Group Dynamics
First of all, I sincerely apologize for the late submission. This entry has come to be the hardest to write. It took me a long time to recall a conflict worth discussing.
I was once collaborating on a web development project with a few friends of mine. To speed up the process, they had hired a side web developer that had limited responsibilities and a well-defined role as a freelancer. From what I can tell, the goals and completion criteria were clearly conveyed to him. After some time passed since we started collaborating, I raised concern with regards to the quality of work that he had been producing.
From my perspective, it was not up to standard by any means. The developer was billing hourly, and counted time he used to educate himself on some of the necessary tooling as work hours. It is common for salaried employees to use working hours to learn relevant tech, but freelance is of a different nature—the scope of work is limited and always communicated beforehand. It is expected that a freelancer knows what exact work will need to be done and has the required skills to meet the requirements. There is nothing inherently wrong with not knowing all the technologies a freelancer might need to work with as long as the worker doesn't bill the employer for learning them. Yet that freelancer did.
I discussed this with the said friends of mine, who, as described above, were the employers in this situation. I suggested I confront the freelancer and go over the things that could be done much better given that the person is billing for extra time. They decided not to follow this path and instead ask the freelancer to complete his work's bare minimum requirements as soon as possible only to end the contract peacefully.
The freelancer, who clearly thought he was performing in accordance with the best work ethics, completed the request and soon left the team. Truthfully, the job has been done; sadly, it wasn't done well considering the number of hours the friends of mine were billed for.
The explanation of each party's behavior is the following: my friends decided to avoid a nerve-wracking confrontation mainly because they knew the scope of work is limited, the relationship is short-term, and that it's easier to seek a new contractor rather than nudge the current one. The freelancer himself had previously gotten away with low standards for the quality of work and has grown to think that he was doing fine. I had come from a long-term collaboration environment and am used to risking confrontation in the hopes of radical betterment of another party's behavior.
I was once collaborating on a web development project with a few friends of mine. To speed up the process, they had hired a side web developer that had limited responsibilities and a well-defined role as a freelancer. From what I can tell, the goals and completion criteria were clearly conveyed to him. After some time passed since we started collaborating, I raised concern with regards to the quality of work that he had been producing.
From my perspective, it was not up to standard by any means. The developer was billing hourly, and counted time he used to educate himself on some of the necessary tooling as work hours. It is common for salaried employees to use working hours to learn relevant tech, but freelance is of a different nature—the scope of work is limited and always communicated beforehand. It is expected that a freelancer knows what exact work will need to be done and has the required skills to meet the requirements. There is nothing inherently wrong with not knowing all the technologies a freelancer might need to work with as long as the worker doesn't bill the employer for learning them. Yet that freelancer did.
I discussed this with the said friends of mine, who, as described above, were the employers in this situation. I suggested I confront the freelancer and go over the things that could be done much better given that the person is billing for extra time. They decided not to follow this path and instead ask the freelancer to complete his work's bare minimum requirements as soon as possible only to end the contract peacefully.
The freelancer, who clearly thought he was performing in accordance with the best work ethics, completed the request and soon left the team. Truthfully, the job has been done; sadly, it wasn't done well considering the number of hours the friends of mine were billed for.
The explanation of each party's behavior is the following: my friends decided to avoid a nerve-wracking confrontation mainly because they knew the scope of work is limited, the relationship is short-term, and that it's easier to seek a new contractor rather than nudge the current one. The freelancer himself had previously gotten away with low standards for the quality of work and has grown to think that he was doing fine. I had come from a long-term collaboration environment and am used to risking confrontation in the hopes of radical betterment of another party's behavior.
May you be blessed the rest of your work career and struggle to find other examples of conflict worth writing about. But if my experience is any guide for you, that you've been lucky this way in the past will not shield you from these events in the future.
ReplyDeleteRegarding your story, some background would be useful to me. When hiring a contractor how do you determine whether the person is qualified? Also, how do you monitor hours o work? In the story you were not approving of his reporting time spent learning new (software? coding technique? I'm not sure). Suppose he didn't do that but padded his hours on tasks that you did deem legitimate to bill. Would you be aware that he was padding his hours? If not, is there any real difference between the two cases?
This gets to a larger question that was relevant to our course in the first half of the semester. What work gets done inside the organization versus what work gets outsourced to the market? So can you explain how the decision in this situation was made? Was an alternative possible where you expanded your group by bringing in a new permanent member? Do recall that we talked about opportunism and the holdup problem. If you could tie that to conflict, you'd have a really good post.
I am very excited for the conflicts that are yet to come!
DeleteSorry, I should've elaborated on that. The common route to hiring a contractor in similar scenarios is through job postings on relevant websites. There're specific job boards for freelance web-development that allow you to screen for applicants. They are very useful since both the employer and the contractor see each other's prior work history, reviews (if available) and some other background information. The platform also acts as an intermediary for payments; that protects both parties from certain types of scammers.
The hours of work are self-reported. Judging by the volume of work and progress feedback, it is usually obvious when hours are being reported dishonestly. This contractor wasn't reporting dishonestly, rather billing for what some don't consider to be work—learning required frameworks and software tools. I don't think there's a consensus in the community on whether it counts as work.
The contractor was meant to be temporary because of the limited scope of the problem that needed to be solved. Certainly, there're non-zero costs to withdrawing from a contract, and that might've motivated the contractor to take advantage of the payouts. When agreeing to work with each other, the value assigned to freelancer's work was expected to be higher than the freelancer's cost of producing. The misreported number flipped the situation and made cooperation undesirable.