Ask HN: How to do freelance work that is reclaimable?

Posted by leowoo91 on Saturday November 24, 2018 @01:05AM
from the ask-hn dept.

Most of the projects I see, their coding depends on the outsourced company it started. I would like go into consultancy business but when things go side ways and it comes time to leave my customer, I would want them to remain happy.

Here, I wonder if how other companies are willing to take over the existing code? What should I do best to make transition easier for the project itself for encouragement of new team taking over?

Thank you for thoughts.

( 3 comments | 3 points | on HN )

Re:Ask HN: How to do freelance work that is reclaimable? by gregjor on Saturday November 24, 2018 @03:28AM (#18521075)

Write clean, simple code. Don’t over-engineer. Use version control. Document design decisions, dependencies that aren’t obvious, and installation/build instructions, and keep those current. Did I mention USE VERSION CONTROL?

My freelance business is taking over legacy software when the original developers quit, get fired, stop answering emails.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: How to do freelance work that is reclaimable? by leowoo91 on Saturday November 24, 2018 @04:06AM (#18521187)

I like your points, I assume I will do all. "Document design decisions" is new for me, I will look for standards for that.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: How to do freelance work that is reclaimable? by axelrosen on Sunday November 25, 2018 @02:15PM (#18528358)

I think to some degree you have to accept the disposable nature of consulting. If you want to be responsible for satisfaction years down the road, you could do a product-consulting hybrid, where you do quite a lot of customer-specific dev upfront but as part of a bigger product.

Otherwise you really need to make sure the customer cares about it as much as you do. And many simply don't.

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