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Met a guy in the gym, he asked me to make him an online shop for supplements.
I quickly made a reactive, angular based shop with an admin page.
He paid, I put my name as the creator, it was all good...
...then he removed all legal products and added tons of anabolic steroids for horses in little jars (yes, he even added pro level photos).
I received a call from the police and had to prove that I don't manage his content.14 -
The beginning of my freelancing time. I was so naive. Didn't even used contracts...
This one client wanted a website with 2 specific features until a certain time. It should look nice, but only the features functionality was defined. All seemed reasonable at first.
I delivered 2 weeks before the deadline. The client was furious, as it didn't look like they imagined. They wrote me 8 lengthy emails with very fractioned feedback. It was becoming unreasonable.
But hey, I'm a newbie in this business. I have to make myself a name, I thought.
Oh was I naive....
This whole project went on for 2 more months. The client was unhappy with every change and 2-5 emails a day with new demands were coming in. I was changing things they wanted done 2 days ago, because they changed their mind.
Then they started to get personal. They were insulting me and even my family. My self-confidence dropped to an all-time low.
In the end I just sent them all the code for free and went to therapy.
BTW: this was also my most important experience, as things went up hill from then on. As Yoda once said: The greatest teacher, failure is.8 -
This one guy wanted a website to sell illegal drugs or something. Oh and he only offered $20 for it. Obviously I didn't take it.
There was another guy who wanted a calculator in Python. I'm not sure why, but I think he was a student who wanted someone to do his homework. He offered $250 so I took it. Once it was done, he didn't pay and blocked me.
I quit freelancing about two months ago or something since I was sick of it. Most clients are disrespectful.20 -
First job.
CLIENT: It's just a small website, 15-20 pages 2,500$, what do you say?
ME: Sure, sounds easy.
CLIENT: oh, and I need you to sign this contract that you won't copy or competete with me for the next two years.
ME: Sounds reasonable.
-- A year later --
I had finished building a huge CMS system that serves 420+ organizations, the entire thing copied from his competitor.
CLIENT: So there is only about two weeks left of work...
ME: Goodbye, I have a new job that actually pays money.
CLIENT: Don't forget our contract...
ME: Sure..
At least he paid me, but 2,500$ for a whole year's work isn't such a good deal anymore.9 -
One day I developed a simple website for a goldsmith who I already new for a year or so.
We discussed everything and agreed on a feature set, price and a deadline when it should be ready. Based on this we signed a contract and I started my work.
Unfortunately at the same time I lost most of my childhood friends. I moved to a new city and started to study computer science, which was awesome on the contrary.
This is where the horror began.
I was totally occupied by the studying, my partner, myself and by the shit of life.
It knocked on my door. The horror decided to pay me a visit.
"Had a look at your calendar recently? Just saying..."
Shit! The deadline came closer and closer everyday and the pile of work undone grew with it. At that point I had to do something. I don't know what it was or how I did it, but somehow I managed to finish the project just in time. I was totally not proud of it, but it featured what was required.
The day before I contacted my client, the horror knocked on my door again. He said:
"You really should have a look at your hard drive."
"Why? everything seems allright."
"Well, then look closer."
"Fuck."
"Right."
Well, there are backups at least, I thought to myself. I'll just recover the last state. That was an annoying thought, but nothing serious. That's just one or two days of w... - Wait, what? Where are my backups? What the actual fuck? Why is the zip file broken? Why doesn't the flash drive work anymore? FUUUCK!!
I was lost. It was a complete nightmare.
Each time my telephone rang the following days, my heart skipped a beat. Finally my client's name appeared on the display. I answered the call, my hands shaking.
"Hey there! I'm calling to discuss the website project with you."
"Well, about that..."
"Yeah, I know you put a huge amount of efford in it so I'm really sorry to say that I on the other hand can't effort the money. Actually I'd like to simply forget about this whole idea."
Seriously? What the fuck just happend? I suddenly noticed a sticky note infront of me reading:
"It was really fun to see you suffer, but I have to go! See ya
- The Horror"
"Hello, are you still there? Do you hear me?", yelled a voice through my phone.
