of friends and the project gave me a lot of confidence and experience on how to deal with stuff when shit goes wrong because everything that can go wrong in a project gone wrong. It was the most valuable developer lesson. Plus it sounds so cool to say “i was born in development hell, b*tch!”🕶
I attached a pic of the laptop i worked on 😂
Thanks for reading 😃

Confessions of a Programmer

#1
If a client is an unbearable asshole during the initial communication, I look for every excuse to pad on the hours for the estimate to get paid more. If a client goes above and beyond in their douchbaggery, I tack on an additional $40/hour.

#2
Sometimes I will present an elaborate solution to a client, but really I'm just reading off the features of a plugin or library I'm going to download or buy after the call. Not because I can't build it myself, but because I'd rather spend more time on other/my own projects.

#3
Clients assume because I know one language, I know them all. Rather than turning down the work, I take a crash course to work in that language, or outsource the work and clean it up afterwards, whichever is more practical at the time.

#4
I use cPanel on a dedicated to manage our client websites. I'm not paid enough to bother with setting up everything manually.

#5
Certain projects I build have a 3-day backdoor built into it. If the client doesn't pay upon completion, a unique hash triggered as a GET variable deletes a core file in my work, rendering the work useless. If it wasn't triggered by the 4th day, the file allowing me to trigger this backdoor is removed. This is only used for clients where the project must be launched on their servers, or if there has been a previous issue collecting payment.

#6
I slip in the initial contract that all preceeding phone calls will be monitored and recorded, and that they acknowledge the recordings are admissable in court. This has saved me from losing money twice now.

#7
I have never used an IDE. (I know, I know, it's really inefficient and dumb, but I'm just more comfortable with Sublime. Plus I often find myself mobile and without my computer, so I have to program from my phone.)

#8
Each day resembles a betting spectacle of which work will be late, which will be rushed out and which will never see the light of day.

#9
I have used "sick" and "family emergency" as an excuse to just sleep in far more than I can count.

#10
When a client from hell crosses over the line in their conduct (such as getting very nasty and personal, or sending threats), I anonymously report them to the BBB and on RipOffReport.

Trying to make a not realistic deadline,set today for yesterday. Pleasing clients is what I do.

With a little #catsupport, she is probably wondering why I'm not in bed so she can sleep on me.

clients...

I swear all my clients are like these! I can probably teach a blind monkey faster than these idiots.

PC: marketoonist

[Thursday afternoon on a call...]

Client: Before we get started, can you create a sitescape outlining all of the pages and sections of the new website?

Me: Sure! I'll go through the website and shoot you a full layout in xls format as soon as possible, that way you can easily make notes on what you want added, modified or removed.

[Two hours later...]

Client: Hey, did you build that sitescape yet?

Me: Actually, I've been on back-to-back calls with other clients.

Client: So when are you going to get it done?

Me: Well, I have to go through the current website in it's entirety, which I'm guessing is about 1,000 pages. I have to determine which pages work fine on their own, which need to be combined for better presentation and which should be removed due to redundancy. That's something that is tedious and takes some time to complete. That, in combination with having an existing work queue that I need to fit you within and being at the end of the work week, we're looking at Tuesday morning to have it ready.

Client: "Existing work queue"? This is ridiculous. We're paying you good money to make our project your only priority. If we wanted to wait days for work, we would have saved money and paid for a cheaper service. You're already gouging us as it is! If we don't get the sitescape by end of day Friday, we're going with another company.

Me: I would tell you that I'm sorry for the inconvenience, but I'm not. I'm not going to feed you a line to make you happy. I'm also not going to work on my days off just to rush something out to you. You hired us because you wanted things done right, not quickly. Your current website is the result of not focusing on quality, but by how fast you can deliver it. We don't work that way. We only build quality products.

By rushing your project, not only do we alienate our current clients, affecting our reputation, but we build product of less than the highest quality. That will upset you because it isn't perfect, and it reflects poorly on us to use it in our portfolio.

If you want to hire someone to pump out this project to your unrealistic deadlines, be our guest. But you paid a 50% non-refundable deposit, so not only will you lose money, but your end product will suffer.

I'm going to let you sleep on this. If you decide tomorrow that another direction is the way to go, we wish you luck. But please understand that if we conclude our business, we will no longer make ourselves available for your needs.

Please find the attached contracts you have signed, acknowledging the non-refundable deposit, as well as the project timeline and scope, of which a "sitescape" was never originally mentioned or blocked out for time.

I hope that tomorrow we can move forward in a more professional manner.

[Next morning...]

Client: My apologies for yesterday. We're just very anxious to get this started.

-----

Don't let clients push you around. Make them sign a contract and enforce it whenever necessary.

*meeting with boss about a quick site for one of her clients*

Boss- "okay so basically I just want you to copy the content from -already made site- and put it on the new one"

Me- "okay sure do you want it verbatim or "

Boss-"no but something similar"

Me-"okay so you want me to paraphrase this list that's on the homepage?"

Boss-"Well no we dont actually need the list at all as it isnt relevant to us so just take that out"

Me-"okay well that is the only thing on the homepage so what should I replace it with"

Boss-"I dont know, something similar to the list. You can figure something out"

Me-"....I dont know anything about the clients business. I am not going to just make up content, you guys can at least give me some direction there"

Boss-"i didnt think it would be that hard"

Me-"it's really not hard. You're making it harder than it needs to be for me though. Anyway, do you wanna keep the same exact pages as the other site or only transfer some of them or"

Boss-"something that resembles that website but isnt exactly it so some of the pages but not all"

Me-"which ones"

Boss-"the ones relevant to client's business"

Me-*closes notebook, stands up, starts to leave room*

Boss-"where are you going"

Me-"I'm going to get another two cups of coffee cause I didnt have enough this morning for this bullshit"

Boss-*raises eyebrow*

Me-"dont tell me to copy paste a website at first and then continue to tell me its going to be "similar" but different and then further continue to be as vague as possible about what is expected of me to be done in order to make it different! Take the time to decide what it is you want exactly and then tell me, with detail, what you're criteria is so I can do the thing!! I cant read your mind."

Boss-"..... I just didnt think it would be that hard to jot in a few sentences here and there"

I left the room at that point. Irritating as fuck. You dont know tech stuff, don't expect me to know enough about YOUR job to write about it as if I'm a professional. I cant fucking read minds, I have no interest in researching anything just to create the site content myself, and its fucking rude that they wont even take the time to sit down and decide what they want for a website that THEY are paying for. For fucks sake people get your fucking shit together

Client: Can you provide some kind of guaranteed timeline that you're going to be able to move our website to our new servers with the optimizations implemented? I know you said it should take a week, but we have 3 weeks to get this moved over and we cannot afford to be double billed. I'm waiting to fire up the new server until you can confirm.

Me: As I said, it SHOULD take about a week, but that's factoring in ONLY the modifications being made for optimization and a QA call to review the website. This does not account for your hosting provider needing to spin up a new server.

We also never offered to move your website over to said new server. I sent detailed instructions for your provider to move a copy of the entire website over and have it configured and ready to point your domain over to, in order to save time and money since your provider won't give us the access necessary to perform a server-to-server transfer. If you are implying that I need to move the website over myself, you will be billed for that migration, however long it takes.

Client: So you're telling me that we paid $950 for 10 hours of work and that DOESN'T include making the changes live?

Me: Why would you think that the 10 hours that we're logged for the process of optimizing your website include additional time that has not been measured? When you build out a custom product for a customer, do you eat the shipping charges to deliver it? That is a rhetorical question of course, because I know you charge for shipping as well. My point is that we charge for delivery just as you do, because it requires our time and manpower.

All of this could have been avoided, but you are the one that enforced the strict requirement that we cannot take the website down for even 1 hour during off-peak times to incorporate the changes we made on our testbed, so we're having to go through this circus in order to deliver the work we performed.

I'm not going to give you a guarantee of any kind because there are too many factors that are not within our control, and we're not going to trap ourselves so you have a scapegoat to throw under the bus if your boss looks to you for accountability. I will reiterate that we estimate it would take about a week to implement, test and run through a full QA together, as we have other clients within our queue and our time must be appropriately blocked out each day. However, the longer you take to pull the trigger on this new server, the longer it will take on my end to get the work scheduled within the queue.

Client: If we get double billed, we're taking that out of what we have remaining to pay you.

