Be paid or don't work.

I am so deadly serious - do not continue working if your invoices are late.

You don't have to be a jerk about it, just explain to your primary contact that you need to be paid and you pick up tools again when the money has arrived.

BUT it is on YOU to properly negotiate reasonable payment terms. And if you don;t know or don't trust the client then require payment in advance until a stronger commercial relationship can be settled in. Do not be a baby - go research business contracts and payment terms.

Do not be afraid to lose business from companies that are squeamish about paying you - in fact actively avoid such companies.

Sadly this is true and lesson anyone who has worked freelance has probably learned - either that or I'd wager they no longer do freelance.

Its easy to say don't be afraid to lose business, but when you're starting out, the economy is rough or all you have are the one or two clients, that's a different matter entirely.

One thing I've learned is that you always have to do the leg work, you can't assume someone will do the right thing or keep their word.

Develop a system where even bad clients, can't do too much damage i.e. upfront deposits, milestone-based payments. You have to control cash flow risks, if you are gonna take risks know what risks you're taking and when to get out.

> Do not be afraid to lose business from companies that are squeamish about paying you - in fact actively avoid such companies.

My boss said that the ones who have negotiated the best deals are the ones that are late paying, complain about just about every bill and will write angry letters when my boss index adjust pricing.

He said it taught him to never offer a really good deal for a regular customer (ie where the upside isn't very obvious).

So true. And I'll add, no matter how trustworthy you believe the other party to be based on reptutation, relationships, or otherwise-- they should understand requiring assurances. The worst backstabs are from the people you know and who should know better. And a lot of people will justify it to themselves if they get in trouble. They will continue telling themselves that they are fundamentally good people and it just didn't work out as they rip you off for a lot of money. If they say the equivalent of "why don't you trust me?" that's a red flag.

A professional knows what they're worth and what they need to deliver. On-time payment according on an agreed-upon schedule is table stakes. That's the most fundamental requirement. Nothing happens without that.

And also: political organizations and churches always must pay up front.

I feel like it's easy in hindsight to say some tough sounding advice in the form of "be a hard-ass", but idk, I feel like there are plenty of real life cases that contradict this advice- taking a chance on a referral to work on something you find interesting. Of course the big-money clients will be fine with a hard-line stance and they have money to pay at the end, but that work tends to be less interesting.

OTOH, one other clear subtext of the story is the "savior" attitude of a lot of tech people, who think that, if they weren't using version control before, think, "oh, I'll just tell them about this great thing, and because it's much better they will definitely listen to me and implement it - it's only logical". But the harsh reality is that "better" things won't affect an org that went along that far and dug themselves that deep.

Never underestimate an org's ability to shoot itself in the foot, even if you think you know better. That includes getting your money from them.

I guarantee you that if OP said, sorry, do this or I am going home, they would have done what needed to be done. Both in terms of payment, and in terms of getting their software and hardware houses in order.

It might have involved OP getting a taxi to the airport and being chased down at the gate, but it would have worked.

And even if it didn't, they would have saved themselves enormous time, money, and stress by following through on their threats if it didn't work out.

>Be paid or don't work.

As an electrician currently self-stopped (for both non-payment & absenteeism, two months no contact, so far) I'm not budging. When you didn't show up for our last two on-site meetups (and still haven't contacted), I thought about filing a lien... but decided to just keep you from having tenants (by not finishing AC/water/electric). You'll get around to it..?

When I told this LLC/owner "you obviously aren't in a rush because you obviously aren't visiting the jobsite/me" I sort of expected him to show within a few days. Then a few weeks. And now we're entering a few months.

You have weeks of my punchlists (unresolved to do), I have weeks of questions (what do you want?) and you won't even do simple things like turning on power/water.

Fuck you, pay me.

[•] <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U>

And for a rush job, don't be afraid to demand half the payment up front, or some other good-faith gesture on the client's part.

100% agree, and to add it can be tough sometimes to walk away from a cool project. I had worked on a project building scientific trial software, an app to review 3D lung scans, and an ML model to detect lesions in lung scans. It was really empowering, but after the first scientific trial the customer stopped paying their bills and ended up in back payment of $1M. My boss closed the project which sucked but it ultimately cost the company and people’s jobs. Just not worth interacting with bad people if they stop the agreement. There is most likely more money later but there is also money that is on time with other customers.

This is all correct in principle, but in practice it's a lot messier

Your business is getting the money. Your business is not to fly around the world trying to engineer-mog the client. The OP has a bad ego.

"They don't even use version control..." Yeah? Get the money. The client are "carpetbaggers", yeah okay... get the money.

It's implied that they hired you because they need the help. But they also may have hired you because they need the help and you seem like a sucker they can stiff.

What if you’re a cofounder or founding engineer and the company hasn’t raised yet?