What took so long?

Posted April 25, 2013 · 2 Comments

Even though I’ve been developing sites with PHP for more than a decade, for some reason I’ve always had it in my mind that JavaScript was something I simply couldn’t handle. So any time a project came in the door that had any sort of JS requirement, rather than trying to sort it out myself, I’d hand that part off to somebody else. I’d then marvel at how they got it working as if they were writing in some mystical foreign language. To me, that’s what JavaScript was; mystical and foreign. For the past 2 years I’ve been saying to myself (and others), “I really need to learn JavaScript.”, and that’s where it would end. The desire was there. Not so much on the follow through.

A couple weeks back I had a particularly crazy week at work. The weekend rolled around and I felt like I still had a thousand things to do. I was feeling overwhelmed and realized I needed to step away so I didn’t explode. I remembered a conversation I had earlier in the week with a colleague who was talking about online learning sites like codecademy and teamtreehouse. On a whim I loaded up codecademy and found the JavaScipt track. I worked my way through the first few examples and I was hooked. Over the next week I forced myself to spend 30-60 minutes each day going through more examples. I wasn’t having any trouble with any of them (other than spending 30 minutes to locate an error that turned out be a typo) and was really REALLY enjoying it.

I finished the JavaScript track and moved over to jQuery. I couldn’t leave it to my normal 30-60 minutes a day. I was too excited. I wrapped it up in under a day.

Putting it to use

I’m currently working on a plugin project with a couple guys. We meet online each Monday evening and do a bit of a hackathon to keep the project moving forward. Usually I’ve left all the JavaScript to them. But this time I decided I’d at least see if there was a ticket or two that I could tackle. I opened up a couple files and was amazed at what I saw. It’s as if the files had gone through a transformation over the past week. It sorta felt like…

The Matrix

I was quickly able to tackle the ticket and mark it complete. To say the least, I was excited and encouraged.

After wrapping up the jQuery track I wanted to take a quick look at JSON. I worked through the API example of using JSON to send emails through Mandrill. Again, I was able to work through it, and more importantly I was able to understand it rather quickly.

Since diving in to codecademy I’ve found myself asking myself “What took so long? Why didn’t I do this a year ago?” My wife answered it best when she said, “Well, you’re doing it now.” As usual, she’s right. I AM doing it now, and loving it.

Big thanks to codecademy for the excellent tutorials. If you’re interested in learning to write some code, you should definitely check them out.

Filed Under: Personal, Technology

Coworking. Or, why I’m back in an office.

Posted March 12, 2013 · 12 Comments

I spent the better part of 10 years working in an office. I spent the next 3 years working from home. Both have their benefits and drawbacks, of course. As much as enjoy working from home (the commute is awesome), I have been having a pretty big issue with creating a work/life split. My home IS my office. If I am awake, I am at work. That’s been my reality for a while now. Nobody’s fault but my own, mind you.

A few years back I wrote a post about wanting a coworking facility here in Vegas. At the time I wasn’t looking for a place to work full-time, but a place to go a time or two each week to work and mingle with other geeks. It wasn’t too long after that post that I heard rumblings of some possible places that were going to open up. But most would end up just being rumors with no real location ever popping up.

Then, #vegastech happened.

/usr/lib16 months ago, /usr/lib opened up. It is a community space that was VERY much needed. A place where the tech community would start to blossom. Several nights a week the place would be swarming with groups of all shapes, sizes and interests. Not just tech groups met their, either. It was really a place for DOers to do stuff.

I was so thrilled to have this location available that was drawing such an energetic and engaging crowd that I found myself spending time there multiple evenings each week. And, since the place was pretty quiet during the day, I would sometimes pack up the laptop and use it as a place to work every now and again. It was everything I wanted in a work space… Or so I thought.

Happy-ish third anniversary

February 1st marked the third anniversary of my working from home. The lack of a work/life split at this point is really getting to me. I have been considering working from /usrlib more often, but I just haven’t made the commitment to doing it. Part of the reason is because I knew something else was on the horizon. Something I have been looking forward to for a long time. A real coworking facility within a reasonable distance from my house.

