Taking the High Road

Welcome to building better developers, the developer podcast, where we work on getting better step by step professionally and personally. Let's get started. Well, hello and welcome back. We're continuing our season where we're looking at mistakes, missteps, errors, and all kinds of fun things like that, that normally one would consider to be a negative, but turning those into a positive, you know, sort of looking at the silver lining on that gray cloud and looking at where we, those mistakes where we made missteps, they were actually building blocks for the future or lessons to be learned that helped us avoid the same or maybe even bigger issues and consequences down the road. In this episode, I want to look at, I'm going to consider this sort of like taking the high road. This fortunately has not been something I've run into too often. There is, there's probably one or two other stories I could have chosen that follow sort of the same line of thought. And this situation was one where I was a contract, really I was a subcontractor for a customer. And initially what happened is it was one of these things that sort of built and built and built and built until I was doing a pretty sizable chunk of work for them. When I first came in, it was, I think it was just like building a report or maybe two on their website. They had some data and it was just basically pulling that data and kicking it out into a nice little, you know, a nicely formatted, you know, effectively a customer list. And I think it was something they could export, but they loved it. It was, it was one of those that I was not, this was earlier on, so it wasn't like high price. It didn't take a lot of time. And then more stuff I had done was not super complex or anything. Thus, it made it a lot easier to estimate, estimate correctly both time and cost. And so that won me more work as they went further in. And particularly the guy I was subcontracting through, he had, I don't remember, I probably about four or five customers that he could do some work for, but he found it was better off for him to have me do a lot of his work. And then, you know, he took some margins off of it and that allowed him to serve more customers. And the way it worked in, this was remote work, but he was, he would be the on site guy. He could go and do things. And eventually it did work out something that was a hundred percent remote, but there's one of those where he's, he's doing the leg work. And so he found out that it was easier for him to do all that leg work, have some developers do the work behind them and have that business model, which is awesome. But you know, I'm sort of digressing a little bit to give a little bit of the context. So this relationship went for a while. I mean, we're probably at this point where the story really begins. We're probably a year into this ish somewhere around there. I'd say six to 18 months, at least somewhere around there. So I've been working with them for a while. And this one particular customer, it grew from a couple of reports to helping, basically it moved from web reports to a couple of reports on their desktop application. And this is one that was installed on, I don't remember, like 10 different machines or something like that at their location. It was a Windows app. And it was your basic customer relationship management type of application, but it was home-built and it was, I forget what the back end was. I think the niche of the back end was it was an access application. And so I came in, I wrote some reports and what ended up happening is they wanted to build something better. And I can't remember the exact reason why, but essentially it was the access application was not serving their needs. They wanted to go to a SQL database and it may have been that the guy I was working with had helped sell them on this idea that it would be easier, it would be, there was more customizations that could be done. It could be something that was a better solution for them. And I ended up being the person assigned to do that essentially. I'd worked with it enough. I said, okay, we can do that. So we converted this, we being, as really me, converting this access application to Windows.net. Application that we can install in all these different places. I think that was part of it is they, it was the whole way access work. They didn't want this access saying shared on a drive that people could step on each other's data. And then they couldn't necessarily get to it when they needed to because somebody else had it locked, all that fun stuff. So we created something where it was a client server application. We had a database and then we had this front end. The challenge was that they didn't, it was one of these, again, this may sound familiar to some other stories, where they had this access application and they didn't really have documentation around it. So it was essentially take that access application and turn it into a Windows application, which is okay. I started, I could create some of the forms and some of those things. But as we got into it, there were, there were fields that existed in access that were one offs that really were not needed and confused the users on the interface. And then there was also a couple of things that was really kludgy data that the way they did stuff. So they'd have one field and it had like four or five different values, whereas a human looking at it, you could sort of, if you knew the system, you sort of knew what it meant. But as a system, it didn't make sense. It wasn't consistent and it didn't really work for automating, for actually programmatically providing solutions. And so we got into that and it started out being, it was a sort of fixed bid thing. It was like, Hey, we'll do it. It was an estimate. So it was, we'll do it for whatever the number is, a hundred bucks. And as I got into it, I went back to the guy and I said, Hey, these are some things that I didn't see before that, you know, that they do this in a weird way. We're going to have, you know, it's going to cost some time and effort to fix this. This is some additional, I think it'd be like, here's a couple of additional screens. Here's a couple of