This is a follow up to my previous post about the observations I've made from my position. In previous posts, I've documented about how small agencies struggle to survive and attract and keep talents, because of a tendency to think web development is/should be cheap.

At the top of the ladder, the story is the same, and I would like to share this point to those who're at the top of the ladder or near.

Being at the top of the ladder means you dictate what goes down below, but from what I've managed to observe, even the people at the top of the ladder, they only help their clients push prices down and expectation high by usually asking a friend for a favour to do it cheap and work 24/7 for them.

This is no way to run a business at the top of the food chain. They give 0 consideration for the people below. I'll spell out here exactly why they NEED to.

• being in such a tiny city, with no room for expansion or talents, you DEPEND on people below to supply you constantly with a stream of qualified and trained developers, if you do not provide the money and set a crap expectation on the quality of production then you're contributing to the failure of this industry in your home city.
• by yielding to the price demands of clients and would rather push down rates of developers at the bottom by getting favours from friends, you are setting an expectation of clients to pay you less and less in the future and demanding more and more. Clients will ALWAYS tell you they don't have budget, they need a site by tomorrow noon. You should just tell them to F-off. Really, you're at the top of the food chain, they're buying quality, money at this stage should not be an issue. If they choose an unknown 3rd-party developer, let them do it, you get what you pay for.

I would try and persuade those who're in smaller agencies to not accept work like what I explained above for cheap, but it'll only fall on deaf ears. The reality or it seems, is that most find their friends, family, relatives to do the work, hence why they get special discount AND treatment. My only advice here is for the boss to really try and micro-manage their staff so they don't choose agencies because on the 'surface' they're cheap and quick, but in fact the only reason is because they're their relatives and also they really cut corners on development quality and end deliverables.

Later.
Ronald

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