Me: On the subject of paying us, you signed a contract acknowledging that you would pay us the remaining 50% after you approved the changes, which you did last week, in order for us to deliver the project. Thank you for the reminder that your remaining balance has not yet been paid. I'll have our CFO resend the invoice for you to remit payment before we proceed any further.

---

I love it when clients give me shit. I just give it right back.

Fellow front end coworker got asked via email today to "capitalize the '2019' in the headline".

Still laughing over this.

Heard a new one from the client today.
Said with a straight face, "You guys write your HTML in all caps, right? It's better for SEO."

Going on a vacation, so notify all clients that I won't be available during two weeks.

Client: well we have this huge presentation and here's a list of stuff we absolutely need for it
Me: sure I have a look.
Me: holy shit dude! That's gona take about 2-3 days. I'm leaving soon!
Client: it's realy critical to have them in a week as it's a very important presentation! Is there any way you can make it work? If we can do anything to help, just name it.
Me: well I'll do my best (planed 1 day for such rhings)
Me: *pulling a 15h day*
Me: here, all done budy! Did a 15h but now it's done, so do that presentation!
Client: oh, nice, but it wasn't that urgent
Me: ...

Next day:
Client ssh in to the server, fucks shit up
Client: well I did a thing and now stage and prod is fucked, can you do anything?
Me: (knowing it will take 30min to fix) well... I try my best. Btw. I'll leave in a few hours and won't take my computer, so try not to fuck every thing again, okay?

When the client is happy!

Client: Please fix the logo.
Me: Okay, what needs to be fixed exactly?
Client: Put this word next to that word(shows me an example).
Me: Okay, no problem.
*after 5 minutes*
Client: You did not do what I asked for. Please fix the logo. Make it look better. Make it bigger and more outstanding. Dont change my logo
Me: Okay, I will revert the changes.
*Reverts to the old logo, and only does that as I do not fucking know what to do with oudstanding for fucks sake*
Client: I will talk to your boss. No one cares. My web site is not even finished and no one cares.
*It is finished, now the client looks for small things to make a big issue of*
Me: Could you please tell me in detail, what do you need to be fixes?
Client: I want the wording better. Im going to talk to your boss...

well fuuuck fucking fuck Im pissing blood!!!!!!!!!

So, our clients missed their internal deadline this weekend so we as vendor were also forced to work for the weekend and implement new features in a very short period. I implemented new features and my project manager stayed to support the testing and sent me home as I already had tickets bought for the movie.

As someone who hasn't done any developing in a long long time he even tried to implement some changes and complex JavaScript dom manipulation that they asked during testing so that I could be with my gf.

Few hours later he called me and with a sad voice said he is simply too slow and needs my help after all . I came and we stayed until 00h and solved everything. He paid for the movie and taxi.
The thing that impressed me was that he was willing to took over my job so that I wouldn't break my deal.

Best project manager ever!

P.S. Yes my gf went alone at the movie and yes we are still together xD

Apparantly, wanting to use company assets for a smoke machine so when clients visit you can say "Welcome to the cloud!" is immature.

Dear clients.

Putting your support subject or content either in uppercase letters or telling US that your matter/ticket has 'the utmost priority' doesn't mean anything to us. You'll just have to keep in line.

WE decide the priorities. Also, calling us when we haven't looked into your very fucking high priority ticket yet for about 5 FUCKING minutes is NOT going to help YOU.

- One of the Linux Support Engineers.

"Who is JSON, and why is he on my website"

Clients. 😂😂

"Oh c'mon, my 14 yr old son can change background color of entire website and you're charging me extra for simple face detection feature?"

How the fuck did clients convince themselves they can have a developer build an Amazon, booking.com, Facebook, Airbnb or site of the sorts for 500 bucks on FUCKING WORDPRESS?!

One of our clients deploy their own server app. So this happened after a prod deployment. (4am)

*Cellphone rings while sleeping*

Client : we need you on the conference call now. URGENT!

*Gets on conference call*
*Client explain the problem*
*Explaining to the client that the problem is in their side (https connection not working, either network or certificate problem)*
*Client doesn't believe it and pushes me for a fix that I have no control on*
*4 hours later in a heated conversation*

Client : ok problem is on our side. We used our SSL certificate from staging with production and thought it would work.

Me :

Ok, so I have a SAAS website where users pay a daily fee to use my platform as there fundraiser landing page.

A new client comes, asks for a discount, and got a 50% off because his brother was a previous client.

Him: Can you please add a list of the days of the year so a donor can donate a day?

Me: Sure, sounds like a good idea, and will probably take me about a week to implement with testing etc. And so I want $$ (hourly rate * one week) for the work.

Him: Don't bluff me I understand a bit in programming, it shouldn't take you more than an hour, and I am paying you, so you should do it for free.

Me: Ok, here is a fair deal, since you understand in programming, build it for me, I give you two weeks and I will pay you double what I am asking for.

Him: I don't understand enough to do it myself, I just estimated how much work it is.

Me: Forget about it, if you want me to build you this feature, you pay. If not you can go to my competition happily.

Who needs bad clients at all?
Why do they think they know everything?
And why don't they understand that time is money?

Just had a meeting with clients...
Accurate as fuck.

How programmer wanted clients to do it vs. how clients do it.
Btw got them 1k =]

fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking clients!

Some clients are a real patience test.

Client:
"I want to be able to edit every detail on every page of the whole website"

After site is coded, and admin page is available for page edits, they send requests like:
"please update the text on page x"

tl;dr stupid clients with their stupid requirements.

Client: (on Monday) hypothetically could you implement "A"?
Me: (on Monday) yeah I could do that by Friday, let me know if you want me to start it.
Client: (on Thursday) hey remember we talked about "A" well do "B" instead and I'll need it by Friday still.
Me: "B" is completely different than "A" and will take probably twice as long.
Client: but you told me you could do it by Friday.
Me: ............ I want to smash your face.

!rant source: LinkedIn;
Yesterday I met with a potential client who wanted a website. I gave him a quote of X. He said, do this work for X/2 as I have lots of projects and I can keep you engaged for months.

If it was 2 years ago, I'd have happily accepted his proposal. But in the past 2 years I have learned this lesson hard way. Don't work for clients who don't pay well, because when a developer is not paid enough, the quality of work degrades. Hence the portfolio is degraded and so the future projects are also of low budget.

And before you know it, you will be surrounded by low paying clients who see you as a Skilled Labour.

Today, I don't negotiate, not even a single dollar. To justify my cost I make sure that no stones are left unturned while delivery.

It's better to work for 10 hours a week for 40$/hr then to work 40 hours a week for 10$/hr.

Understand clients needs and requirements at first time

Whenever the clients try to lowball my price.

Clients can such cheapskates, client asks me for hosting options, I suggest Webfaction ($10/m), decent service, storage etc. Client goes and buys ($20/year) hosting, storage space 2GB. Client has 2.9GB worth of emails. Now am charging said client ($110) for migration.

Apparently, clients/managers favorite acronym is ASAP.

Ok, so I don't work yet and so I've never had to deal with any clients but based on the rants i have read this is how stupid I imagine most of them are.

Dev: Hey, would you like a chocolate bar?
Client: Yeah, sure.
Dev: here:
*hands chocolate bar over*
*client holds it in his hands, opens it and eats it*
Client: Tastes great
Dev: Ok, nice. So about the payment of the project...
*Clients face is swollen and he falls to the ground*
Dev: uhh, what are you doing?
Client *coughing*: Were.. were there nuts in the chocolate bar?
Dev: uhmm, yes. didn't you look at it?
Client: why didn't you tell me??!?!?!? I am allergic to nuts!!
Dev: uhh, I didn't know that. But srsly, did you not look at the wrapping of the fucking chocolate bar??!
Client: I am going to sue you!! You will go to prison!
Dev: Fuck off *leaves the room*

Image of the chocolate bar:

About a year ago, I did an e-commerce for a client who wanted to sell electronic goods. It was a custom design, so the team prepared a mock-up and we showed it to the client who absolutely loved it. The specs were that he was going to sell only a few products (like 50 or so) so the website had to showcase the categories and didn't need to put a lot of products on page. Also the design had to be unique as he wanted to be different from his competitors.

A few weeks later, during the dev phase the client checks again the design and starts doubting about it. We redesign it adjusting to his oppinion. A week later he schedules a meeting where he starts complaining that the deadline is late and that the design doesn't accomplish his specs. At that meeting he tells us that he wants to sell thousands of articles since he's doing dropshipping.

