Stop Being Cheated by Third-Party Companies

A dear friend of mine; Muid Latif, related his horrible recent experience dealing with a third-party for a web project they are working on. In the Malaysia web design and development industry, filled with freelancers derived from students to working professionals there are third-parties whom hire them. Some of these third-parties have no sense of professionalism and worst of all, they have no respect for you.

Muid’s experience in summary is he was given the commission to design a website template for Dewan Bahasa Pustaka by a third-party. A commission is not a recognition but merely an opportunity to be involved in something larger than what you might have expected. In Muid’s case here, I would say he was rather badly taken advantage of.

I’m sharing this story with you because as Muid said, it’s not about the shame but the worries professionals like him, us and others have for the younger or more inexperienced web designers in Malaysia. We do not want this to happen countless times anymore and would like to minimize the emotional damage such a scenario could cause a designer.

Besides his story you must read, he also shared a short list of advices for other web designers or even developers:

1. Always know who are the company you about to work with, and their background. Never trust someone immediately.
2. Never ever take any job without black white. (proper documentation)
3. Never take the job if they keep on asking to reduce price. If they threaten you to give to someone else, let them be. If they mention a student can help build them the website around RM500-1,500, let them be. At the end of the day, their product will be unprofessional because there are no such digital branding, proper site map and information architecture greatly implemented at first place. (I normally let it go if it’s about price)
4. Have courtesy and tolerance. Most of Malaysian client’s pattern is well known for its narrow attitude of being irresponsible, always into power-driven (to impress boss rather than to help improve on the product), being impatience and bark at people. Avoid this kind of people.
5. You have the right decline a project immediately if there’s something goes wrong. If the request of job scope increases and it’s not written black white, make them write, or you will need to do something. This is to avoid wasting your creative time and effort that you are about to put in a project. We designers actually produces more brain-power in creating ideas and creativity through visuals and designs, and believe me, you will get exhausted.(be careful with this if you sign a contract)
6. Always have black white stored, never make any decision orally. Always keep them on track in documents such as email and other documents if necessary. This might help you incase they start to backfired or try to find excuse for a fault. (I agree to this half-heartedly because there are customers which you might not need to be overly strict with. But this can be made as a step of precaution.)

And to add to the list above, I would say:

• Define the job requirements and responsibilities before taking it on.
• If the third-party is starting to be irresponsible, request urgently for a meeting and voice out your professional concerns. As a professional, you should not only be concerned about your work but the results.
• Never accept a job without down payment unless you have a formal agreement of the payment details due. But this is very risky especially dealing with a company size of more than 10 people.

If you’d like to add more advices, please do leave them in the comments. :)
[tags]Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, Creative Industy Awareness, Web Designer Tips[/tags]