like a reporter to that we're going to need to create for them to properly use that. And he didn't like, and this, some of this, I didn't know the whole story until after the fact. He didn't like that the idea of having to go back to them and say, Hey, here's some things that we missed or that weren't included or however you want to spend that or sell that. But here's some things that we didn't include in our initial estimate. This is what it's going to take to provide a solution in this case, because they weren't, it had more to do with non-visual things like performance and queries and some things like that, that the users, because they were not technical users, the users were not going to see. So it was basically going to them and saying, here's some changes we need to make for performance reasons more than anything. And it's going to cost not a small, so like if it was a hundred bucks, it was going to cost another $30 or something. So percentage wise, it was something that was like, this is a, in time, because I think it was when we were getting close, it was going to be another, add another three or four weeks onto this date. So it was going to be a sizable enough slip. He didn't want to do that. So instead he thought, well, what we'll do is say that it doesn't look, I'm not sure how to phrase it, but it doesn't look the way we want it to. And so what he did is he said, well, why don't you go in and as part of this, let's basically just change all the background colors, which to him was like, oh, this take two minutes. Let's change the color scheme, so that it matches their corporate color scheme. And then we're going to say that instead of that taking five minutes, it's going to take two weeks. And again, I didn't know how all this stuff worked. Well, he came back to me and said, hey, we also need to change the look and feel. Let's do this, this, and this. That turned into being a little bigger than two or three minutes. And so a couple of weeks later, we're looking at some things and I said, hey, now we've got, and they'd had some feedback. So it's stuff like, hey, they've requested this, this, and this report and this other thing. And oh, by the way, here's something that was a bug that was missed. It's going to take a while to address this thing because, I don't know, you can say it's a bug or whatever, but it's one of those things like, hey, because we're mostly doing it by time and not so much a fixed bid. It was like, hey, this is something that's going to take a little bit to address this. It was missed in the initial requirements. And again, he didn't want to go back and do that. So again, he, I forget what it was the second time around, but it was the same thing where tacked on a couple of purely visual type changes to hide effectively what we were doing to try to partially to sell it. And so then we ended up slipping again. And this all came to a head at some point because it was like, hey, wait a minute, you guys are now two months behind where you were. And we've been, we've paid all this extra money. We need this solution. We need this. We need to cross the finish line and get this to us. At that point, I can't remember what it was, but there was still some additional work that had come in. And it was basically extra ports that he had tacked in and said, oh, we need to have these in. But he didn't, he was sort of trying to push on me to just throw those things in to make them real quick and get those in and just absorb the cost while he was essentially charging them for it. They had this rapidly increasing cost because he kept tacking in all these little things that were bigger costs to try to offset some of the others. Because basically it was a sort of a bait and switch kind of thing. And eventually it got back to me that they weren't happy with it. And it was because I talked to the customer at times through some of these things and they weren't real happy. They were frustrated. And I went back to the guys working with, I was like, well, wait a minute. I said, here's what I'm hearing from them. Here's what I've been doing. It sounds like you're not, there's not a clear communication of what I'm doing, what the source of the problem is or what the issue is or what the solution is, what our recommended approach is and what they're hearing as far as what's needed and what's important and what they're adding and what's valuable and what's not. And so the major disconnect, well, other than time and money, was that he had me, I was focused on one thing, on delivering one thing. And we were having those discussions, he and I, whereas the customer had a completely different focus on what was the priorities, what was important that was being delivered. And through all of this, it was him finding ways to charge more money and make more off of this as opposed to just saying, okay, it's done. Let's move on. Let's hand this off and move on to another project or the next project, however that is. And once I got wind of this, I pushed back on him. I said, look, honesty is the best policy. It may be a cliche, but just lay it out and say, here's what the issues are. Here's what we're running into. Here's what we did. Here's what we missed. Here's what you missed, whatever. Here's what wasn't provided. Here's what we didn't understand or the mistakes that were made. Let's lay it all out and get to a solution. And he didn't want to do that. He was still trying to find a way to basically make it all look like he was awesome, that it was perfect. And worst case, maybe I wasn't the best developer. But even then, he sort of needed to protect that because he had hired me, so that would have reflected on him. So he was trying to spin this whole thing into, we never made a mistake. Everything was perfect and they should just accept. And it did end up coming to a head because I said, look, you can't do that. You're lying to the customer about what's going on and what's happened and where the mistakes are made and what's important and why we're doing these things. And it's fallen apart because it's not a consistent story. And they're seeing that. Not to mention the fact that, to me, it was like, this is where it's, you take the high road, it's