I am kind of involved in a college project. It's not about money but after working on their website for a month or so, these guys had trouble even giving a link back to my portfolio.
Some people really don't have conscience. I hope you get the payments.
I have no problems doing people favors, but those are done for free with no expectation of payment. If I'm expecting to be paid, I want it in writing.
In my experience, good people don't ask for such favors.
Everyone who has asked or expected that from me has let me down. My relationship with the first and only person who talks compensation as a first course remains friendly and lucrative.
If you help a friend with a coding problem he's having with his startup, that's a favour. If you give up other paid employment to help him found a startup, that's business, and you need contracts and payment and all the things that go with business.
You should treat the favor as a gift, and not expect a quid pro quo. You shouldn't do more than you can afford as a gift for them; you shouldn't spend years of your life, or a large fraction of your salary, or anything of the sort. It's just a gift for a friend or family member.
That way, you aren't left hanging, expecting something from them, and having that poison your relationship. Be very careful about letting some kind of debt or obligation hang over the head of a relationship that you care about.
Family? Yes, family. I only do free computer work for my spouse and her mom. No one else. Any siblings, aunt's, uncles, neighbors, etc... get the standard look of stupidity and are referred to my cousin who will charge them, but does good work.
He managed to get a few leads, but he relied on me to pull him out of problems. I recall the first time I helped him, it was only as a friend. Basically a large Australian government department had been screwed by a company who printed their paperwork. Their system couldn't handle umlauts... Yet they had told that company they handled Unicode. They were telling them that they handled a "subset of Unicode", which was sneaky because it was actually ISO-8859.1 that they could handle.
Later I did some reporting work, which I now see that he entirely left in my hands to sort out with the consultancy company. The state government department didn't even entirely know what they wanted. It took me about 3 months to sort out what should have been a 2 week project. It was only when I threatened to quit the reporting project that I was paid.
I still believed in the guy, so I helped him sort out an absolute disaster project for him for free with a mining company. I didn't ask for any money, as I was doing it as a favour. I managed to make him look awesome and turn it around.
Somehow through his existing work for another company, he stole a contract for an important Federal Government department - one that dealt with national security - and I implemented an ITSM solution for them. I fixed up a variety of things that I was never paid for (I fixed an upgrade that had gone terribly wrong and was threatening the project - which I was never involvc I till the last second).
Due to my success, I had learned some things about ITIL from my cousin, who is a genius about systems. So I explained to this agencies head of department what I thought about ITIL and where I thought it should go and the importance of the Service Catlog to their organisation. Not only did they get what I was saying, but they asked me in to implement their catalog! At the same time, somehow this guy had managed to get some systems integration work. The catch was the only communications channel, they could use was - wait for it - email!
Somehow I made it work.
I did a bunch of other work, and I started to help him win big contracts.
The final bit of work was with yet another very large, and highly political Federal government department. At this point I had been paid for very little and never offered any share of the company he founded.
It all came to a head one night when I stressed out as I was getting into serious debt, hadn't seen my kids or wife for some time, and phoned him to tell him I wasn't sure I could keep going.
His reaction was to cut me off all his IT systems, and then guilted me about not being loyal or reasonable.
Eventually he told me, after I had completed a large project to success, that his WIFE wouldn't let me be a part of his business. He then tried to tie me into a bunch of contracts, which I declined to sign after he put high pressure on me.
I did agree to finish off work for a company I was implementing a solution for, mainly because I didn't want to leave him in the lurch, and also because I didn't want to let my client down. I had gotten a new part time job so i could do a computer science defree, which I warned him about so he would know when my end date for wrap up would be so he could finish up that project phase so he could implement testing, for which he would employ someone who finalize the project.
I then billed him...and waited a few months (I figured he was busy). In fact, I waited 6 months before I sent him an email... To which he told me that he wasn't happy with the work, that there had been problems and he had had to redo the work. When I asked for specifics, he refused to tell me. He did say he'd work out how much he believed he wanted to pay me.
I never heard from him again.
I have now taken him to a debt collector. He has gone bankrupt and is no longer a director of his company. Instead his father is. His father refuses to pay me. In fact, he claimed he had no statement of work and that I should provide evidence before he would consider payment. What he didn't realise was that his son had caused problems for a former business partner, a very very honourable guy who quickly worked out that the son was despicable, and he provided evidence of the work I had done.
The father then offered me a fifth of the money owed as a "goodwill gesture ex gratia" payment. The debt collector is less than impressed.
The gentleman doesn't know it, but I'm about to wind up his company.
In my opinion, the man has no scruples and no conscience. I feel like a fool to have trusted him.
Such is my tale of woe... Quite cathartic to get it out there!