We start from scratch and make a third design, which he approves after quite a lot of changes. He also asks for a dropshipping plugin which we install in its free version, when he complains about having to update manually, we answer politely that he has to purchase the paid version.

Fast forward, we deploy the website and the design has a few issues related to responsive development. We fix it quickly and the site starts working.

He also has a physical shop, however, since he's competing with big corporates like Amazon or eBay and he can't offer any difference, neither his phisical address or his on-line shop manages to be profitable.

He decides to close the business but before, he calls my PM saying that the website has "never worked" (There were a couple of people who bought with 0 issues and we tested the site countless times). And that we shouldn't have recommended a custom design because the website never worked. He also implied that we should compensate him because of that.

I've never seen my PM to tell someone to "fuck off" as fast as he did.

When I opened my digital agency it was me and my wife as developers, I had no savings and I needed to get long contracts ASAP which luckily I did straight away.

Lovely client, had worked for them before as a consultant so i thought it would be a breeze. Let's just say the project should've been named "Naivete, Scope Creep and Anger: The revenge".

What happened is that when this project was poised to end I naively thought I would be able to close the job, so I started looking for a new full time consultancy gig and found one where I could work from home, and agreed a starting date.

Well, the previous job didn't end because of flaws in my contract the client exploited, leaving me locked in and working full time, for free, for basically as long as he wanted (I learned a lot the hard way at that time) and I had already started the new agreed job. This meant I was now working 2 full time shifts, 16 hours per day.

Then, two support contracts of 2 hours per day were activated, bringing my work load to 20 hours/day.

I did this for 4 months.

The first job was supposed to last one month, and I was locked into it, all others had no end in sight which is a good thing as a freelancer, but not when you are locked into a full time one already. I could've easily done one 8 hours shift and two 2 hours jobs per day, but adding another 8 hours on top of it was insanity.

So I was working 10 hours, and sleeping 2. I had no weekends, didn't know if it was day or night anymore, I was locked in my room, coding like a mad man, making the best out of a terrible situation, but I was mentally destroyed.

I was waking up at 10am, working until 8pm, sleeping 2 hours until 10pm, working until 8am, sleeping 2 hours until 10am, and so on. Kudos to my wife for dealing with account and project management and administration responsibilities while also helping me with small pieces of code along the way, couldn't have survived without the massive amount of understanding she offered.

In the end:

- I forcefully closed the messed up contract job and sent all the work done to another digital agency I met along the way, very competent people, as I still cared about the project.

- I missed a deadline on my other full time contract by 2 days, meaning they missed a presentation for Adobe, of all people, and I lost the job

- The other two support contracts were finished successfully, but as my replies were taking too long they decided not to work with us anymore.

So I lost 4 important clients in the span of 4 months. After that I took a break of one month, slept my troubles away, and looked for a single consultancy full time contract, finding it soon after, and decided I wouldn't have my own clients for a good while.

3 years since then, I still don't have the willpower or the resources to deal with clients of my own and I'm happily trudging along as a consultant, while still having middle of the night nightmare flashbacks to that time.

If y'all need a lil help with clients and conversating, here's my personal way of ending conversations. Just acknowledge it! (If all else fails, take things into consideration)

Friend: I hear that the most viewed youtube video ever is now despacito
> I acknowledge that
*conversation end*

Co-worker: I love my new shoes!
> I acknowledge that
*end*

Hot girl: hey sexy, you're looking fine today
> I acknowledge that
*end*

Client: hey could you add x?
> No
*end*

Sibling: you're adopted
> I acknowledge that
*end*

(Consideration example)
Windows: I will update
> I will take that into consideration
*end*

trogus: I will make a line of debugging ducks with capes with their respective language on it
dfox: I acknowledge that
*end*

Bus driver: sir please wake up the busses are closed
> I acknowledge that *sleeps*
*end*

Python: wrong amount of tabs/spaces
> I acknowledge that *uninstalls python*
*end*

devRant: you are running out of characters for this rant
> I ackno

The company motto

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?"

What is it with clients who have never even seen a single line of code in their entire lives telling me how long they believe a certain change request should take to code.

I mean, what if I told you that your "seemingly simple enough" change needed an update to 36 class files, 9 oracle stored procedures AND several database schema changes. Also, who the fuck is going to perform a regression test to make sure I didn't break anything? Your Uncle Bob??

Me: How big do you want the banner to be (in pixels)?
Client: Mhhh... do default size

DEFINE 'DEFAULT SIZE' STUPID MORON

Client: "We don't want line breaks in that column make it 500px wide!"
Me: Makes the column 500px wide. Sees that the line breaks are still there. Asks if it should be made wider to fit the text.
Client: "Just implement what we send you"
Me: Ok (thinking wtf)
Client after testing: "Why are there still line breaks?!?"
🙄😥😤😭
Why the actual hell can't they get there freaking requirements in order?!? This shit happens with every fourth request!

Upwork clients in a nutshell...

Dear Clients,

You are always correct and stupid.

When two different clients, on the same day, congrats and thanks us for the work made by me and my team.

This was today.

...

The best part, they pay the bills XD

Fuck those clients which are surprised when they get an invoice when they ask you to do something for them.

I think it's as simple as:

- you know my hourly rate
- you ask me to do some work for you
- I give you an estimation
- you agree with the estimation
- I get the job done and show it to you
- you accept the edits/solutions
- I send you an invoice with less hours than estimated
- you agree with the invoice and pay

It seems that every step is going well, except the last one...

Well... fuck you too.

When the client says "I just need a really easy edit, shouldn't take more than a few minutes."

*in my head* "Oh really? Can you do it? No? Then don't tell me how easy it is going to be to find the one line of code I need to edit out of thousands of lines in hundreds of files."

A few months ago, I decided to let go some old clients with bad behavior and/or bad projects, since I noticed this was affecting my mental health (lowering my self esteem, make me feel depressed, anxious, etc).

I was exhausted of doing miracles in projects without git, build files, staging enviroments (yes... you can imagine), and receive all sort of curses when sudenly something stopped to work.

I set some requirements to work with any new project/client: 1) project needs to be under version control, 2) it must have staging enviroment, 3) I must work with build files.

As I still have contracts running, I'm communicating this to clients as soon as I finish my obligations.

Today, one of these clients told me they are leaving to work with another developer.

Reason: They said my new requirements are unreasonable and they prefer doing the old way.

App nearing completion. Code tested, everything's working fine. Ready for release.

The client just calls me and tells me that they have decided to turn the app into two separate ones. Should not be a problem, you developers must have some tricks for that, according to the client. Of course, the release date remains unchanged.

Clients!, finally understand that there's no secret button for turning an app into two separate ones.

I'm really starting to get annoyed with clients not understanding design principles.

I know they're not supposed to and it is their product at the end of the day but when I design something, it is for a reason. That "empty space" is for a reason. It is "negative space" next to something important so the FOCUS is on the IMPORTANT THING.

I don't just fucking leave gaps because "why not". I leave gaps to focus people's attention.

Ha, this is so true...

Me: Have you finished the MVP description?
Client: No
Client: But I found you a girlfriend
Client: *name*
Client: 21

😑

So this client wanted a demo on Dockers. So I gave the demo with some microservices running on different containers. Later the clients come back and say, "Docker is good. But please fit all the microservices in one container." I say but that defeats the purpose of microservices. But no, the client say. I tried explaining but no is no. Shit!! Fine! Have it your way!!

True story.
Some clients (especially in India) don't want to pay, but they want everything to be implemented in the project.

Big data.... Check
Machine learning.... Check
Deep learning..... Check
Espresso maker.... Check.

They want all the buzz words that are buzzing to be put in your project and they want you to put it in the 'cloud', for which you have to pay.....

The worst part about being a web developer is when clients ruin a perfectly good website by asking for dumb things, even though you told them it's either:
a) near impossible
b) not useful/helpful to users
c) deprecated/no longer used code/techniques
e) will harm performance and SEO
d) just plain stupid

I am building an ecommerce site and the client is asking me to hide the product prices because he doesn't want his competitors to see his prices. He also thinks it is a smart move not to allow users create an account and use it immediately. He wants to manually approve every user that signs up.
Why do people who know nothing always argue with us when it comes to our job?

What we have to deal with.

