"Endless" edits

I did one of my first freelance orders for a couple of weeks. I started the task with a slight delay, but completed the bulk of it towards the end of the deadline. On the last day it accelerated sharply, creating a mess in the source code. It never occurred to me then that I was creating a lot of extra work for myself.

The client received the result and with the words “I’ll look at it this weekend” disappeared for several days. I was looking forward to feedback, because the final payment depended on it, and I just needed money. And then the letter with comments finally arrived.

I opened it with great optimism, because I thought that I had done a great job with the project. But when I saw the volume of the text, I was both upset and angry. “Hmmm... I won’t see any payment anytime soon!” — I thought, reading through dozens of comments.

I gathered my strength and sat down to edit. Many of them were very simple and took only a few minutes. Some were more serious and required more time. And I didn’t want to agree with some of them simply because adding them could take as many hours as creating the entire project. I put aside such comments “for later” and decided to discuss them separately during the next demonstration.

What angered me most was that I made my work much more difficult by not putting the source code in order. Some of the elements were named in such a way that after some time it was difficult to figure out what exactly was meant. And I haven’t used symbols (or wizards) yet. These are elements that are used in many places in the interface and can be edited all at once by making changes to only one of them.

With grief in half, I coped with the edits in a few days and suddenly received another letter with a list of comments. The client accompanied him with a short message: “I found a few more points that I would like to improve.”

At this point I became completely depressed. “How long can you torture me?.. And when will it end?” — I thought, continuing to work with the last remnants of my willpower. It seemed to me that the client, who seemed completely adequate at the beginning of cooperation, turned into a monster and thus decided to devalue the work done and drive me to the grave.

During the demonstration, I defended my work like a lion. Most of all I wanted to make sure that the customer accepted my arguments and refused many edits. In some cases, he actually agreed, and I, rejoicing in small victories, defended myself even more. At some point, this turned our dialogue into a real battle, where what was at stake was not the quality of the project and the customer’s satisfaction, but the number of hours that would have to be spent on edits.

Needless to say, before starting work, I so sparsely described its composition in the annex to the contract that I could not say: “We did not agree on this!” And it turned out that, on the one hand, I adhered to the position “The client is always right and I will complete the work without asking for additional money,” and, on the other hand, with my behavior during the negotiations I hinted to him in every possible way that he was wrong and that it was time to let the poor freelancer go free.

But the client did not give up, and then I turned on another tactic: I began to silently apply all the edits, even the most controversial ones, without discussions or objections. It looked funny, of course. I turned from a specialist into a “pencil” in the hands of the customer, with which he drew what he wanted. It turned out crookedly, and, looking at the result of his work, he asked to roll back many of the changes. At this point I realized that I had not saved some intermediate versions, so I would have to do some additional work to return everything to the way it was.

In the end, the client clearly got tired of all this. At first, he extracted from me the edits that he could, then he felt my apathy and uselessness as an interface specialist (after all, I did everything “to his tune”) and did not waste any more time and energy on such communication. He made the final payment, thanked me for the work and never contacted me again. I was glad that this “hard labor” was over, not realizing that I had lost a good client forever.

What this story taught me: get to work early so as not to do everything at the last moment, prepare sources in advance for a large number of edits, and also save intermediate results so that you can easily roll back.

Thanks to this approach, I became less afraid of comments, and therefore became less protective of my decisions, now paying attention not to my working hours, but to what exactly clients want to see as a result. At some point, I realized that before I communicated with customers, being with them “on opposite sides of the barricades,” and now we were peacefully deciding together how to cope with a common task.

The contracts have also changed for the better. Now in the applications I described the work in such a way as to protect myself from overwork, and to give clients a certain “corridor of variability” within which the project could be implemented in one way or another. You cannot limit the variability too much, as this will not allow you to get a result that the client will definitely like. You can’t leave it too high, since you can take on one project and end up with another.

Over time, I was in the client’s shoes and was horrified, in many moments remembering myself at the beginning of my freelance journey.

As a customer, I received voluminous work results at the very last moment and had to spend hours studying them and providing feedback. I didn’t have time to check everything in one go. I had to send comments in batches, which created the impression that I was deliberately overwhelming the freelancer with edits. It was then that I realized that I had made the wrong conclusions about my first customers. They didn’t want to overwhelm me with edits; I myself put them in such conditions.

Often, out of ten comments, the performers worked on seven or eight, and skipped the rest, either due to inattention, or in the hope that I wouldn’t notice.

They argued with me and fought for every edit, and at some point they gave up and began to mindlessly correct everything, as if showing that I won the battle, but lost the war.

Finally, at some point, I was dumbfounded with the phrase: “You have reached the limit of edits, all further comments are only for an additional fee.”