"Uh, yeah. You know, that project was a lot of work and... but you know what? It was actually a pretty fun exercise and I'm doing well over here, so because it's you I'd agree."
I heared a reliefed sigh from the other end of the line.
"Really good! I owe you something! Bye!"
What. The. Fuck.14 -
My freelancing horror story?
I remember like it was yesterday. It was late at night and I was doing some freelancing. (You know... the good stuff...)
All of a sudden the light began flickering, it got really cold and I felt like something was watching me!
OMG! SOMETHING JUST TOUCHED MY SHOULDER! I TURN AROUND AND...
...nothing. Nobody was there.
"I really need some sleep", I think to myself and turn back to my monitor.
Wait a second, what's that?
"10%..."
"20%..."
"60%..."
Oh my god...
How could this happen to me?
Those bastards got me after all!
I just witnessed...
A WINDOWS UPDATE!!!
The end~
______________________________
I don't feel responsible for pants that need to be washed now.25 -
Still haven't been paid for completed a retail shop project. But all is well, since the system will not start on Black Friday till I remove the if condition 😈9
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I was 12 years old and it was my first freelance.
I was taking a Web Designer course and my teacher offered me an “opportunity”. He asked me to develop a search engine for a real estate website.
I did it pretty quickly with PHP and MySQL. The amount offered was U$ 20.00 (yeah, I know, it sucks, but it was a good chance to earn experience).
3 months went by, it was the last week of the course and he still hadn’t payed me yet!
End of story: my dad and a couple friends went to the school and had a conversation with him. They said things like: man, you shouldn’t ruin a kid’s dream for twenty dollars. I’m sure he only payed me because he was scared haha7 -
A guy wanted me to convert his Unity project from Android to ios.
He was offering less than 50$....
It dosent end here....
He sent me the files in a zip on Google Drive.....
Also the project size was around 3 gb......
😢😢2 -
"I made your static HTML pages into a dynamic site! Now just include <%Header%> instead of copy pasting that nav into every page!"
...1 week later...
"You made our website all crazy. None of the pages have headers in the source code but it still shows up by some kind of witchcraft. Put it back."2 -
Client: Hi there, we worked together I few months ago and loved what you created for us! We have another job and would like to see if you are available?
Me (1h later): Sure! Let me know more details about this new project.
Client (15min later): Oh, sorry, since you took so long to respond, we've decided to choose another freelancer. Thank you anyways!!
Me: ...5 -
After my college I was about to start freelancing.
I met a client and had a chat with him about requirements and all.
He was really nice guy. Then he asked me "What will be the size of the website?? A4 or Bigger??.
On the next day I started looking for full time jobs.2 -
Just a common day.
I received a message on Telegram, a guy wanted a Minecraft plugin for his server.
It was a small plugin, he accepted my first offer of 15€.
After some hours, it was complete. I was pressing "Export" on my IntelliJ but a terrifying message arrived.
"Dude I forgot to say that, can you make it using C++? I heard EXEs are faster".
Fuck dumb clients especially Minecraft server owners!7 -
I'll keep it short:
My nastiest freelancing horror stories contain shitty clients who dont pay, the nastiest fucking legacy code you can imagine, and expectations as high as trump thinks of himself.
The lesson is simple: Choose your freelancing clients wisely and always expect partial payment in advance. Even from family or firends!8 -
I used to do freelancing gigs as a kid, maybe 5/6 years ago, I'd remotely fix software issues on fiver for 5€ which would pay for a game every once in a while.
Now, it was pretty common to get customers from all around the world, and I never had any issues whatsoever until I got a message from a potential customer from south Korea...
She had purchased a karaoke machine, but the software wouldn't add anything to its library making the machine useless.
Well, apparently the software was in Korean...
After a LOT of fiddling around I got it to turn into French, and I was able to try a few things and after about 3 hours I managed to "fix" the thing.