I can now understand the pain of developers here

Clients are pain in the Ass

Ignorant Rats

this.isRant === True
Salute to everyone who can handle clients (the dumb ones).
So the client I'm freelancing for gives me this website and asks me to scrape entries out of it. It had about 45 items. I did that sent the file. Next day he says my file had the wrong data. He wanted data which satisfies X but the URL given was for Y. The least he could have done was to let me know in the first place instead of giving random URL to scrape and then blame me.

I hate clients that tell the developers what to use without discussion.

We're paid to solve problems.

Dictatorship on tools and methodologies are okay with junior devs or interns, but when you have senior devs, it has to be a democracy.

Having limitations like browser versions or server capabilities are fine, but declaring which slider to use, you MUST use jquery, or all that jazz just grinds my gears.

...when users create a ticket or call support because they forgot their password. Even though there is a big 'forgot your password?'-button right below the login form.

I always wonder if they also call Google or Facebook when they forget their password on those accounts...

!rant but nightly thoughts about wrecking clients that won't pay

If you're building something for a client for money, think of a killswitch.

If it requires internet anyway and you have a webserver, do something similar to what the killswitch of WannaCrypt was (but rather checking for a file on the webserver for existing/non-existing). If the client won't pay, kill the application. If the client pays, maybe even deliver a version without killswitch later (as a "bugfix")

If it is some offline project, you can check for a date (payment due date?) and also check for date/time manipulation on the system itself, and disable the killswitch via a "bugfix" version later just like above.

If clients pay, they don't have trouble. Else, they do.

Wk1:, Client wants stack deployed to AWS in a day... Does it in 30 minutes...

Wk2: client complains about cost of service so requests I downsize the stack they asked for... Does so... Just to save some £££ at loss of any DR or HA capability

Wk3: Client wants stack moved to a different AWS account just cos... Advised could cause issues... Client says carry on. Migrates to account as requested on the days they requested.

Wk4: client complains that said migration caused issues and that proper change control wasn't followed..... That was never informed on..

Wk5: issue discovered to actually be network fault linked to clients wanting every £££ saved in AWS... And as the stack specialist I still have to write up a summary and findings?

Wow just get a decent AWS admin will ya....

Hey guys,

this rant will be long again. I'm sorry for any grammar errors or something like that, english isn't my native language. Furthermore I'm actually very sad and not in a good mood.

Why? What happened? Some of you may already know - I'm doing my apprenticeship / education in a smal company.
There I'm learning a lot, I'm developing awesome features directly for the clients, experience of which other in my age (I'm only 19 years old) can only dream.
Working in such a small company is very exhausting, but I love my job, I love programming. I turned my hobby into a profession and I'm very proud of it.
But then there are moments like the last time, when I had to present something for a client - the first presentation was good, the last was a disaster, nothing worked - but I learned from it.

But this time everything is worse than bad - I mean really, really worse than bad.

I've worked the whole week on a cool new feature - I've done everything that it works yesterday, that everything gets done before the deadline of yesterday.

To achieve this I've coded thursday till 10pm ! At home! Friday I tested the whole day everything to ensure that everything is working properly. I fixed several bugs and then at the end of the day everything seems to be working. Even my boss said that it looks good and he thinks that the rollout to all clients will become good and without any issues.

But unfortunately deceived.

Yesterday evening I wrote a long mail to my boss - with a "manual". He was very proud and said that he is confident that everything will work fine. He trusts me completly.

Then, this morning I received a mail from him - nothing works anymore - all clients have issues, everything stays blank - because I've forgotten to ensure that the new feature (a plugin) and its functionality is supported by the device (needs a installation).
First - I was very shoked - but in the same moment I thought - one moment - you've written an if statement, if the plugin is installed - so why the fuck should it broken everything?!
I looked instant to the code via git. This has to be a very bad joke from my boss I thought. But then I saw the fucking bug - I've written:
if(plugin) { // do shit }
but it has to be if(typeof plugin !== 'undefined')

I fucked up everything - due to this fucking mistake. This little piece of shit I've forgotten on one single line fucked up everything. I'm sorry for this mode of expression but I thought - no this can not be true - it must be a bad bad nightmare.
I've tested this so long, every scenario, everything. Worked till the night so it gets finished. No one, no one from my classmates would ever think of working so long. But I did it, because I love my job. I've implemented a check to ensure that the plugin is installed - but implemented it wrong - exactly this line which caused all the errors should prevent exactly this - what an irony of fate.

I've instantly called my boss and apologized for this mistake. The mistake can't be undone. My boss now has to go to all clients to fix it. This will be very expensive...

Oh my goodnes, I just cried.
I'm only working about half a year in this company - they trust me so much - but I'm not perfect - I make mistakes - like everyone else. This time my boss didn't looked over my code, didn't review it, because he trusted me completly - now this happens. I think this destroyed the trust :( I'm so sad.
He only said that we will talk on monday, how we can prevent such things in the feature..
Oh guys, I don't know - I've fucked up everything, we were so overhelmed that everything would work :(
Now I'm the looser who fucked up - because not testing enough - even when I tested it for days, even at home - worked at home - till the night - for free, for nothing - voluntary.

This is the thanks for that.
Thousand good things - but one mistake and you're the little asshole. You - a 19 year old guy, which works since 6 months in a company. A boss which trusts you and don't look over your code. One line which should prevent crashing, crashed everything.

I'm sorry that this rant is so long, I just need to talk to you guys because I'm so sad. Again. This has happend to frequently lately.

Know about your clients...

Bout to loose my shit. Fucking hate it when clients push and push to launch the system as urgently as possible. Say they have run through the test version and understand what they are getting and sign it all off. Then come back 2am the day after launch and bitch and moan cause its missing features they thought where there when they weren't part of the original planning and always use the excuse "i have just bought a bunch of marketing, your loosing me money" or "I have an important even with important people that need this tomorrow" and try make it your fucking problem.
Firstly, fuck you
Secondaly, fuck you.
I cant even comprehend your lack of logic.

I just hate it when clients with no knowledge of developing says I'm looking for "more professional"

FUCK YOU!!!!!!!!!

Somebody did that with dedication and you can't just call it that!!

SCREW YOU!!!
😡😡😡😡😡

Google Chrome has adopted material design. Expecting a change request from the client to change it back to how it looked before.

Client: "My proposed deadline can't be met? Maybe we should go to your office and sit right next to you to see how you work."
Yeah right, that surely speeds things up. Even if the ever-changing requirements require at least triple of the time allowed.

!dev

Just went to the pet asylum to look for a cat. There was a shy black one (eh, maybe not a good first but Moar Blacker, Moar Better 😋) and a black and white one which was very open towards me.

Probably I'll get the latter, and build some food, water and litter dispenser systems for it with motors and my esp8266 boards 🙂

The lady who was volunteering there and showed me around had an interesting story though.

Apparently both of those aforementioned cats were wild cats (so they don't come from a proper household or anything). Except that black and white one which apparently came from some rather retarded people.. think average Facebook user.

According to her those previous owners came there with 2 cats including the black and white one as "extremely wild, we found them in the forest, put them in cages (because everyone carries cat cages in their car every day, right?) and brought them here". Nice excuse for average Facebook user level of retard I have to say 😜 but it's not very waterproof, you know?

But on average the people that they get there are even worse than that.. some get a great initial meeting with a cat, but then leave them there because they don't like the stripes on a paw or something stupid like that. As she put it: "you're not fitting pants in a clothing shop, are you?! 😑"
Had to try hard to not burst out in laughter from that description 😂

Point is, the average customers there are awful.. apparently she was very grateful to have a rather down-to-earth customer like me and my home supervisor (who helpfully drove me there 🙂) for once. So terrible clients.. they're everywhere!

It really taught me to be mindful of the hardships of people in any profession who deal with clients.

So, it has been 2 months and a half since I started working. So far I learned two important things.

1. Clients are fucking retards. Like really fucked up shit. I don't even understand how they got the job.

2. Working for a company is nothing like an internship. I now realize much they treated me like shit during my internship compared to my current job. I did my internship in a startup and I now work in a big multinational company, I feel way more welcome in this company than in the startup

So far I really enjoy my work and I've been learning more for the past 2 months than during my studies.