In early February Work In Progress finally opened their doors. Located in downtown Vegas, it’s a short 12-ish minute drive from home. I immediately signed up for the base level membership which gave me access to the common work area during business hours. That first week I worked out of WiP twice, and by the end of the second day, I knew I had found what I was looking for.

So, what’s the difference?

I know what you are thinking, /usr/lib and Work In Progress sound an awful lot like the same type of place. What makes them so different? For me, there are a couple key things that make for a pretty significant difference:

1) Purpose. I have found that when I leave the house and head to WiP, I am “going to work.” when I get there I sit down, focus and dig in. At /usr/lib, it never entirely felt that way for me. The place, in general, is a place I go for social events, so my time spent there isn’t as focused and isn’t as productive.

2) My Spot! (I immediately thought of Sheldon Cooper when I wrote that) I have upgraded my membership at WiP which gives me the ability to pick a desk and make it my own. I have brought in a nice sized monitor and stand, so when I am working at WiP it is a setup I am very comfortable with, since it matches my home office pretty closely. When I am working at /usr/lib, I am always working on my laptop only. That is just never going to be as productive as working with more real estate.

3) Facilities. /usr/lib wasn’t designed to be a coworking facility, so many of the things I would talk about in this category aren’t fair to compare. Having a locker to store belongings, a staff on hand to help when needed, a fridge to keep drinks, a kitchen, a phone room to step in to take a quick call. Hell, the option to have a dedicated desk where I can leave my monitor is a huge benefit.

Work/Life split

Originally my plan was to head down to WorkInProgress a couple days a week, similar to how I was using /usr/lib, but after those first couple days I was noticing that I was already feeling more productive while I was there. This past week was my first full week at WiP, and while I don’t expect to all of a sudden stop working from home in the evenings, I at least feel that I am on the right track to getting back to some sort of normalcy. Hopefully the days of spending 16 hours in front of the screen are behind me and I can start to regain that work/life split that I have been missing.

Wish me luck!

Filed Under: Work Tagged With: ,

Instant Messenger is the Devil

Posted February 14, 2013 · Leave a Comment

Software like Adium and Pidgeon are so darn handy. They let you hook up your Google Chat, Yahoo! IM, AIM, MSN and other instant messengers along with access to tons of IRC channels, too. Man, what a great invention. Instant access to everybody I’ve ever exchanged email with (thanks gchat) all at the click of a button. What could be better?

Whoops, I meant, what could be worse??

Up until a couple weeks ago, my normal practice would be to get up in the morning, sit down at the computer, open my email and open Adium. It was basically like shouting “Hello World! I’m awake and ready to answer all your questions!” The flood of emails is bad, but the flood of IMs are worse. Mostly because my (self diagnosed) OCD wouldn’t let me just ignore ‘em. I felt like I had to answer every single one. I basically felt like this:

Dilbert

“So why not just shut off IM?”, you say. Simple answer, I have a team I work with and it’s nice to be available to them. Unfortunately that meant being available to roughly 1400 other contacts at the same time. I was in serious need of a solution. And as usually happens, one presented itself at WordCamp.

I was sitting in the back of the room with Dre and looking over his shoulder as he was doing some work. Up popped a messenger window and he started typing to a coworker. I asked, “What IM program is that?”

“Hipchat, it’s awesome”, he said.

He explained that it let him be in direct contact with his team, and just his team.

Holy crap, why had I never heard of this? I downloaded it immediately and sent invites to everybody on my team. I now had direct access to my developers, I could create rooms to talk about specific projects with sub-sets of the team, and it even let me receive notices on my phone if something came in while I wasn’t at my desk. I was instantly in love.

The first week of not having the IM distraction was a bit weird. I was so used to the distraction, when it wasn’t there, I sorta didn’t know what to do. But, after a couple weeks, I’m really noticing a difference in my productivity during the day. It’s not perfect, but it’s a HELL of a lot better.