like, hey, they hired us, they're paying us, this is what they want. So let's be honest with them and say where we've succeeded, where we made mistakes, whatever it is, let's lay it all out on the table and that way be very transparent so they can understand. And then we can build them accordingly and basically say, hey, this thing is new. We want to bill you for this. This thing is our mistake. It was our call. You know, we're going to absorb this cost because that one's on us. And do that. Be honest and move forward. And he didn't want to. And eventually it got to something where I had to talk. I went to the customer and I said, look, this is what's going on. He's adding all this stuff on. It's costing me. He's saying it's not. These are the problems that he's trying to hide. Just laid it all out. And essentially what ended up happening is they ended up replacing me with him. So it worked out because I took the high road. It worked out for me. I ended up working with them on and off for years afterwards because I laid it out. I said, I told him this is what it is. This is how it is. And they respected that. In this case, it was one of those, I thought going into it that I was going to end all of the relationships there that the and it wasn't like it was, you know, the cornerstone of my business. I think it was it was basically it was all side hustle at that point. So it wasn't going to change my life if I lost either of those as customers. It did drop losing him because he was I said, I can't work with you like this. I'm not I'm not going to get into a situation where I'm working for somebody that I don't think is trustworthy, even if he's treating me well. The fact that you treat the customers in a questionable manner to me thinks you might treat me that way. And I don't want to be that person anyways. I don't want to be part of an organization that is questionable as far as how they know their ethics and things of that nature. And so in this case, I didn't get dragged down with him because once I figured stuff out, I was able to cleanly come up and say, hey, I'm sorry, here's here's what's going on. Here's what has happened. And I apologize for where whatever communication was, whatever I did wrong. And I'll do what I can to help you, you know, what I can to help you to help make things right. So I took the high road, you know, as they say, as I said, look, I'm I'm not going to do the the quick and dirty or the way that maybe we can we can sort of finagle our way into some extra work instead. I'm just going to shoot it straight and see what happens. And sure enough, it worked out very well. The mistake of getting into a situation where I was working with somebody with a questionable ethics, luckily, or I guess maybe not luckily, but because of the way I looked at stuff, I said, hey, let's I need to get out of this. So that mistake and the mistakes around it that he was hiding ended up actually turning into something. Like I said, it was a multi-year. It's never hugely profitable or anything like that, but it was a steady little stream of work that was fun to do. I liked all of the people that worked there. It ended up having some opportunities to help them grow, train, eventually train somebody to to convert to their next generation of stuff. They eventually got off of that Windows application and moved on to something else. So it ended up being a very rewarding engagement with a client over over all those years. And it really boiled down to separating myself from the one that wants to take the shortcuts and that wants to take advantage of the fact that you you're trusted and using that to spin it into extra work. It's I almost was hesitant even sharing this story because it's not really it's not it wasn't necessarily my mistake per se, at least the focus of this. The take the high road was not something that I ran into, although I could definitely I guess maybe I'll come back and talk about some cases where I found the shortcut and the shortcut did not work out. But this is one I want to share because it's it turned out really good and it could have turned out very poorly. It could have been something that would have been I I likely what would have happened if I had just followed what the guy was working with is he would have lost his customer because at some point that stuff all falls apart. And it was getting to that point when I figured out what was going on. It was because he was trying to hide that from everybody. And once I found out, I was like, oh, back up. I don't want anything to do with this. That being said, I think I've rambled on long enough. So we're going to wrap this one up and let you get back to it and hopefully have some opportunities to make sure that you're you're taking the high road. You're doing the right thing because it does pay off in the end. But however you do it today, go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week and we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to Building Better Developers, the Develop-a-Noor podcast. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon, anywhere that you can find podcasts. We are there. And remember, just a little bit of effort every day ends up adding into great momentum and great success. Here we go, my song for Rob, my little insta hit. Now, they always a little bit of a have a bit of a love song vibe to them because I think it's funny and it makes it a bit creepy and weird. So just heads up. Here we go. Well, give it up for Rob. He's my new best friend. I think I love you and we haven't even met. So I thought I'd write a little song for you because I think that you're so damn cool. California born, Memphis raised, but Nashville's where he likes to spend his days. That hockey rink is where he likes to be, but he's dying to head to Italy with Tim, Ian, Ben, Beck and Tom. Where he can stare at the stars all day long. Yeah, he can eat that pasta till he passes out. Oh, well, I love you Rob. I think there ain't a shadow of doubt. Come on. So I said give it up for Rob. He's my new best friend. I think I love you and we haven't even met. I want to say thank you for having me on your show, because this friendship of ours is one that can only grow.