So finished a project for a client, the client signed a contract. He signed off that all milestones where reached. Text me that he was very pleased.
We give 30 days to pay. 8 days before the due date he asked for a meeting, telling us he wants to go another direction and he wants the source code to show the new development team he's going with to get a quote from them. I tell him that, that's fine he can have the source files once he pays for the product which was in the contract they signed mind you!! And this FUCKING DICK FART threats to sue, saying he's calling his lawyer, threatening me and my development partner with physical violence, and saying he's going to sue me personally not because me work was bad but because I refused to give him the product before he paid. I was calm we offered to meet his new dev team explain the code, and show them what they needed to see to give the clients a quote and they would not allow that, saying how now I'm not getting paid instead I'm getting sued and that he will publicly shame my startup company. Just complete bullshit, good thing I saved the original contract he wanted me to sign which had threats of physical violence I. His contract... Which in retrospect should have been a hint, but it was the highest paying contract we ever landed. Seems he never planned on paying. What's a guy to do?

Just received an email from a client letting me know they can't access their email. It was in reply to an email I sent. What?

One of our existing clients who used to pay for two of our products but now only pays for one just called us. The one he canceled is a loss prevention product that tracks internal theft in stores. He canceled it because he didn't feel it was worth it.

Now, he's calling us from a police station because he's trying to press charges against one of his managers because they were presumably stealing from him.

"Hey I need to know how many times this person stole from me over the last few months and I need to know it now because I'm at the police station."

With just a few clicks that would be an easy figure to retrieve for him had he not canceled our product.

My stance is he can get lost. I don't even think he sees the irony of canceling because "it isn't worth it" and then "asap" needing the data that the "worthless" product provides. Of course, he wants it without reactivating the subscription.

Unbelievable.

When you ask a client for website requirements and they respond by pulling out their phone, opening a random indie game and swiping around, saying "It should be dynamic and colorful, like this game."

So last night was a Friday. After leaving the gym I noticed a missed call and a voicemail from my client.

Note this was sent at 21:50 on a Friday night.

My client stated they were "rather disappointed" (to use their phrasing) that I didn't answer. There is no contract that I answer out of hours or any issues with their system.

This morning, I noticed my client followed up with an email. It was a single line saying they found some new AWS services they like to talk about (translate: "I've found some new AWS acronyms that sound cool that I wish to talk about for several hours").

Emergency! :)

Seriously, clients, sometimes :(

I can't complain about clients on devRant because I make a REST API and some of my clients use devRant. Oh wait.

Here's to clients who wish to pay "per project" instead of "per month". Man, fuck that.

Back when I was still a novice, I took on a couple of small time projects from clients who contacted me after looking at my GitHub, and they all wanted to pay me a lump-sum for the project. Because I'm an idiot, I thought sure, what difference would that make. Boy was I wrong.

What followed was me finishing the projects well before time but because of the clients' constant reiterations and changes in design and nitpicking every decision I made while creating the websites for them, the projects dragged on for weeks longer than they were originally intended. And I fucking got paid that one-time amount in the beginning. All this maintenance, for free. Even though I had not explicitly agreed to the maintenance part, since they never finalized the specifications of the project, it just never got "done" officially, and all the maintenance part just came under development.

How many different kinds of disgusting does someone have to be to do this? I should've fucking said NO to those terms, but I had to have experience. Well, nice experience that was. Never again. :(

Clients never have login credentials to their stuff, do they?

Client: there is not Internet connection at our office, it is because we have not paid your service bill?

me: sir, we are a hosting company, please contact to you ISP

Some clients are just assholes!

"Could you make me a nice logo really quick? I have no budget"

.. sure, just let me press the "make Logo"-Button in Illustrator

The client asked for the Vector version of the graphic but refused to pay more.
So I added the jpeg to a new illustrator project and gave him. He thinks he won the bargain.

Why the hell does the client keeps changing the bloody specs? Do they think that they've bought us with their money?

😣😣😣😣

when client sits through a 2h explanation/tutorial for his new CMS and doesn't take any notes.

2 days later, ask where to go to add a product.

Boss: our team in El Salvador is having problems with the app. Look at the email I forwarded you.

Me: oh yes. They are running the wrong ionic commands they need to run these commands.

Boss: okay, and that will fix everything?

Me:...Let's just have them enter the right commands...we can go from there.

Clients always add up:
- The time it took you to create the project.
- Enhancement times.

Client: "How are we still working on this a year later?"

Me: "Well motherfucker, you requested a change recently. It has nothing to do with the original request, nor the last 39 updates."

Like it's my fucking fault you keep changing your mind.

Has any of your clients asked you to disable inspect element and right click on webpages to protect their COPYRIGHT images from being downloaded...

We made a simple SMS application - when there is alert in a building, SMS is sent to specific range of numbers, based on the alert type. After a month we received invoice of approx. 10K € from the client, my colleague was supposed to pay
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
After checking the logs and running tests on module, we found out it was not our fault, client then told us he played with SIM-card while module was sending SMS and somehow he managed to fu*k up. I still don't get it, partially.. Mobile service provider doesn't give a sh!t about sending tons of SMS/hour? No warning, nothing..

Ahh.. Clients, right?

Client: The image upload functionality is broken!!
Me: just tested it, works fine.
Client: no I'm trying to upload this image and it says It cannot complete the request.
Me: hmmm...
Client: does the fact that the image is 36MB has something to do with it?
Me:

So one of our clients is changing the IPs of his systems (3 servers and one VPN).

It was scheduled that we should support them yesterday. They have tried to change the IPs yesterday for almost 16 hours, don't know they have done in all of that time.

Today I woke up at 8AM on a Sunday (in weekends I just want to sleep!!!!) to continue and hope that we finish fast.

BUT NO! THE fucking VPN IS NOT WORKING!! We are trying to do this over Team FUCKIN VIewer.

But guess what... they cannot either connect to the new IPs from their local systems.

You know how we all get frustrated with new clients who don't provide enough information or detailed background of what the last dev did or tried?

Careful what you wish for. Just took on a new client who has sent 3 separate Word docs, all organized and color coded and fully detailed with the website's life history. All 24 pages of it.

We are supposed to fix the checkout flow and organize the download directory. That's all.

Clients don't know what they want!

Was handed a detailed report and asked if I could create a webpage to dynamically generate the same thing from our database. Sure its ez ps lemon squeezy.

Simple page and database query. Boom, done. Exactly matched what they gave me.

They ask why some of the data isn't there. Uh well you cunts it wasn't on the original report...so it's not there obviously.

How clients tend to not understand how much work developing a "simple" or "small" feature can be.

Hey add live chat, that's easy right?

The story of the shittiest, FUCKING WORST day of work.

TLDR: shitty day at work, car crash to end the day.

So, let tell you about what could possibly be the worst day I had since I started working.

This morning, my alarm didn't work, woke up 30 minutes before an appointment I had with a client.

Arrived late at the client, as I start deploying. They don't have any way to transfer the deployment package to the secured server. Lost 45 minutes there.

Deployment goes pretty well. My client asks me to stay while they load some data into the app. Everything's pretty easy to work out. Just need to input 3 CSV with the correct format (which the client defined since the beginning).
I end up watching an Excel Macro called "Brigitte" (I'm not fucking kinding, could'nt have thought of that) work for 4 hours straight. Files are badly formatted and don't work.

Troubbleshooting thoses files with a fucking loader that does not tell you anything about why it failed (our fault on that one)

I leave the client at 7:30pm, going back at work, leave at 9pm.

At this point, I just want to buy some food, go home and watch series.

But NO, A FUCKING MORRON OF A BUS DRIVER had to switch lanes as I was overtaking him. Getting me crushed between the bus and the concrete blocks.

Cops were fucking dickheads, being very mean even tho I was still shaking from the adrenaline.

In conclusion, the day could have been worst. The devs at the clients are pretty cool guys and we actually had some fun troubleshooting. At work, there was still one of my colleagues who cheered me up telling me about his day.
And when I think of it, I could have got really hurt (or even worst) in the crash.

A bad day is a bad day, tomorrow morning I'm still going to get up and go to a job I love, with people I love working with.

Very big rant (sorry about that if someone's still reading)

To understand the true requirements of the clients instead of what they 'think' they want.

Wish me luck. I HAVE to launch 10 websites (yes, ten) this week and half if not all of the clients don't know their DNS accounts or log ins. I foresee a lot of long nights in my near future. Story of our life, right?