I still need to sort out a way to deal with emails, but, for Instant Messenger, Hipchat is definitely the answer.

Photo credit:4nitsirk, on Flickr

Filed Under: Tools, Work Tagged With: , ,

The “Bench in Utah” story

Posted January 4, 2013 · 2 Comments

For Christmas I got my wife a weekend getaway to Zion. She was kind enough to invite me along. We made the drive from Vegas yesterday. After you turn off the 15 on to highway 9, you end up going through a string of small towns. As we made our way on highway 9 I told her “If we see the bench again, we need to stop because I want to take another picture.” She laughed. She’s awesome that way.

Flag BenchJust after entering the city of Hurricane, I saw the bench. I pulled over and had her take my picture. I posted it to Instagram with a note saying, “if I’ve ever told you the story of a bench in Utah, this is the bench.” I got asked about the story and since it’s too much to type in a comment, I promised to post it here. So, here you go… The Bench in Utah story.

Several years back, Chris and I came up to Zion and really enjoyed our time here. We liked it so much that we decided we wanted to come back and bring the kids. Part of the reason we liked it so much had something to do with one of the best burgers we had ever had. A bacon bleu cheese burger from Wildcat Willies. The bacon itself was amazing.

One Saturday we woke up and entirely out of the blue decided that for breakfast we wanted to go to Wildcat Willies for bacon and eggs. We woke the kids up, threw ‘em in the car and headed out for a 3 hour drive to get bacon. Around that time I was heavily in to photography. So I was excited to be heading back to Zion with all my equipment to take a bunch of photos. But really, the bacon played a big part in our motivation that morning.

As we made our way up highway 9, I saw the bench that was painted like and old-time American flag. I told Chris, “on our way home, I want to stop and take some pictures of the bench.” We continued on and stopped at Wildcat Willies. During breakfast our daughter spilled an entire cup of tea in her lap. This put a serious damper on our plans to go in to Zion and do some hiking. So instead, we stopped and got her some sweatpants and then hopped back in the car to head back home. So it really did end up being a 6 hour trip just for breakfast.

On our way back home, we saw the bench again and I pulled the car over to take some pictures. Chris and the kids were going to stay in the car. I hopped out and popped open the back of the car to grab all my gear. I crossed the street, took a couple dozen photos and headed back to the car. I opened up the back, put all my gear back inside and closed it up. I opened up the driver’s door, got in and said, “If you look behind us right now…” at which point all 3 of them quickly turned around to look out the back window, “you can see where I farted.”

We all had a big laugh. OK, probably me more than them. But, I’m happy to report that the phrase has remained and is still used from time to time.

So there you have it, the Bench in Utah story.

Filed Under: Personal

Knowing when to say when

Posted August 26, 2012 · 6 Comments

Stress 39/365

Better late than never, that’s what they always say, right?

I’ve had a project on my plate for a while that started out as one thing and then morphed in to something totally different. The problem is, I didn’t notice the fact that it was morphing until I had already done a shit ton of work on it. More than I probably should have before noticing a huge underlying issue. It’s at this point that I made the first vital mistake.

At this point what I should have done was to stop working, contact the client and let him know the issue I found and reevaluate the project, the direction and the solution. But instead, I soldiered on throwing more hours in to the project.

The next thing to happen is what always happens when a project starts to run long, other commitments start getting in the way and the available time to work on the previous project seems to disappear. Eventually enough time passed and the client starts asking about the project. It’s at this time that we finally have that talk that should have happened weeks ago. The project is off-track and the direction needs shifting.

After the talk with the client, new goals were set in place. But once again, I misjudged the amount of work the project was going to take. I dug in, got some pieces of it done and before I knew it, I had once again put in far too many hours. My problem this time; guilt. I felt terrible about how long the project had drug on. I felt terrible about the lack of focused attention. I pretty much just felt terrible all around.