3 hours of headaches in Korean for 5€... That's when I stopped doing that and took up an IT education and became a dev, so much better, although I miss the gratitude I used to get from my customers when I fixed their printer connectivity issues from a few thousand kilometers away4 -
Client: “I’m sorry I just don’t understand the issue with the contract?
You said logging into Facebook was easy, what’s the issue with feature X (= complex graph API queries based on opinions and sentiment) and displaying images and videos, it’s the same thing!!!”
... no sir, it is NOT2 -
The fact that this week's rant topic exists is the exact reason I never do freelance work. It always ends in horror.
I don't believe good fullstack devs exist. A good junior will assess their talents/passions and specialize to become a senior. They'll keep checking the rest of the market from the corners of their eyes and start moving when necessary. But eventually, focus and specialization is a must.
If that's true for the field of development... why would I invest time in marketing, support, sales, PR, legal?
Maybe you can earn a bit more gross income in freelance work — but I see my employer as a service provider, I "hire" them so I don't have to manage phone calls, lose sleep over court cases, play product owner or worry about getting paid.9 -
I remember a bad freelance experience.
It was a sophisticated mobile applications (many UI, many customization, many APIs to integrate with). since the client have many future freelance projects, I give him 3 weeks as estimation time, and one day per week I work on its place to evaluate the progress and sync our work.
I worked hard, the quality was excellent.. but he kept ask for "small" changes and "small" features.. at first it was OK, and I was planning to give him a good example to profit from his future projects.. but he toke advantage for that and the same app extended from 3 weeks to 2 months and more.. he barely added a little to the initial price..
So what I did? I uploaded the code to a private repository in Bitbucket, added him to the team.. I wrote few lines how to sign and publish the app.. aand disappeared.
his luck, I disappeared from the country, I immigrated to another country for best job opportunity.1 -
Sacrificed my Diwali and made a website for my first client and did not get any payment.
I was new and less confident.
Well this is my freelance horror story.
Now I fucking demand money from client UPFRONT.1 -
Did a freelancing project... Hosted the project and gave the client credentials with the invoice. She changed the password and there is that6
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Client wanted a site for the 100th anniversary of an important local musician. They wanted to show calendar of events, biography, store, and more. We started the work 8 months before the commemorative date, and after 4 months, the site was 99% complete and waiting final review and approvement. 2 weeks of silence has passed, when I got an email saying their deleted the site from server and all backups, and now they wanted all the work back.
With luck, I could restore a partial backup, and the client didn't want to pay for redo the rest of the work.
10 months later (yes, after all the events has started and the site being off) they contact me again, asking to continue the work.
I was happy to say no.1 -
New project, sent a 7 page contract to the client. First day of work and client begins to ask things outside scope and terms.
I explained what is written in contract and he interrupted me saying "I READ THE CONTRACT".
One minute later, he starts asking the same things again.1 -
I'm on my first free lance project, and devRant asks me for my horror story. -_-
Well, I undersold myself and gave such a stupid time estimation. Fortunately, the client was smarter, and he wants just half the work in same time period and will still gave me the same amount xD1 -
My freelance horror story just happened a few weeks ago. Programming final project was due and a classmate payed me to make his project. It was something very simple so I was able to make mine and his different and functional. Grades went up yesterday; he got an A and I got a B+ 🙃 #wk861
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So I work on Embedded System. While working on my project I was drinking water from bottle.
And kept it near my laptop.
Just there all my circuits were open. Connected via USB with my laptop.
And while working I tried grab the bottle and guess what?
Yeah, It fell. But thankfully it didn't touch any of my circuits. If it did!!!!
I was frozen on spot.
Phew!!3 -
My freelance horror story is that I don't work freelance, but rather for a corporation where I am a faceless entity known as asset.1
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I used to work with a teacher in my last uni year.
The job consisted on doing a kinda-like management system for a business. It all began kinda "right", we agreed upon a price for 6 months of my work (a very lowball price, but it was just right because I was learning stuff that we were going to be using).
Fast-forward first six months, all I do is code frontend, mockup screens and whatsoever because this "business" hadn't give us proper requirements (Yeah, I told him to ask for them, but nothing came through).