3 in 1
---

If your project needs more than three sentences to describe and the budget is not in the high four digits or preferably five, then you're clearly not fucking paying enough

---

Clients that just write a "?" after you wrote a very detailed tutorial, which even a fucking skunk could do, if given a fucking mouse and keyboard, are just the fucking laboratory perfection made retards

---

I just LOVE IT when my internet drops out for under a minute, so windows doesn't notify you yet and your sftp client trashes both local and remote files

Fuck this day!
Like really fuck it!
I have one of the most terrible crunch-time i ever experienced.
I’v been working 12+ hours every day with an ever-changing project timeline.
It started simple, we made a timeline, it was risky even then but it was realistic, we started working immideatly, everything looked good then a few days in BOOM! Actually our project management completely forgot client B’s projects soo we need to do that too with the same fucking deadline!!! (About 10x more work in waay less time)
Then this morning i got an email from the graphics team that we need to document our design process RIGHT FUCKING NOW! Because management wants documentations, in the middle of a fucking crunch-time.
Today it almost got physical with my project manager, i told him that he is not a programmer, i dont fucking care about his shit, just fuck off and let me work because we won’t be ready based on his unrealistic bs.
I feel like completely fucked over, like we were told 2 days before deadline that the whole company and people’s jobs depends on us now because if we wont finish this clients won’t pay.
WE ARE TWO PROGRAMMERS for studio of 10-12 people!!!
Soo i’w been thinking about getting the fuck out of here ASAP, i got an offer from a pretty big international gamedev company just what i needed, i already did their test before all of this, i passed A+.
We scheduled a skype interview for today. I had completely no time to prepare or chill off, just got out of the office, got into a starbucks and i’m interviewing. No time to even check my mic or internet, the call was so shit i could not hear anything, they neither because the plaza was loud af. Meanwhile im nervous about work, about the interview, about can they hear me at all because of the noise. I fucked it up. BIG time! I was so done i could not reverse a fucking string in c++ or explain what is a signed int!!!
Needless to say they said no.
Need time to think about it or realize what happened? Nice dreams. Back to the office and continue working.
I can’t do this anymore. My girlfriend came for me and took me home at 10pm but all i could do was stare at the floor on the subway. I don’t want people to lose their jobs but i just phisically can’t do this anymore.
Meanwhile any time i talk to my project manager about being tired he says like “hshshsbsb i have 60 hours in the last 4 days i got the worst part, i would be grateful in your place..” like fuck off dude, i dont give fuck about how you feel about this. This is not okay for me, you did this to the project, your fucking job is to manage it! I have one day off before going back to this, i have completely no idea what to do now...

[ps: this is not Nemesys. They did not let me work on my own stuff because i would be a competitor, so i left.]

I fucking hate it to work for clients ... also i fucking hate it not to have any clients to work for.

No, programming is not copy and paste code, is not easy and I will not do it for free

So we are having lunch on a normal day when our boss announced that one of our clients are visiting and our boss is telling us to standby and act like we are working so that the clients will see us in action.

WTF!? Is this company *that* desperate!? Then they should hire actors not developers

On negotiation and signing contract
================================
manager: yes you will work 8 hours a day from Tatta hours to Tat tat ta hours.
dev: okay great, i accept it. So no overtime and everythings right?
manager: that we will consider.
dev: hmm okay
=========================

Start working for about 1 month
=========================
manager: John, you not showing up at the office today? What happened?
dev: Sir, I have to stay up all night finished the last task as required and just sleep around 6am in the morning.
manager: John, i need to tell you. your performance is very great. Our clients are happy.
You deliver all the task. We love you, John.
dev: Yes thank you so much. I am happy too, but i need to sleep now i been over time for the last 3 weeks.
Manager: don't worry john, you will get reward later.
===================================
Weeks later:
dev: i need to request for leave, i am over work and now i am sick, my eye got red and cannot look at the screen.
manager: what is happening this month, you been late to work and you not deliver the task, you are sick and this and that, and depressed and whatever... tata taata,
dev: sir, when i first started you said i could only have to work 8 hours a day, now I work more than 12 hours day. What's change?
================================
life as devs in tough companies, high expectation and shit.

So, at the start of November last year I completed a big system for a client. It took me months to complete.

Most frustrating was the sheer amount of pressure the client applied to get it completed. Emails every day, phone calls where the client was "checking" on my progress etc etc. All the annoying stuff.

Only plus side was the fact they paid in full a few after is was completed.

I've just released the system is still on a test AWS account and I haven't heard from the client for well over a month now.

I've just logged into the system and took a look at the logs. The client logged in once the day it was completed and hasn't done anything since.

I mean what was the point of all the pressure if they were just going to let the thing gather dust?

I'm pretty annoyed to be honest as I experienced a few fairly borderline stressful months due to that project.

Ah well, the image below was me after looking at the system logs :)

I work as the entire I.T. department of a small business which products are web based, so naturally, I do tech support in said website directly to our clients.

It is normal that the first time a new client access our site they run into questions, but usually they never call again since it is an easy website.

There was an unlucky client which ran into unknown problems and blamed the server.
I couldn't determine the exact cause, but my assumption was a network error for a few seconds which made the site unavailable and the user tried to navigate the site through the navbar and exited the process he was doing. It goes without saying but he was very angry.

I assured him there was nothing wrong with the site, and told him that it would not be charged for this reason. Finally i told him that if he had the same problem, to let me know instead of trying to fix it himself.

The next time he used the site I received a WhatsApp message saying:
- there is something clearly wrong with the site... It has been doing this for so long!
And attached was a 10 second video which showed that he filled a form and never pressed send (my forms have small animations and text which indicates when the form is being send and error messages when an error occurs, usually not visible because the data they send is small and the whole process is quite fast)

To which I answer
- It seems that the form has not been send that's why it looks that way
- So... What an I supposed to do?
- click send
It took a while but the client replied
- ok

To this day I wonder how much time did the client stared at the form cursing the server.

Oh? The deadline is tomorrow? Let's just change all the requirements. *sigh*

My first project at the job was implenting a website, designed by the same company we mostly worked with.
It was very stressful because half of the 2 months calculated for finishing the project, these genius designers needed for their design. Until then, I had almost no tasks to do...
When the designs finally came, I worked on it and two weeks later was a meeting for review and to decide about some details.
These fuckers then concluded, that the whole design did not fit the page and that they would rework it.
Two weeks later, on the planned release day, we finally received it. A completely fucking different design! Wow!
My boss was pretty angry and so was I. We had to move the release 4 weeks ahead, the client was pissed like a stinking hobo and it needed a lot of convincing to keep that client...

It's fucking nerve-wracking as well that we always have to wait in most projects for weeks for clients or designers to add the content before we can publish a website.
They don't seem to care if they have 2 months or 2 weeks, we never were able to release one single project on time, because of these lazy fuckers...

Why in the world IT work is so stressful?
I never been like that since I start developing code professionally, 8 years ago.
Since then, I had many health problems due stress, and some were really scaring (heart problem).

I'm trying to adapt to a healthier way of work, but I'm starting to doubt if that is possible.

Work in technology seems cruel and soulless sometimes. The constant pressure to learn new things all the time, to specialize in a lot of skills, simultaneously. The urgency nature of ALL tasks - even a simple form field slightly out of place seems to be an issue of life and death for clients.

Easy and quick communication made some people lost boundaries and respect. Many times I received calls and messages after midnight, about things like elements alignment.

And the worst is when clients blame you about their business problems. If they are not selling well this week, it's fault of the website you did ( which they are using for months now).

This actually happened to me today, first thing in the morning. After I slept just 3h, because I worked until late yesterday (oh yeah many more of these life/death updates).

What happens in this industry? Will this ever be different some day?

So today a client requested that the domain name in the address bar should be all capital letters because of corporate design. Don't get me wrong, this is a valid request for someone who has no experience in the IT world. But he refused to believe me that it wasn't possible. He even claimed that he has seen it at least hundred times and called me incapable. I don't get clients.

Let’s see I suppose the most pissed off I’ve been at work would be....

Being blamed for a clients mistake when their newsletter email settings where being changed over to a new mailing system but during the change over they wanted to still send out mail using the old list. So a single endpoint was kept in place so they could send one last newsletter out after it was approved as part of the migration and they were to inform us when they were done so we could change that endpoint over.

Several months later when everyone had long forgotten about it, the client tried to send another mass mail out using the old endpoint and complained when no emails had been sent.

I was blamed for making this mistake even though management approved the fucking old endpoint to be left in place at the clients request against my concerns that someone’s going to forgot about this and I was never informed to swap it over.

I quit on the spot and walked out the door after that.

Clients be like

I really wish people valued health over profit.

