Many clients (not all) I have dealt with are clueless, simple minded, non-thinking morons that think about hiring someone 3 months past when they should have been approaching someone to fulfill their needs. If ya wanted it yesterday then maybe you should have contacted me 3 weeks ago, huh.
Got an idea you want to pursue? Great! Talk to me (or your programmer of choice) about it in advance. Let them plan their schedule so it can happen on a realistic timetable. Don't come to me two days before you want to launch "the latest innovation" and expect me to jump through firey hoops to meet your deadline. Not going to happen, sorry.
I will expedite things for clients - IF they pay me upfront and are willing to pay a premium price. However I won't sacrifice deadlines I have with other clients to suit your "emergency" unless it's a support issue from something I've already provided you.
It really cracks me up (sadly) when people contact me and say shit like "I need a custom (insert monster request) created THIS WEEK!" My response is generally "good luck".
Lazy? Nah, but we sure as hell get tired of people thinking we can pull a rabbit out of the hat at any given time.
Let me ask this question: When you're buying graphic design or gallery/site work do you expect that you're going to get deliverables in a day or two? Do you honestly think that the quality folks that do that kind of work are sitting on their hands WAITING for work? I'm betting not usually. You should take the same type of attitude with the programmers you are looking to hire. Generally, we're pretty busy ourselves. Programming makes this industry work and turn profits. Take away all the Perl/PHP/mySQL backend stuff and nobody makes money here.
So, when you think you *might* want something done programatically approach a programmer THEN rather than wait until you are 3 days away from wanting to launch it. PLAN your business and be proactive. You might be surprised at how it works to your benefit. Coming to a programmer at the very last minute is going to do a couple things:
1) It's going to cost you out the ass to expedite it, if you CAN get it expedited.
2) You're going to see your deadline be redefined multiple times because unless there is a massive team of programmers working to get it done you are screwed.
OK, enough ranting - Has anyone that watched Zoolander noticed that Juicy and Ben Afleck's character share the same look?