Two words: Vicious Cycle
By no means is this an excuse, but, the month of august has royally sucked. We’ve had more than our fair share of crap hit us and it’s all added up to a huge pile of stress. One thing I’ve learned is that when enough stress piles up, my ability to focus has a tendency to fly out the window. So in the case of this project, it was causing me stress by taking so long, which would in turn cause me to lose focus… which would then cause more stress. I felt like I was riding the stress-go-round and I needed off. Now!

I wrote the email I was dreading. I let the client know I needed out. This wasn’t about money. This wasn’t about hours. This was me realizing I had screwed up long ago and every minute I continued on this path was wasting everybody’s time. I felt sick writing that email. But the second I hit send and couldn’t take it back, a weight was lifted from my shoulders. I could literally FEEL the stress leaving my body.

Sometimes I am my own worst enemy. By not paying attention to the writing on the wall I can sometimes get my self in to pretty crappy situations.

As with many of my blog posts, I write them as a reminder to myself. But, there is one take away that I think is universal; take a few minutes and reevaluate when the stress starts to build. You’ll thank yourself for it later. I know I did.

[stress photo by Crashmaster007 on flickr]

Filed Under: Work

42: The answer to the universe

Posted July 7, 2012 · 9 Comments

Yesterday I celebrated my 42nd birthday. I have to say, I’m both excited and a little concerned for what the next year may hold. Mainly because the past year has been pretty much insane. Let’s recap:

Business

What started out as a 3 person partnership went down to 2 at the beginning of 2011. Then, in early 2012 that went down to 1. I’m now the sole owner of 9seeds. I’m thrilled to say that I was able to lose two partners but keep both as friends. Their friendship means way more to me then having them be part of the company.

You might think that having 2 partners leave means that things aren’t going so well. Well, you’d be wrong. We just wrapped up one of our best months in our nearly 3 year history, and July is already shaping up to be better than June. So on the business side, things are good and the next year looks to be a big one for us.

Aside from just my own business, I have also had a lot of involvement with two groups looking to change the outsider’s perception of Las Vegas. VegasTech is a group of technology enthusiasts and entrepreneurs. Downtown Project is a group of passionate people looking to revitalize downtown Las Vegas in new and unexpected ways. After only a year there are already signs that big changes are on the way. I’m positive that what you seen in downtown Vegas 18-24 months from now is going to knock your socks off.

Personal

On January 10th, I did two things I had never done before. The first was something I had been wanting to do for a while. I gave a presentation at an Ignite event. For whatever reason, the shorter and more structured format for the talk made it really interesting to prepare for. I had an absolute blast.

What I didn’t know was also going to happen that day was that my tastes in certain foods was about to change. After Ignite, a group of us walked across the street to a little restaurant called Le Thai. If you had asked me earlier that day if I liked Thai food, I would have said no. But, we went and I really liked it. The spice level I chose (level 1) was a little outside of my comfort zone. The next time I went I ordered the same meal but with a zero spice level and realized I didn’t like it as much. I’ve switched back to level 1 and have probably eaten at Le Thai 20 more times since then.

The other big food/drink related change worth noting is my recently acquired interest in addiction to coffee related drinks. Blended Vanilla Mocha or Caramel Macchiato, neither of these would have ever been something I would have seen myself ordering. But, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have at least one of these each of the past 3 or 4 days. I haven’t gotten to the point of just ordering a cup of black coffee yet. But something tells me it’s probably not far off at this point.

Throw in my recent switch to ordering ‘mild’ rather than ‘plain’ chicken fingers and I think you can see that it’s been a pretty weird year. More than once I’ve been asked “Who are you and what have you done with John?”

What to do while 42

I’m not usually somebody who sets goals or plans things too far in the future. But, for the past year or so I have had a fun little idea in the back of my head. You see, I’ve pretty much been a geek my entire life. I bought my first computer (with my own money, mind you) when I was about 10. Around that same time I read The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy for the first time. I’ve since read the book a couple more times, but, something I have never done is read the entire series. So I figured, when better to read the entire series than while I’m 42? Nerdy? Absolutely. But it sounds like fun to me. And if you don’t get the reference, please go read the first book in the series.