So I joined a company last month and last week I got assigned to the biggest client we have. The project is quite big and there are no deadlines coming up. I was sick for a couple of days and hence could not turn up at the office. Apparently the client called up my manager and went on a rant about this situation. So now I have to work on the weekends to cover up for the missed work while on meds that make me sleepy.

Fuck such clients.

Well. I'm running out of money. Time to get new clients. Merry Christmas everyone.

Clients that add you on Facebook and start asking at 3 AM how their project is going.

No this is my personal life, how about you get lost and call or email me during working hours.

Clients with almost no idea about tech stuff are really funny !

Client has an "urgent" release that needs to be launched immediately... So they keep changing the spec every few minutes with new changes, but are upset that the product isn't launched yet. Lol. Got to love clients.

Added new hidden function in my service: If you don't reply with "thanks" after I send you requested data, I will not reply to your requests for 15 minutes.
Clients really need to learn some manners and I'm here to help.

Clients

Clients: give them some free extra cheese and they'll just complain they don't have enough crackers.

Client: can you spice it up a bit
Me: ok
Client: more spicing
Me: alright
Client: i liked the first one.....

!rant

All I want in life is to be left alone in a fucking sub-basement somewhere so that I can just code and research and drink coffee and ignore other humans until the day I die.

Is that so much to ask? To be left the fuck alone?

PLEASE NO MORE EMAILS OR PHONE CALLS CLIENTS! I JUST WANT TO WOOOOORRK!

It makes me shudder when clients use "pages" to describe a website project and its size.

A client just asked why her site was in Latin instead of English (I used dummy text because there was no content yet).

Last week, she requested l chop up a .jpg mockup because she 'can't scroll' the image.

I had to re-read the email to be sure.

I'm a perfectionist and like things done the right way, but had to learn to let go and remind myself it's the clients site and their choice. No amount of logic and reasoning is going to stop a hellbent client from wanting the dumb things they want, even when it's bad for design, performance, usability and/or SEO.

Haha really clients make me laugh!

Yes you can have your website with all the bells and whistles, but sorry it costs money.

Do these people think we live on fresh air, while the reep the rewards for all the hard work we have done for them.

The problem today is everyone wants everything for nothing. 🤔

Get an email from a client, who has been stringing me along for about 6 months, but ringing me up for advice on tonnes of different shit for free. Basically did his original website but his business model has changed to make his existing site irrelevant. Suggested months back doing a simple one pager as a stop gap with key messages. The bastard said no to that "just take it down for now and redirect to my LinkedIn page". He keeps saying we are getting stuff together and we hope to get together in September. However, yesterday he sends an email "we are getting a student in over the summer (not a Dev or designer or anything). Could you recommend any "web builders" so we can get on with the website in August. By that he means those drag and drop fucking pieces of shit website templates full of wysiwyg editors for creating shit typography. I give them free help and guidance and they think that I'm not going to want to smash him in his fucking face for his last email. The cunt.
I have an idea for 'having the last laugh' but I am open to suggestions from some devRanters, all legal of course.
P.S. I post quite a bit here about shitty clients, but I do have a number of really good clients who value my work and experience and have been with me for many years. It's just some that treat the profession with disdain and that they can easily do it themselves if only they had the time. These fuckers then wonder why their businesses fail.

If your client doesn't know what the fuck he wants to see on his website even with all text and images included - don't take this fucking job.

They will let you choose a template and you end up switching it 5 times. "Oh we don't like it. What else do you have? Oh, this looks better." Next day "We don't like this theme anymore. We want to switch to what we had before."

If people can't draw their home page on a paper I tell them go fuck yourself straight in a face. I always put these people on my reference list so my future clients know I'm straightforward, not lazy, not low skilled, but honest with dumbasses like some of my previous clients.

You are asking for a basic website with 5 pages, you have a shitty budget and then I have to customize the entire theme and tweak every fucking possible element in CSS, HTML and PHP. Go fuck yourself. All you get for your money is WordPress with 15 min consultation how to copy paste your shit and save it. Never do fixed budgets, never work on projects like this if it's under $500-1000. Meet with the client to understand him/her better and see if he is a jackass-perfectionist or a chill person who won't be picky.

That's my memories of being a freelancer, trying to get any job for any budget just to build my portfolio. Never going back to this, at least not for small businesses with less than $5,000 budget. Reading people before you start working with them is a good thing.

Long time ago had a really painful client. Everyone had an attempt at training the said client. However, the client just didn't get the system at all and kept asking lots of questions.

It got to the point where one poor developer had to make a set of screencasts of him using the system and performing basic operations.

I recall how absolutely insane it was that in addition to the hours of trading time we had provided we were sending him links to video files we'd created.

It was literally face palms all around and so bad it was sort of funny.

!rant

Lovely and thankful clients do exist!

Last week the client of our last project came to my desk to shake my hand and thank me for my well done work. Keeping in mind that I'm a junior dev and our company has around 3000 employees I was really flattered :)

Has anyone who's running a start-up had to deal with email happy clients?

I just watched a thread of 14 emails be generated for sending a maintenance contract which was already agreed upon.

Most of the emails are "thanks for the reply........."
To which some one will reply " thanks for the reply.........

I'm pretty much sure somewhere in the wide world Web there's a clients community joking about ordering developers to fix their printers and stuff...

while making EEEEVILLLL laughs.

Clients r wankers. He wants to be able to send login details incl passwords in email to his clients when he adds them in the cms. The passwords are encrypted and generated on creation of a new user. Ive told him that sending credentials in email is shit and not secure. The stubborn bastard wont budge, so instead i've put explicit instructions to reset password once logged in with the credentials they send. Any other suggestions?

Every time...

Clients defining exactly how they want to build something they don't understand is a bit like me telling a brain surgeon to use a butter knife to perform surgery.

a client today wanted a specialized high performance, extremely stable, stock management software for pharmaceutical products, he also wants the software distributed, cross platform, and expect the delivery to be in a week or so, oh and did i mention that he also wants it to have an extremely good looking ui,
he got offended that i said you can only have one or two of those things not all of them,
for context, I'm just a freelancer not a big company and doing what he wants is impossible for me, also it was a billion ages since i worked on anything desktop related, web is all I'm diving into lately

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.

So pretty much all my clients have decided they are done working or responding to emails until the new year. Normally this would be fine and dandy, but I work in an office that says I have to be there every day still, and all my projects are in a state of "Waiting for Client Approval" so I can't move forward on anything.

I've spent two days so far just staring at my work pretending to do things while browsing the web, but I'm losing my mind here pretending to work when I could be doing other things. I still have at least 4 days next week where I will be in the office hoping someone responds, either say something is broke or tell me to push it live so I can get my projects out of limbo.

clients!! 🙄

Clients who expect you to come up with the idea... 😠

Receive several documents of blog posts from a client, each one titled "Blog $n - $category - $title." Cool, the client gave them to me in order and I just have to plug them in.

Enter blogs on site starting with Blog 1.

Client sees the blogs on the site and loses their shit. "I specifically numbered the blogs so you knew what order to put them in! How hard is it to put them in numerical order? Blog 1 is the newest blog and should be first on the page."

The site displays the newest post first, but because any normal person would have named the oldest blog "blog 1" and counted up from there the blogs are in the reverse order the client expected.

What the hell kind of dense motherfucker numbers their blog files in a manner which requires them to rename every file each time they write a new blog post?

Boss asks us to make sure out documents/instructions to clients are idiot-proof. I am not disagreeing this but usually clients are more idiotic than the most idiotic idiot you can ever imagine...

There is nothing more fulfilling than working you ass off 2 days, learning a new technology, and getting it to finally work as per the requirements and then ...

getting told that the absolute cunt of a client forgot the release date, announced its release 2 days early and decided to casually ask why there is no app on the released URL (it's a tiny Agonizing Reality [AR] app meant as a gimmick on the invitation cards for an upcoming convention).
My boss told me, the thing I worked on is now being scrapped and will not be released.

Yes, I wish the clients could slowly die in agony by a tree growing out of their appendix. Nature shall reclaim their corpses and feed a happy pig which I would happily have a feast of. 🤗

When clients calls me, and tells me that the website is broken.
client: It won't upload my pictures, says that file size is to big.

me: How big is your picture?

client: How do I check that?

30 min of explaining and a him forgetting to charge the laptop.

Client: It says 32 mb.

Me: Yep that's way to big, won't work for a website.

