Writing code for a startup without signing a contract first...

The last time I did this I got 52.5% of my promised salary, and got shorted $4.2k in back pay.

Surprisingly I haven't murdered him yet.
Still crosses my mind every couple weeks.

Even big companies are hit or miss without a contract

@Root do iiiittttt

Lawyer up and get that contract signed!

Dare devil detected.

Jesus, is that really so terrible? People spend massive amounts of time and energy writing mostly nonsense worthless open source code for free. That nobody ever needs or cares about. That's just to make your GitHub profile look good

I wish startups would get even a fraction of those people's help, then we'd all have a lot more choice on every service we use online

@vertti because some people volunteer to do work like say a trainee (and more often than not suboptimal job of it) does not mean that you can screw people over. When you promise someone a livelihood in return for months of time and dedication/actual results and than just don't deliver that livelihood after you get to keep the result of that person's tim work. That is called screwing someone over royaly.

The trainee can also be screwed over in the same manner perhaps without money. Just don't sign off on his/her final report so he/she has to do it again😈

@vertti Open source is greath and it furthers development greatly. It is not always free or good quality though. If a project has value it either saves the creator time so the investment is worth it or it is part of a larger goal/business model. Most successful open source projects have (a lot off) corporate submissions. They need the added value and by sharing it with the rest they might get improvements on that part and the guarantee that newer versions can be upgraded safely without breaking there modifications.

The cost of sharing is little as it already had to be developed anyway so why not share it so others may benefit and see your name. (There are of course valid reasons not to do so)

@hjk101 obviously a man's gotta keep his promises. But I was saying that is it really that horrible to write some lines of code for a startup without a contract.

Whenever I enter any open source project slack channel people sorry of help you endlessly, for free. By giving advice. Writing a few lines of code for someone is not so different.

I agree with you about what you said about open source. Most of that is not charity. It's sponsored by big companies that need the tech, and want others to improve it for them for free. It's beneficial for everyone.

However, I've noticed at least around where I live that doing nonsense open source projects has become a form of procrastination for developers. It's easy cos there is no pressure, no deadlines, and you can do whatever you want. Nobody will criticize. Cos nobody will ever need what you built. Yet it looks good on your CV

The reason nobody will ever need it is that you don't take it seriously yourself either.