So I was like well, I'll keep working in this project because I really want to finish it. Sidenote: I was doing all the "hard work", he didn't know how to code, and he calls himself a teacher... wtf).
Months go by, and a year goes round, in between these months, he spoke to me, that he wanted me that we kept working together, that we could renegotiate the payment (I asked him to give me my payment once the job was done). I agreed, but my uni residence period was coming along and I got an oportunity to go abroad to another country.
So there I was, in the need of money to buy my passport, plane tickets and other stuff, so I asked him for the payment.
Needs to be noted, that the last 6 months work was me doing tutorials on how to fucking use Linux, how to use PostgreSQL, how to fucking use CSS! He told me he would pay me extra for it.
The day came, and I received my payment... the exact amount we talked a year ago, I was like "Seriously dude?", but well, I needed the money and I didn't have time to argue, so we talked a little bit about me helping him and I told him "As long as I have time, I'll help, but remember that I'm going abroad to work for a small startup, so maybe I'll be up to my head with work" he agreed, we nod and then I left.
First week abroad came in and I was doing a shit-ton of stuff, then his first message comes around "Hey, I need more tutorials! ASAP! Before 6PM"
What.The.Fuck. I told you, son of a bitch, that I wouldn't be able to do them until weekend.. and it was monday!
So I ignored it, weeks went throught and my "angry mood" was fading away so I said to myself "Well, it's time to pick up that stuff again", I open Slack and I find a week old message with a document attached, it was a "letter", I just skimmed by it and read some keywords "deceptioned... failed me.."
Sure dude? Was I the failure? Becase, as far as I remember, you were the fucktard that didn't know how to fucking install a VM!
A week went by, and then randomly a friend of mine talks to me through Facebook:
E: Hey, how are you?
M: I'm fine, what's up?
E: What did you do to TEACHER?
M: Nothing, <explains all situation>
E: Well, It seems weird, that's why I wanted to talk with you, I believe in you, because I know you well, but TEACHER it's thrashing shit about you with all his students on all of his classes
M: Seriously?
E: Yeah, he's saying that you are a failure, irresponsible, that you scammed him
That moment, I for sure, lost all moral responsibility with him and thought to myself "He can go fuck himself with my master branch on his ass"
So when I got back to my country, I had to go around in school, avoiding him, not because I was ashamed nor anything by the way, just because I knew that If i ever had the disgrace to meet him face to face, my fists would be deep into his nose before he could say "Hey".
Moral of the story:
If you overheard that a teacher has a bad rep, not by one, nor two, but more than +100 people, maybe it's true.
Good thing my friends and others know me well and I didn't have repercutions on my social status, I'm just the guy that "fucked up TEACHER because I had the right and way to do it"4 -
I was still a 2nd year college student back then. Someone approached me about a personal branding site, with quite a generous fee for a poor student like me.
I took the job. Surprisingly she paid me in advance. About a week later, when I wanted to clear up some requirements with her, she disappeared. Didn't read any of my messages. Didn't respond to my calls, let alone emails.
Some time later, I got busy with exams and college stuffs. Welp, I let go of the project, even erasing the github repo to make some room for new private repos on the way.
A year later (yes you read it right), she came back.
Messaged me on WhatsApp.
"Hey dude, how you doin? Sorry about last time, I needed some time to take care of stuffs.
So how's the website going?".
By that time, even the domain name I bought for her site had expired.
I didn't know what to say, so I just shut up.
"Remember that I paid you in advance. Either finish the site or give me my money back."2 -
That one company that told me they will not pay me since they did not told me to start. After a full month of cooperation and nearly daily phone calls with them about the project and it's progress.
I told this their customer I actually built the project for and now I get paid directly.4 -
So, there was this guy where i worked, who was doing some freelancing.
He asked me to do some front-end stuff for him and i said ok.
After some gigs, my boss found out about him working as a freelancer and got really pissed, because, according to him, it was forbidden by company policies (though i never saw it on contract).
After that, the boss started talking to me about shit that the guy did on the past, like stealing, liying about been sick for months, bad mouth the entire company to others companys, etc. Some really bad shit.
