I have worked as a freelancer for more than a decade and was very very fortunate with the projects and partners I had. I apparently let my guards down a little bit too much and this is a reminder what to look-out for.

I have nice memories working with the Trolltech PSO team and helping with architecture, performance and low-level debugging in South Korea but when Nokia stopped investing into Qt my work on Qt and QtWebKit halted and I moved to work exclusively on GSM/3G systems. Through linkedin I got approached by a Korean business owner that spent some time working in Norway and for some companies well known to (old) Qt developers with something that looked like an opportunity to pick-up my old work. Given the common background and my work in Korea I immediately trusted this person.

I have a thing for tight deadlines and some forms of death march projects and was curious of how much the landscape changed. I thought we agreed on times and material for an exploration phase to see if the rest of the project is feasible and depending on the result move on or not, HW was sent and while there was no signed agreement I began to work. The exploration was fun but the setting was difficult and turns out there was no intention to pay for the exploration phase.

Which brings me to things I have to remember and want to share with you:

• Don’t start to work before there is a written and signed agreement
• If there is a tight deadline the burden on making the contract is on your customer and not you. If the contract is too long to read, reject it.
• Don’t take the risk of unpaid exploration if you have no influence on the final project