rant
Out of context: Reply #40
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- stewdio0
This reminds me of a situation I was in a while back.
During graduate school I was pretty poor, basically living on loans. (Now I'm super poor while paying off loans; the irony!) At one point I decided I had better take some paying jobs outside of school. Big mistake. My stress level, lack of food, sleep, hugs, etc. made me pretty snippy. But I was desperate for money.
I signed on to build a website for some "friends" outside of school who had snagged a large client. Thought I would have some level of authorship because I was clearly the web expert of the group . . . I quickly realized I was just being used for my coding skills. No authorship. No visual input. No interactive input. The site design was horribly ugly and horribly non-functional. Clearly drafted up by someone who doesn't think in web terms. (I imagine motion designers must feel the same way when a print designer tries to storyboard a motion piece.) Any attempt to fix it was met with a lot of friction.
I was given the material to work with two months behind schedule. Things that the client had "signed off on" kept changing and when I couldn't produce to meet the *original* launch deadline I was crucified. Fired without the remainder of my fee. It was devastating. I was broke, unslept, unwell . . . defeated.
That's the worst (and final) example of a lesson I had to learn a few times over. The scenario is pretty much the same each time : There's a client that you never meet. They don't care about you or your concepts. They just want the product delivered on time. Then there's the middleman, the go-between who is supposedly on your side. But they don't really understand what it is you're doing and they certainly don't know how to present it to the client. They claim they're "protecting" you from the client and/or "distracting" aspects of the project so you can "get work done." Instead they're using their position to deflect blame.
What I've come away with is this : Never take a job for the money (unless you'll starve). Only work on projects that appeal to your specific and illogical interests. No middlemen. Never work "for" a client. Only work "with" collaborators. Only work with people who share your quirks and a desire to make great things. I find that if I follow these rules I tend to deliver things that I'm proud of — that the client is proud of. It's fun, I deliver on time, I make new friends, and usually these lead to future collaborations that are equally as fulfilling.
But then again, I'm not exactly a big fish so I'm probably doing it wrong . . .