End of the story, the company fired that guy, threatened to do the same to me, made me go on record about that shit in court, and that fucking motherfucker didnt even payd me for my last work.
I hope he rot in hell, fucking piece of shit.
Sorry for the long text, but (today) i find it as amusing story. -
My first freelance dev job thing, turned out alright. For the first year though, the dev job thing became a tech support thing. Oh the horror.
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I worked a few times for free until the client decided he doesn't need anymore that product so he doesn't need to pay me.
From that moment i started to ask for advance payments, but a lot of times I calculated incorrectly the real price of my work miscalculating the number of hours it will take, ending working for less than 3€ per hour...
I love freelancing, but I'm really bad at evaluating my work.5 -
TL;DR
I signed in at a few sites like freelancer.com , you did it you understand this nightmarish post.
for every fucking job, there was a full team of fucking lowcostshitters that took it for 0,50 $ . When I say this number, I mean it literally.
Translations
Data Entry
Ios app
Android app
Java
Python
Websites
Games
Scripts
System Manager
DB creation
Porting
...
And if you think this was the only nightmarish thing, you have to check the jobs descriptions and their spec.
You'll loose your sleep for sure.2 -
My first freelance project.
My wallet was almost empty, but I got a 1 week project (YAY!), but paid after completion. Obviously, it didn't work out well. Feature creep followed me into the second week, I didn't get paid, I was out of money. When I asked for payment, their accountant was on vacation, and they told me they would pay me when everything is completed.
Went to stackoverflow (one of the sites that relates to freelancing) and asked about this dilemma. Was advised to move on unless they pay me. When I told them that I want out, because of money, they quickly found that accountant.
But even after that, ODesk (now upwork) was only pain. I was too fast for it. I demanded like 30$ per hour, which nobody wanted to pay, but when someone did risk it, they got too much for it. I ended up living paycheck to paycheck because it's so hard to convince people that you're good enough.
That site is only good for people in countries with very low living cost, that are OK with spending 4 hours per day trying to convince people of something.2 -
Hahaha ahah ahaha ahha haha ha :') does saying that its a solo project and throwing me into a team of incompetent researchers count? Does specifying a python-ish stack and giving me c++ and fortran code count? Does not fucking paying me until i threatened to leave the job and delete everything i wrote for them count? Does speaking to 9billion people to get the same job as fulltime because i spent 8 hours working for them anyway count?
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Pretty late for week 86, but I just remembered my first paid freelancing web dev work.
While not my worst experience, it was a pretty horrible task given to me...
I was helping someone implement a new design on a pretty outdated (visually and technically) PHP site.
I was getting paid crap. The guy wouldn’t even let me look at the HTML, let alone touch it, so definitely no PHP work, either...
Literally the only code I was allowed to write was CSS. So, I’m supposed to be restyling, but I can’t change the structure at all, or even ADD CSS SELECTORS.
Fine, I’ll just make your site fragile as fuck by using nested relative selectors.
#main:nth-child(3) > div > div > div > button
As if that wasn’t bad enough, there were some pages...I shit you not...that had A DOZEN LEVELS OF NESTED TABLES.
WHY. DEAR GOD WHY.
For a simple checkout page.
So, on some pages I was literally trying to access elements through relative selectors, nested within levels and levels of tables. FFS
Needless to say, I did not work for him for long. Even if I wanted to deal with that crap, my time is much more valuable than what I was being paid. -
I guess someday Facebook will know so much about you. Even a new user login page will automatically have your birthday after you enter basic details. 😂2
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Had this client for which I did some work on agreement. The agreement was fairly well laid out and the work was well defined. We delivered on time and he was all good. Move forward a couple months and this guy comes back asking for changes, upon which I said we'd need a new agreement because the last one expired when the job ended, but he didn't want a new agreement and to not make a point of it we didn't. We made the changes and I invoiced him, as we do, and then he starts accusing me of trying to rip him off and calls me a child. Stopped working with him after that3
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I hate it when the clients seem so interested and then stop replying to your emails as soon as you send them your quotation for the project.2
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My upwork account is banned for sending too many proposals without getting too many jobs.
