Ask HN: Negotiating a consulting contract with large company

2 points by dimitri-gnidash 6 years ago | 2 comments

I am thinking of doing a contract with a largish startup (500) as the project is interesting and they are in the environmental space.

I have run into issues during the contract negotiation where there seems to be no flexibility at all: start date fixed (in 2 weeks), hourly rate non-negotiable, termination clauses non-negotiable (they have immediate termination and I have no termination for convenience). The rest of the agreement is also one-sided to the extreme.

The process is off-putting, but I am not sure if this is just the big company processes and power establishment or reflective of the value they have placed on me (and that I perhaps did not convey properly).

I have other projects and they are better paid, but this one is interesting.

bryanrasmussen 6 years ago |

consulting, where consulting is often just freelancing, is pretty inflexible about termination - the rule should be that you make at least 2X your normal monthly wage - but adjust for small times (increase, decrease slightly for longer times).

Generally with a 3 month project I do exactly 2 times my normal monthly wage, if I do a direct negotiation with company 2.5 times.

Generally termination is instantaneous because they are paying lots more for me than if I were a normal employee. But sometimes I have managed to get termination for a week or two, never more than that.

500 is not really a large company, although it is for a startup. In my experience smaller companies tend to be more jerks, because to them the money they are paying for a consultant is just WHOAAA. They want you to be productive day 1 and not mess anything up ever. Really big companies think productive in a couple weeks please, and if you do significantly better than that they are pleased. I like consulting for big companies because I get my money, they like to renew me, they don't care about what they pay they just want to get the results. I hate consulting for small companies, and will pretty much only do it anymore if project really interesting or I have friends there.

on edit: fixed typo.

gus_massa 6 years ago |

Do you know what happened to the previous developer?

When are they going to give you their first check? What happens if they are "late"?