Client: How do you make them smaller?

Me: Crying.

No-contract client stops the project in the middle and wants his complete deposite (25%) back. How to tell this asshole that he has to pay even more??

So I guess one of our clients suddenly switched to a different website service... Without being told. I went to their website and it's so not what I worked on. I still have pending tasks for it, but I guess not anymore.

I think it's the same case with another client from before.

That one client who feels entitled to immediate feedback and response from you, yet they're not paying you on retainer and know good and well that you have other clients. Then they get condescending in their emails and cop an attitude when you (nicely I might add) advise them to find another developer if they want people to micro manage.

Yeah, I just fired that client. Not dealing with this anymore. Good thing about being a contractor is that you have the freedom to walk and have a backup plan. And if they try to come back, I'm hiking the rates if I even take them back at all.

😎✌️

:o oh noh!
#fromthenet

We have a client who calls us right after sending an email in order to inform us that she sent an email. Guess she doesn't know anything about notifications!

So a few weeks back guy I used to work with contacts me for some dev work on a UK project he is working on, it's the Thursday and they need the thing the coming Monday. I tell him it's totally impossible, and it was so he asks what can done and how much, as well as how much for the entire project.

I stipulate exactly what can be done, with exclusions and say 7.5k and them mail over a detailed quote for 30k for everything.

I get told it's all fine, I must go ahead. I get through a bit more than expected by the Monday, but they still needed something to demo and I set I can get enough for demo in place by Thursday.

They demo to business and money and all that and everyone is happy and tell me to finish up along with some changes, and I don't even adjust the price as it was more work they wanted outside of the original spec.

Get to probably 80% done and they say we need to pause they need to look over other feedback.

Next thing, the PM come back, no they were never actually happy with the quote and they found some other guy willing to do the entire thing for 7.5k and they willing to only give me that for the code I have written so far. Cunts.

Anyway, he tries to take some blame for it, even though I know it's BS and says he will pay in another 7.5k from his share if I am willing and we call it quits.

This people, is why I don't freelance.

I feel sorry for this new kid, he clearly under quoted, and yes I am expensive, but with decades experience having worked on international projects for one of the largest digital asset management firms, my countries leading fintech dev house and now the lead developer for my countries largest insurance software dev house, you damn fucking strait my free time comes at a premium, as you are getting top fucking quality, 100% tested, high performing code.

They can go fuck an entire flock of ducks when they come back after this half ling fucks up the diamond I coded up for them.

Even funnier, they a UK based company, so for them this was a 1.5k project. Cheap cunts.

I usually work in a two person team on a hybrid application we are developing, using AngularJS and node.

This normally works okay, because he handles the back end (he's been on the project since January last year, I joined in August as a placement student), and I handle the front end.

However, due to Christmas holidays and such, he's ended up taking an entire month off, and won't be back until the end of January.

I've dabbled in back end before, some routes and that for SQL queries, but nothing serious.

Last Tuesday our core service for the application that needs to be updated in real time broke and pissed off the API provider because we were hammering them with requests.

My first day on back end and this happened. I didn't really know what to do, and had to call my teammate to ask what to do. I essentially just restarted things, and left them as is, until I could find a solution.

From there, I had to mock the operation of the service (which is a complex enough beast) to figure out the problem, and find a fix. Our app more or less hinges on this service, so if it messes up, it's the end times.
All of this while flying on what I've interpreted because the guy that's on holidays was the only guy that knows more about this project than I do.

To make things worse, the clients are being very particular because they're waiting on investments and don't have money to pay our company. So, if they're paying for 5 days work, they're going to put in 5 days of project development. The problem is that their interpretation of 5 days of project development has not changed from when there were two people on this project.

There are 40 tickets in this sprint (ends Friday) and 35 of them are assigned to me. Granted, not all of those take a day to do, but estimates don't mean anything, I guess.

Ganbarimasu.

I can't stand talking to clients on the phone!

One of my first freelancing clients used to talk to me for an hour at a time. I really wish I could have billed him by the hour, it took him twice as long to explain anything and then I'd have to get back in the mindset for what I was working on. The phone is just so disruptive.

I'm so much happier working for a company where the project manager deals with the client's and product managers.

So my client thinks he knows how to code and is freaking out that I won't give him FTP access to the server.

If you already know the best way to get this project done, then why are you paying us? Do it yourself then!

My boss just said “as long as it puts a smile on the clients face, it’s worth examining, within reason.” Yeaaa that’s a bit broad... Some of our clients only smile when they have hookers and blow on hand. Is it reasonable to help them acquire such if it helps retain them as a customer?!

I changed IP address of the domain A record to point to his new site. Told him it could take a day to propagate, but usually fine in a few hours. 2 hours later... "Microsoft is pointing to new site but Google isn't". I have to make some assumptions here, who else calls a browser by its fucking parent company, that is if he is talking about that or search engines. Anyway just sent him my favourite wiki link on how to clear browser cache and hopefully he will fuck off indefinitely.

5 years ago , when I started coding and problem solving things , my IT teacher said "you need to be patient, to learn coding"
Nowadays I found out why you need to be patient.
To deal with stupid clients ..!!!!

Idiot: Hello, Sam gave me yo #, I need avery small database system, how much wd it cost.
Me: I can't giv u a price without knowing features of the system in details.
Idiot: letme send u a list of the features.
Me: ok
Idiot: Budget issues, Payroll, Reporting, capabilities, Purchasings,Projects/Awards, Trainings ,Input query, Fixed, assets, Central invoicing, General ledger, Accounts, payable, Accounts receivable.
Me: you managing a financial institution?
Idiot: no, its a university project.
Me: well am sory bt I can't help you guys, I dnt do campus projects.

"Can you teach us how to do x? If not, how much would you charge for doing it yourself?"

Bitch, my time is valuable, if I teach you, I'm gonna charge you anyway...

Do any other teen programmers find it frustrating that clients will only hire us for a lower price? I understand it's a matter of experience, but I still feel designing and programming an iOS app is worth more than $2500...

Our work is highly valued, never forget it, always give value your work because the clients/bosses only want cheap/free things.

LAMP site. Client: Can you stick it on a USB stick, I need to show it at an exhibition and there's no internet. Me: If I had your laptop I could potentially replicate the server set up to run it locally. Client: I just want it on a USB stick?

Why do clients wait for 17:55 before asking you to fix that nuclear reaction bug or that new "little insignificant feature i can't live without" ? Seriously, what the hell is your daily job ? Because i really want to switch to it.

Clients.

Database is being slow AF again. Team lead is investigating. This is happening more often lately and affects both production and dev because everything is just in one gigantic database. So clients are calling support being angry about the speed they get and us devs get to twiddle our thumbs while waiting for our own data to load.

Client asked me to complete the job as fast as I can and, here I am, waiting for the review of the latest version for the past 2 WEEKS.

Good thing, she paid up the entire amount beforehand. *Rubs hands in glee*

I was working on a new feature for this legacy project.. Just minding my own buisness then all out of the blue I got an email from our client (before the email I exported the live database because I needed to reproduce a weird bug) saying the sync stopped working
<backstory>
The database needs to sync every 15 minutes because it has a master-master relationship with a 3rd party database..
</backstory>
So I was like shiiit! Did I do that!? So I checked the logs, nothing... I called the 3rd part to check if they have problems, nothing.. Then I checked the network logs... Again all fine... 30 nervous minutes later, I got a new mail... Saying it finally synced... Still have no clue what happened or if it ever was a problem... God damn clients man...

Hey boss,

Here’s a letter for you.
First of all, thank you for the stable job and advantages we have as a small business in the middle of the alps.

Following that, FUCK YOU.
Why? Because of the retarded clients I have to deal with because they’re your friends. Because I have to spend more energy doing fucking politics instead of doing IT. We have people that like t bla bla. Send them, not me.
Close me in a basement with a computer, a bunch of screens, a comfortable chair and a package of cigarettes. I’ll write Google from scratch for you if I need to (not sure I could at all). But please, stop fucking sending me to morons with the same IQ level of a sheep. And sheeps are more clever sometimes.

And last but not the least. Learn to fucking dress accordingly. We’re not in a gay pride but in a business.

It's not my throbbing knob

fuck.some clients

I fucking hate imposity

i was staging the fucker site to deploy and get on with it, but now the requirements changed, and major redesign is needed
I'm payed by hour but this shit still infuriates me

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!!!