Got 2 jobs out of 35-40 proposals sent.4 -
I live in a country that is blacklisted on freelancer.com, therefore I don't even have a chance to try freelancing. Fuck, there aren't many things I hate more than this so called country.13
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Pitching against people that BS their way though everything but will ultimately be picked because they offer to do it for 0.01 per hour.1
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"Hey mate, you should learn some zen coding you know."
"Ow that's one of your tricky bullshit"
"No man, look and learn!"
"OH FOR F***K SAKE! ARE YOU A WITCH?"
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Decided to do a project for ₹30,000 because the client is an acquaintance. After 60% of completion got ₹10,000. Since then I haven't heard from her. Project is now rotting at 70%.1
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I spent three weeks developing the simple application for her, she keep add changes and updates. Nothing about payment, I get upset and stop the work. She took whatever I finished, which was almost everything, used it, and she disappeared.
I regret working without having a clear timeline for the delivery and the payment.1 -
Currently working a contract for a startup that never finishes the final content editing and organization task so that we can build the last page. They were in such a hurry to start and we 100% delivered everything they asked for on time and at budget. Now that we are centimeters from the finish line, they keep pushing the date back due to the CEO never having time to provide feedback. It’s been months and we cannot get to the final work to earn the final payment.
Not the worst one (which I already shared another week a while back) but definitely not fun.4 -
Never done freelance but for those ranting this week this talk is a must watch "Fuck you, pay me":
https://creativemornings.com/talks/...
It's also entertaining regardless. So everyone else should watch it too! -
Broadly there are two things which concerns me:
1: Clients' businesses fail miserably or change their direction.
2: Instead of focusing and improving the quality of their work/product, they prioritise remaining things instead.
BONUS: Don't forget those individuals who dream really big but fails to take any action towards it, just talking. I stay away from these people personally.
Because of these reasons design gets vanished or no longer valid for their new business venture, and don't forget the time and dedication it took to create, as a freelancer it hurts a bit.
I like working for non-profit organisations, most of them look for volunteers. Your work and efforts are alive, and you have to be jack of all trades IMO when dealing with them. Additionally in the process you will meet some extraordinary individuals. -
"We'll have a full time position for you by January at the latest"
I was told and only now found out they hired someone else after being 'impressed' with my work -,-1 -
That 5 year deal I made for building and maintaining a Drupal website. Fuck, that shit's nasty. I even used a plugin to be able to create a custom model for some shit1
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Two friends (doing part time degree in Digital System Security awarded by a pretty well known Aussie Uni) hired me to do their final year project.
I was like "Sure,extra money + a project to apply my newly learned laravel skills". So,I quoted them a certain price for the whole project. Remember,even after I started the project, they have no clear vision. Both of them are like "Sure,man whatever is easier for you". And the system at their uni is that they need to meet with their project supervisor every 2 weeks. If the supervisor wanted to change sth,they relay it to me and I need to add/modify...so the same process has been going on for about 2 months. I was expecting to finish the project within the first month but now they keep requesting.. What I've charged was for their supposedly version 1.
So my mistakes here -
Working with friend/ not setting a line between work and friendship.
Charging by the whole project(without even really knowing what the customers are expecting) should have charged hourly rate.
The good thing here is that I was thinking about going for a part time degree(still thinking about it) previously it was 100% now it's only 50-50 -
the place my friends and I were previously interning at offered to pay us for some freelance work once we started school, "it'll only take one month, the backend is ready!", they said.
We finished on time, and delivered fixes throughout UAT. 9 months and counting only paid half the promised amount.... -
Hmmm.. I don't know but something sketchy was going on with my previous employer as they're not really registered here in our country yet so, they decided to put "Freelance" on our job title though we're working full-time or under a contract. Not really sure how that goes. Glad that I left that company.1
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Well...I can not post it here because I threatened him that I would post his non payment bullshit all over the internet and he would never get anything done by a freelancer again.
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