I've had one job like this where they were desperate for a solution and after months of searching couldn't find anybody to do the work. I just happened to have the intersection of several skills they needed and be available. It also helped that they were losing a lot of money every day they didn't have a solution.

On the other hand I've grown to be wary of customers who push for a fixed price. They are usually doing that because they know something that you don't.

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chasd00 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> On the other hand I've grown to be wary of customers who push for a fixed price.

fixed price projects are like handling dynamite. A sophisticated client can use a fixed price contract to extract a huge amount of work/value from an ingorant consultant and a sophisticated consultant can use it to extract a huge amount of cash from an ignorant client.

My advice to both sides of the fence is clearly, _very_ clearly, define the scope, schedule, and a rock solid change order process for changes.

	▲	rawgabbit 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I second this. I see inexperienced business folks (including CEOs) think they are going to take advantage of an IT vendor by signing a fixed price contract and then demand constant additions to scope couched as something else. What ends up being delivered is a hot steaming pile that is dead on arrival. Act like shit; be treated like shit.

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Maxion 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I've found that it's generally SMEs that tend to be stingy when they ask for a fixed price. Large corps ask for a fixed price just so that they can internally talk about money and budget the thing once and be done.

SMEs in my experience generally are able to handle change in scope and billing easier than larger ones.