Since I probably should do more than just read a handful of books over the course of the year, I’m also going to devote some time each week to sharpening my dev skills. Currently my focus is on JavaScript. There have been far too many times where I have put off building projects simply because I don’t know the JavaScript needed to make them successful. No more. This year I WILL learn how to use JavaScript to do the things I need.

I’ll set a reminder to write an update post each quarter to report back on how things are going with both projects.

Filed Under: Personal Tagged With: ,

My first week using RescueTime

Posted April 30, 2012 · 7 Comments

I spent a lot of time at my desk. I mean, a LOT of time. I’m really trying to cut down on the numbers of hours I spend at the desk and I’m going for the ‘Work smarter, not harder’ approach. So one of the things I thought I should do was track how much time I’m spending doing different activities. So in order not to spend more time trying out a bunch of different tools, I asked Twitter for a recommendation. I quickly got back a handful of responses suggesting I check out RescueTime. I signed up for the free account, installed the Mac app and away I went…

The first day I installed it, I let it run for about an hour and then went to the dashboard just to make sure it was working. Sure enough, I could see it was recording how much time I was spending in my email client, in a browser, on IM, etc. So, I let ‘er roll.

The following day I checked back and was already really liking the information it was collecting. I did a little research and found that the paid version offered an even better set of reporting, including some custom reports that I’ll talk about later. It was enough to get me to purchase a subscription. I pre-paid for a year, set up some custom reports and went back to work.

The next day I got my first “weekly” report. Since it only had about 1.5 days recorded, I decided to not even bother with it and would wait for another week before really digging in. So here we are a week later. Let’s have a look, shall we?

What I learned

  1. RescueTime will block you from accessing sites that are marked as Very Distracting. Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and I’m sure plenty others. But, it didn’t block me from using TweetDeck. It did, however, stop me from clicking on any links that tried to go through the t.co redirect.
  2. I cheated, and it screwed up my stats. Rescue time has a nifty little feature where you can tell it to pause for 15 minutes, 60 minutes or until tomorrow. When it is on pause, you can go to all those great time wasting sites. My problem is, I’d click pause to go check Facebook and then forget to start the clock again once I got back to work. So because of that, my stats for this week are pretty low. For the next week, I’m going to try and not use the pause button for anything other than 15 minute Social Media breaks. I will also try and limit them to a couple per day.
  3. I spend a LOT of time dealing with email. This one wasn’t actually all that shocking to me. Although, I was a little sad to see that my top 2 activities were email and IM. when do I get any work done??? I’m working on some solutions for that issue as well. IM is a vital tool for me since I manage remote developers and that is one of our main communication methods, but I need to lower the amount of time I spend on it.
  4. Custom Reports are awesome! With custom reports you can set up to track time you spend on individual clients by adding a list of keywords that the software will look for. So, if you are writing code and saving it to a directory named ‘client-abc’, you can easily track that time. I need to refine my custom reports a bit, but, I believe over time it will become a way to better track how long each client project takes. This will help with estimating the cost of future projects.

Moving forward I’m going to go ahead and let RescueTime run 24/7 to get a better understanding of how much time I’m spending on the computer and when that time is productive and when it’s not. My goal is to raise the productivity number while lowering the total hours. Although, I have a feeling this next week is going to see a big jump in hours as I try to leave the pause button alone.

Overall I’d have to say I’m really happy with RescueTime. Sure, some of what it’s showing me I already new (Damn you, email), but there have definitely been some eye-openers as well. Now, to use this knowledge to make changes for the better.

Filed Under: Personal, Reviews, Technology, Tools

Shopping at Ikea from Vegas

Posted April 18, 2012 · 7 Comments

Up until two weeks ago, I had never entered an Ikea store for my own shopping purposes. I have been inside an Ikea a couple previous times, but those were always because somebody knew I was traveling to California and asked if I would pick something up for them. I had never even seen the showroom. Just the customer service counter. But that has all changed.

