Met a guy that ran some dropshipping thing in a bar once, once he found out i was a programmer he kept on trying to get me to fix his website for free because it was easy, would not take no for an answer. I just kept upping how much money i would charge him till i got sick of it and left.

I knew a few guys like that in crypto too, before crypto came along and they got into that, this guy told me he’d written a twitter app, it was a bot that pumped gold at some influencers command. Spurred me to write an app though.

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tombert 10 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Tangential, but in my previous apartment one of my neighbors really wanted me to build him a website after he found out I work with computers.

I told him that I don't really build websites, and what I mostly do is write things that move information from one computer to another and that I haven't really enjoyed web development so it's not something that I do in my free time so I'm not good at it, and he should check out SquareSpace or Wix something.

He kept assuring me that it would "be easy". To shut him up, I gave him a quote of my daily rate for contract work (which honestly wasn't even that high by software engineering standards), and he backed off because he didn't realize how expensive software engineering is.

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nobleach 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

"My nephew makes websites, and he's 14... I could just have him do it"

- Every client of mine during my contracting days. It took me way too long to reply with, "Oh that's great news! I wasn't sure of my availability, and was certain I was going to be way too expensive. Glad you got it figured out."

	▲	tombert 6 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Someone told me that in 2013 when I was trying to do contract work. I gave him a quote that I thought was reasonable, and he thought it was too much and he told me that his thirteen year old son could do it for free. I responded that he was the one who had reached out to me, and if he feels like his son can do it then he shouldn't have wasted his time trying to find a contractor since that will be more expensive. The client didn't like the attitude and I didn't get the job, but I was kind of glad because it was pretty clear to me that he would have tried to weasel out of paying me regardless.
	▲	dpb001 an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I think the 14 year old nephew has been around for every iteration of technology - there are probably clients now threatening to just have their nephew vibe code the thing you're trying to spec out. Once, when fed up with this during a discussion on a small moonlighting job I said "Yeah, kids are pretty good with this stuff these days, Tell you what - have him get started and I'll be available to give him any help he needs at 2x my rate".