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Comment by indiejade | Hacker News Reader

I've hired a coder to create me a desktop app using JAVA swing that I planned to sell.

You might be asking for advice in the wrong place.

If you want to make money selling desktop apps, the advice you'll likely get from this crowd is "learn how to do it yourself." Otherwise, give your coder at least a 50 percent interest in all of the proceeds from this app.

Given what you tell us of his reaction, it sounds like you might be offering him an insulting percentage; think about it like: where would your idea to make a quick buck be without somebody who writes code?

Sometimes it's all about respect; other times it's about credit (being known for coming up with X); and still sometimes it's all about money, but most of the time it's a combination of the three. Find out what his combination is.

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I appreciate that I can't write code, he has a skill I don't have. But I hired him to do it, he agreed a price, but hes now almost a year late and despite me offering him bonuses, 10% of the profits, hes still holding me to ransom and wanting more.

If I hire someone to build a house they don't get insulted when I offer them 10% of future rental yields. How can it be insulting to offer a percentage which wasn't even in the initial agreement?

If I hire someone to build a house they don't get insulted when I offer them 10% of future rental yields. How can it be insulting to offer a percentage which wasn't even in the initial agreement?

Maybe you're thinking about it in the wrong way. If you were to commission somebody to create a painting, you wouldn't paint over his or her name, scribble your own over it, and try to take credit for the work, would you? Even if you bought an unsigned piece of artwork for investment, you wouldn't go around telling people you created it, would you?

Sometimes it all boils down to something as simple as respect or attribution. If this desktop app is the next big thing, the coder probably just wants to at the very least make sure that he gets some kind of acknowledgment for his work. For some, acknowledgment can be as simple as ensuring nobody rips off their code and reverse-engineers it, and stamps a different name on it. For others, it is about monetary compensation.

I don't know what this dude's deal is, but of all the factors in your little moneymaking scheme, having the ability to write working code is probably the most valuable. 10 percent doesn't seem like a very equitable exchange.

I appreciate that coding software is an iterative process.

But this software was planned out very clearly, there were some minor changes, but nothing big.

Im not sure why 10 percent doesn't seem like a good deal for him, he quoted me 2500 dollars, which is all he should get. Out of desperation and a desire to get the project moving and actually get some results, I offered him 10 percent when it was several months late.

Your biggest problem is that having offered him a stake in the project, you've created a situation in which he now has a reasonable right to control over the way the source code is deployed. I'd assume your programmer set up server authentication to get visibility into the number of sales. If I was working in return for a percentage of sales I would expect a way to independently verify sales figures as well.

That is really going to limit your flexibility down the road, so it is probably easier to just develop from scratch. Perhaps you should let him know you're disappointed with how things have worked out and are thinking about getting something simpler developed by someone else. Be honest and don't come across as personally critical and the discussion may push him to finish things, or break him of the mindset that you are trying to take advantage of him.

I outsource design work on a per-project basis, by the way, and like to ask people to let me know how long they take completing the work, especially since most of the time it involves iterating a couple of times. This approach lets me figure out what their hourly take-home is when all is said and done. If it ends up being too low, I like to increase it a bit more to build good relationships. Having reliable go-to people who can take care of problems on short-notice at a low cost is a lot more valuable than losing $20 here and there over individual projects.

This approach lets me figure out what their hourly take-home is when all is said and done.

What, precisely, is your "job title"?

Very very few can truly afford to "outsource" design. When you start adding metrics, time worked, etc. it's hubris. Your post started off OK but ended up badly.

When you use the words "take-home" in the same sentence as the word "hourly", you're violating some serious syntax.

A programmer views "a year late" as, makeing him do more work than he was contacted to do. House construction doesn't work that way. You hand over a detail plan diagram and the contructor develops exactly that. One doesn't break down half the house after it's 80% done to build it a different way and check how it looks. Though that happens frequently in software development.

Most probably than not, this programmer can work a year more on this project and still not "finish" it in real sence. Specially if there was no specific finishing point mentioned in the agreement.

Software rarely gets finished. All these might be the programmer's point of view, just wanted to mention.

To add to this: I recently finished a small contract that I took on for the sake of family (don't do this, by the way). As a general rule I don't take contracts from people who don't know how to program, for the following reasons:

- They don't know how to write a specification. It's like asking a non-architect to draw you blueprints to a house. You end up with things like "there should be an arch here that's... um... about this tall".

- They don't actually know what they want 80% of the time. They will tell you (and you will document if you're smart) how they want it built, and when they see exactly that they will turn around and want it another way.

- They have absolutely no appreciation for how much work you're actually putting in. "But it's just a button on a page!". It's often insulting to work with people like this.

The spec for my contract changed constantly, and in the end took twice as long as I had anticipated.

And I still haven't gotten paid.

I don't know about that. Personally, I'd take $2500 over a 50% interest in most apps-for-hire I've seen. The OP may, in fact make a lot of money off of what he's trying to sell, but asking a programmer he doesn't already know to take that bet seems like a way to get a programmer who can't find other work (probably for a good reason).

To the OP: even if you're right, morally and legally, and you manage to get someone to disable the authentication, and you don't get sued, what you're asking for is still a bad idea. You won't have the source code. You won't be able to make any worthwhile changes. You won't get very far selling an application that you can't modify.

Your best bet is to either start over (someone here might be willing to do the work, for example - I'd consider it), or work things out with your programmer. Note that working things out might involve you getting a lawyer, though he might well have some legitimate claim to more money, if, for example he did work beyond the original spec for your project.

I'm sorry but this is bad advice. Coding isn't a special skill that can't/shouldn't be hired.

He hired a guy to write code. That guy seems to be jerking him around. The way forward should be to dump the guy and get someone else. There are a lot of software engineers out there. Reneging on a deal isn't ok just because you know Java and your client doesn't.

There aren't a lot of software engineers out there who will do two months of work for US$2500 and nothing else.

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