My old desk

For a while now, I have been pretty unhappy with my office desk. It is a corner desk that doesn’t really have enough room to set thing up other than directly pointing in to the corner. Which is pretty darn uncomfortable in a few areas. It would be hard to explain, but trust my, it wasn’t a great desk for sitting for long stretches of time.

We happened to be in So Cal for a few days, and while we were there I made my first REAL trip to Ikea. I had something specific in mind. I was looking for a corner desk that had a rounded transition in the corner, and it was a must that the edges of the desktop were rounded and didn’t have a piece of cheap board stuck to it that would eventually peel off.

Easier said than done.

They didn’t have what I was looking for, so we started looking at some other options. Even though none of the desks they had on display was thrilling me, I was pretty stoked about a nice table top they had on display. It was a thick slab of wood with really nice rounded edges. I loved it immediately. Two problems, though; it doesn’t have legs, and, it was out of stock. Damn.

After getting back to Vegas empty handed, I checked out the Ikea site and found the desktop I had been looking at. On the page they had suggestions for legs, and as alternatives, these spiffy looking shelves. That was exactly what I was looking for. At that point I knew exactly what I wanted. I addeded the items to my cart and calculated the shipping to Vegas. The shipping was actually more than the cost of the entire desk. Ouch! The next thought was to drive back out to Cali. Round trip would be over 500 miles. Between gas prices and the idea of spending a full day on the road, this wasn’t an option either. I needed a better solution. To Twitter I went.

A friend suggested I contact ModernLV.com. They provide Ikea delivery service to Las Vegas. I hit up their site, followed their quick instructions for placing an order (sending an email), and waited for a response. The following morning I got back the details. They charge a percentage of the order price for the service, which, when I considered my other options felt like an absolute steal! I confirmed my order and then began the long wait for the weekend to come and go.

First thing the following Monday, I woke up to an email that my order was here. I scheduled a time to go pick it up, and a few short hours later I had my new desk built and was back to work.

The New Desk

My new desk has a lot less real estate than my old one. I am trying to cut down on the clutter to help keep my mind clear. It has only been 2 days with the new desk,but I feel like the new desk helped me reshape some habits. We shall see what things look like after a few weeks/months, but I am feeling pretty confident that I can stick with it.

I can’t say enough great things about ModernLV. Great service, great communication, friendly. I will definitely use them again.

But for now, back to work at the new desk. Woo hoo!

Filed Under: Personal, Reviews

KISS mini-golf

Posted April 17, 2012 · 1 Comment

Growing up, I was such a HUGE KISS fan. I saw them in concert in 1980, had all their albums, dressed as Paul Stanley for halloween, had the lunchbox, watched the TV specials… All of it! I loved that band. I can’t say that there’s ever been a time in my life where I wasn’t at least a casual fan.

That being said, I’d be lying if I didn’t say that the amount of merchandise the band has put out over the past decade or so is absolutely gross. Some of the items are cool, don’t get me wrong. And, I love when they license a product that is at least entertaining in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way. But come on, the volume of products they’ve licensed is absurd. Not to take anything away from them. They are one of the best marketing machines we may ever see. But still, it does make me a little sad inside.

So of course, since KISS opened an indoor mini-golf course right here in Las Vegas (Across from the Hard Rock), you know I was gonna have to at least check it out.

We had gone to Vegas StrEATs on Saturday, and as we were finishing up some food, it began to rain. But, rather than just head home, I threw out the idea of checking out Kiss Mini-Golf. We headed that direction and called ahead to find out the price and to confirm it was an indoor venue. I certainly didn’t want to be mini-golfing in the rain. Even though I though $11.95/person was a bit spendy for mini-golf, the $2 off per person for locals made the price at least tolerable. As we were paying, I saw a sign that suggested getting the iPhone app for keeping score. Naturally, I had to geek it up and grab the app. I was a bit put off that it was a $0.99 download. Come on. You already have me dropping $40 to play a round of mini-golf. But, whatever… on we went.