I was amazed, frustrated and learned quickly. I realized that no one likes to generate endless comments, everyone wants a result that suits them. I realized that many performers try to guess the client’s wishes instead of asking them directly and recording them at the beginning of the work. Then there would be no need to correct with the help of an endless number of “crutches” what is fundamentally wrong.

But I myself often guessed, spending little time collecting all the necessary information about clients’ projects and desires. The problem was that from time to time I was lucky (I did what I needed on the first try) and therefore I did not wise up as quickly as if each time I was faced with clients who were disappointed with the result.

As a result, I came to the conclusion that I should not limit clients in the number of edits, but rather work better on the reason for their occurrence.

• Start work early and immediately demonstrate intermediate results in order to quickly “synchronize” with the client and have the same vision at the end of the work.
• Do not provide customers with voluminous results that require several days to study, but break them down into parts that can be reviewed in one go.
• Initially prepare the source code for future modifications. Minimize labor costs for edits so as not to be afraid of them.
• Save intermediate results every time major changes are made to the project, so that you can roll back the work to a previous version.
• Write down all comments, even the smallest ones, so that nothing is missed. If the list was provided by the client himself, then work through all its points without exceptions. He will not pay attention to 19 completed items out of 20, but he will remember exactly the one that the freelancer for some reason did not complete.
• Don't be afraid to redo basic solutions. This is much more effective than trying to save an initially incorrect vision with the help of a large number of “crutches”.
• Do not limit clients in the number of edits.

Colleagues did not approve of my decision not to limit clients in the number of edits. They proceeded from the fact that customers would definitely use this opportunity to my detriment: endlessly generate comments until they tortured the unfortunate freelancer until he lost consciousness. However, I myself thought differently. I realized that there were too few sadistic people in the world for me to have a chance of encountering them. Clients want to get a result that they will be happy with, but what prevents them from doing this is primarily the work processes built by freelancers. At the time of writing this chapter, I have worked with more than three hundred customers, and not one of them has taken advantage of the “endless” edits feature. We arrived at the desired result in short iterations and finished the work on a positive note.

There are situations when it is difficult for a customer to choose from two options, and he begins to rush back and forth, jumping from version to version. Typically, freelancers react negatively to this behavior; they do not like the client’s uncertainty, which leads to additional work. However, here you can always choose from two approaches: “Make your decision sooner or pay more money for new options” or “Let’s try together to decide on the choice and what it will be based on (to make such decisions easier next time), and move on.” I chose the second one for myself.

Of course, this has also happened: clients who got exactly the result they wanted looked at it and realized that it could be improved. And this is a completely natural process. If you show me the prototypes that I finished working on a few months ago, then I will also have good ideas for them. But by making endless improvements, you won’t bring any project to completion.

When clients went beyond the project requirements, the situation could develop in two ways. If the changes were minor and could easily be made without harming myself, then I didn’t tell the customers anything and added them to the project. I did this so as not to make them nervous about forcing me to do extra work for free (after all, they are not able to estimate labor costs in an unfamiliar industry). When I myself ordered the services of freelancers and they reported that they did something for me simply because they were so good and valued their employers, I felt discomfort. I felt that I was becoming a participant in an unfair deal in which I was assigned the role of exploiter. Therefore, I myself began to use the following principle: “If you have done more than is necessary, do not boast about it if you do not plan to receive a reward for it.” If it mattered to the client, he himself will notice. If not, you don’t need to add value to yourself at the expense of something he won’t appreciate.

At this point I want to draw the reader’s close attention: there is no need to be shy about talking about the work done in all the details. This will help the client see more value in the outcome. But don't talk about it in the context of "I did more than you asked" because that just means the deal was unfair.

The second scenario in which the situation with edits could develop occurred when the client asked me to do something that would take me a lot of time and effort, and this was not specified in the contract. Then I immediately informed the customer that this work was not part of our agreement, but I was ready to describe it in an additional agreement and do it for some money. And he additionally explained that this would also affect the already agreed upon deadlines for the project. Most often, clients in such situations agree with my arguments and politely refuse such edits. And sometimes, on the contrary, they ask to add these works to the list “for the future” and return to it after the current iteration is completed (which actually happens in half of the cases).

Here it is important to demonstrate that, despite my unwillingness to do additional work for free, I am very attentive to such wishes, write everything down, do not miss anything, and will gladly participate in the further development of the project.

As a result, I settled on the following rules that protect against free overtime:

• Prescribe the list of works in the contract in sufficient detail so that there is no desire to burden the freelancer with tasks beyond the agreements.
• And at the same time, it is not so detailed that the client has a “corridor of variability” with the help of which he could get the result that completely suits him.
• Those edits outside the agreements that will take a lot of time and will be to the detriment of the freelancer should be recorded and offered to be assessed separately in an additional agreement.