Frustrations with our web developer

[rzach41]

About half way through the creation of our website, our web developer secretly terminated the four other members who were part of his team, and assigned to help with the building of our site. He did this without once consulting us, or speaking a word about it. Soon after we noticed that progress had slowed substantially. Fast forward about a month and progress has slowed even more, and frustrations are building. He is not communicating with us nearly as much as he has in the past... (he rarely responds to the multiple emails we send him per day). Our site has not changed at all in the past week and a half, seriously. I would say the site is about 80% completed, but we have paid him 90% of what is owed. He complained of lack of funds so we agreed to pay him a little bit ahead of schedule thinking this would motivate him to bust his a$$ from here on out. We told him this.

The main frustration here is the secret termination of his team and lack of communication. I don't know what he does all day. His team was a major factor in our decision to hire this company over others. Now everything is on him solely, and I fear the final product will suffer because of it.

Has anybody else experienced something like this in the past?

 

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[Seshiro]

Can we be linked to the website, how much did it cost you? And no, never been trhough this because i research who i hire, anything fishy goes on, i tell him to take it down give me my money, and find someone who suits you.

 

[rzach41]

The website is currently hidden, so all you will see is a "coming soon all rights reserved" type of thing.

But yeah, we researched about five different companies before choosing these guys. Everything was going just fine for the first month and a half. Lots of progress, constant communication. All was swell. It's become a constant pain in the a$$ since then. I mean he is still making progress and implementing the edits we seek, but we have to email him five or six times and talk to him on AIM multiple times before he makes the change.

I am strongly considering negotiating the cost of development with him.

 

[TC2]

That is one thing we hate about the outsourcing. We tried to develop our own stuff in-house.

Can you get hold with those 4 developers and get rid of the middle man? Sounds to me that the middle man is having problem on both end. In man case, the middle man don't any work or can't finish, he set sub-contract to those developer and rip them off.

If those developers were let go, you should be able to hire them to continue your work (without non-compete agreement) and sue the middle man for damaging your business or bleaching your contract. Consult with your attorney.

 

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[rzach41]

That is one thing we hate about the outsourcing. We tried to develop our own stuff in-house.

Can you get hold with those 4 developers and get rid of the middle man? Sounds to me that the middle man is having problem on both end. In man case, the middle man don't any work or can't finish, he set sub-contract to those developer and rip them off.

If those developers were let go, you should be able to hire them to continue your work (without non-compete agreement) and sue the middle man for damaging your business or bleaching your contract. Consult with your attorney.

I will try to get a hold of them. These 4 developers had worked with our main developer many times over the past few years, that's why it was so surprising. I am going to review our written contract and see what my options are. At this point, I just want to get the site done, not sue. If anything, maybe I can pressure him enough to bring the 4 others on board until the website is completed.


Rep ++

 

[James Fake]

To be honest; it sounds like that guy took on a couple other projects and put yours lower in priority.

See what's really going on; I think it's some deeper issue than him just not completing the work. He may be fed up or frustrated with something in the project?

I use Elance to outsource my work so if they don't do it; I pull my money back out from the escrow.

 

[rzach41]

To be honest; it sounds like that guy took on a couple other projects and put yours lower in priority.

See what's really going on; I think it's some deeper issue than him just not completing the work. He may be fed up or frustrated with something in the project?

I use Elance to outsource my work so if they don't do it; I pull my money back out from the escrow.

Yeah I think he took on a side project or two to pay some bills or something. I shot him an email this morning letting him know where I stand on all of this. Also, Andviv gave me some good advice from a PM that I'm going to post for others to see.


"Hey Ryan.

Stuff spot to be on.

do you have access to the latest code generated? Before doing anything, get that first, that way you know that, worst case scenario, you have the latest versions.

Are you paying as you go, or 50%-50%? how is the arraignment for payments?

Then, once you have a copy of everything, setup with him a conf. call to discuss progress and ask him to specifically provide you estimates for completion of each task.

The fact that he terminated his team is, at the end of the day, not your concern unless the project suffers. So yeah, get with him about completion dates and focus on what needs to get done.

Ask him for assurances from his side that he can complete the site on time and meeting the requirements. Mention to him that, given the latest progress -or lack of-- you are doubting he can complete this on his own. Listen to what he says and try to address it during the call.

In many occasions, the lead developer (him) underestimates the amount of work needed to complete the work and must reduce what he pays to others so he does not end up losing money. You may be stuck in a situation like that.

Let me know if you need help getting a copy of your site/files, as long as you have access to the development/hosting server, you should be OK.

What technology has this site been developed on? PHP? .Net? Ruby? Java?"


-Andviv to me




Its just frustrating because the longer he takes, the longer we wait to start beta testing and moving forward. I originally had him planned to take another sites API and create a very useful function for our site, but now I am leaning towards freelancing it to somebody else.

 

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[andviv]

my take on this is that he underestimated the amount of work and the cost for building this site. He will probably lose money if keeps the staff on board to complete your project. Talk to him to find out what is the best way to have this done in the time you need. Probably will cost you more than what you expected.

 

[rzach41]

my take on this is that he underestimated the amount of work and the cost for building this site. He will probably lose money if keeps the staff on board to complete your project. Talk to him to find out what is the best way to have this done in the time you need. Probably will cost you more than what you expected.

The project will not exceed estimated costs. It will take longer than expected though. Working on getting latest version of code and setting up tasks followed by estimated completion dates. Thanks for the advice Andviv, I'll keep updated!

 

[chrisranjana]

Atleast he was frank and admitted that he is the only one who is working on this project.

Also what is his latest estimated time of completion of the project?

Ask him to send you the source codes on a daily basis.

 

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[mtnman]

This is the norm fyi. Should it be? no

Hook up with Andres after you get your money back, he'll take care of ya.

Something to keep in mind as well, when you get frustrated, you might become more of a pain in the a$$ to work with, which doesn't speed things up.

 

[rzach41]

This is the norm fyi. Should it be? no

Hook up with Andres after you get your money back, he'll take care of ya.

Something to keep in mind as well, when you get frustrated, you might become more of a pain in the a$$ to work with, which doesn't speed things up.

I have always stayed respectful and positive with him. The last thing I want to do is make him angry or toot his horn. I doubt he would be motivated to work on our site very much after a swift kick in the rear!

Not going after my money, worked out a win win situation based on his needs where we both come out on top.

Compromise, it's whats for dinner. :groove:

 

[andviv]

glad to hear that.

in any case, make sure you have continued access to the code, you are paying for it and it is yours to control.

 

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[TJComer02]

I think I know the guy that's doing this to you! J/K, but I had a guy who did the same thing. I basically had him do a small job for me, and he did okay, for a good price as well. As I started to trust him with bigger projects, he put me on the back burner. I remember he started to send emails more and more as time went on, with stuff like: "we need to add this and this to your site" I would tell him something like "there's no use to add this right now it can be done in three or four weeks once the site's ready for traffic", he would keep asking and telling me we need to do it. Of course it was adding something to the site that didn't need to be at the time. I gave him money upfront and that was the last time i'll do that. Always, always work out a deal where you give the smallest a mount you have to up front. Stuff like rentacoder is good where there's an escrow fund, but you also have to deal with some weird people on there.

 

[ZDS]

I always see threads like this, it seems like their is massive opportunity for good, honesty people in the web design industry.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Hey Ryan how did this turn out? Did you ever get your project completed?

 

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[Rem]

Did you ever write up a contract? I don't work with other people without doing contracts now for this reason alone.