Perception

All good things come to an end, and my working relationship with Avant Global ended on a somewhat sour note. I never intended for it to end this way, and I’d devoted most of my time and energy to the development of the site for the past few weeks, so I was honestly quite disappointed that they ultimately aborted the project in the end.

The problem being? Money, the usual single most important factor in any business equation. Things got complicated when the final issue of payment was approached, and I’m probably partly to blame for the manner in which the deal fell through. Maybe I should start from the beginning, but bear in mind that this is being told from my point of view, which can hardly be treated as a fair assessment of the whole situation, but hopefully it’ll come pretty close.

How it all began
When I applied at Avant Global at the start, I had two main goals in mind – to learn and to apply. After all, I always thought an internship was an opportunity to pick up skills from an experienced superior, while being given supervised opportunities to apply those skills. Work at Avant Global was more the latter and less the former, though. It’s not that I didn’t learn anything from my time there, but most if not all of it was from the Internet and books, and not so much from the company itself.

I was given a straightforward enough project right from the start, and I was excited to be involved in a project that could be profitable within a few months based on my estimates. Thus, I worked on it everyday (even at home during the internship) and ended up burning three consecutive weekends in the hope of getting it done before school started.

Cracks appear
Signs of a potential problem did show when I initially asked if I could be paid for the hours worked at home. It’s understandable that they were reluctant; it was difficult to quantify and justify those hours, but then again, would I really be interested in ripping them off at this rate? Perhaps they thought so, and an alternate payment scheme was suggested. I thought it was a fair enough idea at first, but decided that it was best only to discuss this again once I had a working prototype done.

So when the site was nearly completed, I brought up the issue of payment again. I had thought about the scheme previously offered and felt that it was against my best interests to take that route, since I had already done my part in building the site. Hence, I decided to ask for a lump sum, as the site was working and could easily help Avant Global with their service.

I wondered what would be a fair price to ask for, so I counted the number of hours that I spent on it, apart from those at work. I clocked in nearly 90 hours, so I figured that a price range of $500 would have been pretty reasonable. Since I was asked for my price first though, I threw out $600 thinking that negotiations would bring it down roughly to the minimum price I would settle for.

Shit hits the fan
Avant Global, however, was not only not keen on my proposal, but seemed completely stupefied that I would even suggest so. Thus, I explained my rationale for not wanting the original offer. They agreed to the lump sum, but then offered me a much lower figure, citing two reasons. The first was they had a tight budget for the project, and the second was it was based on a slightly more generous internship fee (for 90 hours). I was quite surprised by the first reason, and admittedly a little offended by the second one.

For a five-man startup, it makes perfect sense that they had a tight budget, but it’s not like I was asking for a thousand dollars or more. I felt that the site I built did have utility and the potential to help them generate revenue, so couldn’t they see this as an investment? If they felt that the site did have the ability to earn them profit, then whatever they earned subsequently would have been theirs to keep. So what was really stopping them from offering more than that amount? Were they really unable to pool together anything more than that or did they doubt this investment would ever break even?

In any case, going ahead with the project didn’t really seem too important to them, nor worth their money, which is why I was slightly offended by the second reason for their price. To them, the value of the site was only worth how many hours I had put in and at that internship rate. I tried to negotiate for more but they were simply not willing. It was then that I decided to walk away from the deal.

It wouldn’t be fair if you heard only my side of the story, but their offers and willingness to negotiate showed me much about their sincerity. It led me to two conclusions – 1) that this project wasn’t important enough, although likely highly profitable from what they say, which is rather contradictory or 2) that they were simply trying to get a good deal out of me. I surely hope it’s the former, though.

Lesson learnt indeed
This experience certainly taught me a lot of things, both in life as well as the technical aspect of web development using PHP. I’m thankful for the opportunity that Avant Global has given me, even though they’re actually asking me back for the pay they paid me for the four days of work there. It would be more in line with the contract if I gave them four days of code instead, but I didn’t want to complicate matters further.

In my opinion, what they really wanted should have been a free lance web developer. My boss had some harsh words for me too, especially when he suggested that I should not have had “the cheek to ask for further payments”, even though I only stated what I thought was fair and was willing to negotiate. When things get nasty, it’s sometimes best to just walk away.