The place is pumping KISS music and I’m pretty sure the only lights in the place are black lights. Tons of black light paint is glowing all around the place. The 18 hole course isn’t all that challenging, but the atmosphere and the staff really made up for it. The place was pretty busy, so there were plenty of times where we were standing still waiting for the group ahead of us to finish up. They have staff members who will come around and ask KISS trivia questions and give you tickets for correct answers.

The walls are painted with some some famous Vegas-related names, usually painted up in KISS make-up. Oscar Goodman, Elvis, Liberace and a bunch others. Oddly, there wasn’t as much KISS memorabilia as I was expecting. They do have a small-ish store where you can purchase a bevy of KISS related products. Oh, and for those with a shit-ton of money, you can purchase a bass played by Gene Simmons and get a meet and great at a concert of your choice (tix not included).

Reading this back, it sounds like I’m doing more complaining than anything, but we actually had a really good time. I think I was a little put off by some aspects of it. Maybe a more spread out golf course would have helped. It does sorta feel like you’re golfing with groups on 3 different holes at the same time. I’d say it’s worth at least checking out once, but I can’t see myself rushing back for another round any time soon.

Here’s some photos from our adventure.

Filed Under: Personal

Some thoughts on finder’s fees

Posted April 9, 2012 · 6 Comments

Last year somebody reached out to me and mentioned that they had a client they couldn’t take on so they wanted to pass them my way. I got some basic details about the project and it seemed like we’d be a good fit for what the client needed, so I said send ‘em over. The person said, “OK and then when you land the client, you can send me a 10% finder’s fee.” Without thinking much about it, I agreed. After getting off the phone and giving it some thought, I wasn’t really sure how I felt about it. On one hand, I may not have ever found that client, so getting 90% of something is better than 100% of nothing. But, on the other hand, the other developer was overloaded and wouldn’t have taken the project anyway and I felt like they were just trying to capitalize as they sent the client away. Either way, I wasn’t really happy. And, as luck would have it, it didn’t work out and we didn’t land the client so I didn’t have to deal with it anyway.

I go to a fair amount of WordCamps around the country with a bunch of other WordPress developers. When hanging out and talking with non-developers, one question that comes up from time to time is “Who is your competition?” My answer is always the same, “Everybody here. And nobody.”

I’m currently fielding more project enquiries than I could handle. Hell, my current project list is already insane and I’m telling anybody who calls that I’m booked through the middle of next month. And when they say that they can’t wait that long to get started, the next thing I do is send them an email with a list of other WordPress developers I know who may be able to squeeze them in. No request for a finder’s fee. Just trying to connect somebody who needs work done with somebody who may have time to do some work.

This past week I had another request from somebody asking for a finder’s fee. I politely told them that I don’t offer a finder’s fee and if they wanted to send the project to somebody else instead, that was fine with me. Once again, when I got off the phone, I stopped to think about the conversation. I’m wondering if I’m going about this all wrong? Am I missing out on a grip of cash by not requesting a finder’s fee from people I send leads to?

Oh, right, I almost forgot… I don’t care.

Here’s my thinking; if you are only interested in sending me the lead because you’re looking for a slice off the top as the client leaves your hands, do me a favor and just don’t send them my way. If you spent time with the client ahead of time and helped them sort out their RFP, you definitely should be paid for that. There’s even a word for what you did. They call it consulting. Consultants get paid. By the client. I am not your client.

So, yeah. After having some time to think about it, I’ll just go on record and say, “No, I will not send you a finder’s fee”. I’ll have to list this post right next to my “No, I will not sign your NDA post”

I’m curious what you think. What’s your take on finder’s fees? Do you ask for them? Do you pay them? Leave a comment and give me your angle on it.

 

 

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