Reply to: Help please - contract termination

[TK421]

If only that was the offending sentence - that refers to a customer I worked with in 2000, nothing to do with the current one!

The 2000 one was a financial client, this one was a public sector body with large sales of data (approx 150000 order lines per month) who want to keep the data for at least a year. No issue there, it's a design concern about where you store the data - runtime, non-tunable, non-partitioned tables is not the place to store it...

[Torran]

"a customer I worked with in the past wanted to retain the data for 7 years! At their anticipated sales volumes, that meant that there will be somewhere in excess of 450 million records in the one table"

is that the offending sentence?

sheesh . 7 years is pretty standard to be honest (in Financial Industry anyway).

[TK421]

Thanks all - lots of advice, which is what I was hoping for.

So, what have I learnt?

1 - Don't write anything in a Blog. Although the blog entry was nothing about the project, just about effective design, if the end client ever read the entry and compared it to the build, then they might wonder why it was done that way. (If anyone cares, the "offending" entry is (no longer) here.

2 - Don't put anything unnecessary in code comments. By trying to protect myself (the responsibility for ensuring the project met the build standards was mine alone), this wasn't the way to do it. I shouldn't have done it, but hindsight is a wonderful thing - unbelievably stupid given my already precarious situation.

3 - Understand everything that's in the contract. Having been given an extension of just over 5 months, I didn't anticipate getting into a situation where they would say "we're not happy" and terminate the contract. If I'd been in their shoes I would have gone the route of unprofessional conduct, which I wouldn't even think about fighting.

4 - Stop acting like a consultant and think like a contractor. I'm no longer being paid to argue over the design (even if they are so wrong!), make the point and then move on. Take the money and keep quiet.

5 - Never underestimate the reaction from permies - when you have two people giving conflicting advice and one is permie and one contractor, there's typically only going to be one winner. I completely misjudged my position - I was brought in as a recognized expert for this particular piece of work, which is why I was so concerned about the design.

I'm not completely surprised at ending the contract, it's more the manner of the way it's been done. I'm pretty sure that if the PM had spoken to me about terminating the contract, I'd have been willing to do it.

I've invoiced them for the four weeks notice (which I don't think for one second that they will pay), and will have to wait and see what they say. I'm more worried about things being presented in court that would potentially impact on my getting more work (would you employ someone who sues when the contract gets terminated??), so probably won't go as far as suing. Not really happy about it, and feel a bit of a wimp, but I now need to concentrate on getting a new contract instead of thinking about going to court over this one.

Thanks again.

[cab]

I had to sue an agency several years ago and took the legal route with representation by a firm of Solicitors specialised in Contract and Commercial Law. The outcome was that the agency had to settle and additionally had to pay all of the costs.

Also, since the agency/employment business have not mentioned the "Blog" in their termination, i.e. terminated for "Gross miscounduct" (for which you probably would not have a defence), this cannot be used in evidence against you, and without this their case could be quite poor.

Basically, if you are confident that you have performed as required by your contract then sue the agency/employment business for the 4 weeks notice.

Good luck!!

[errorista]

Do you have any liability cover? You may have included legal protection which will cover the cost of a protracted action.

regds
error

[MarillionFan]

Jacks - no I had a go. As Malv says though, its the time & hassle actually outweighs how much I would win, and Jon Antel from the site seemed to think they would pay, but between me paying him, the time etc it wasnt worth it.

[cojak]

. But you? Are you a pussy? ARE YOU?

You obviously are if you haven't actually gone as far as sueing them, MF

Oh and one thing TS15 - Blogs can get you fired and lose you future contracts, remember that. Explicit or not doesn't matter, criticised companies are always sensitive about this things, you'll find.

[Asterix]

First one

It's your first contract, so at least you've learnt something from it. Try not to get yourself cornered again and forced to be on constant defence. From what you said, the writing was on the wall since the argument you had. If someone is a permie and has been working in the same place for a few years, chances are that his network/influence/etc is better than yours, n'est pas ? In future avoid writing anything that can be construed as offensive, demeaning etc. Do not e-mail, call people, or even better talk to them face to face. This is anothewr unfortunate story that tells us that although someone can be brilliant in technical skils, the lack of people ones and poor communication does not make a good all-round contractor.
PS I wouldn't bother going down the legal route, no-one as far as I can remember has ever come on this site and told us that they've successfully sued and got money due for a notice period, don't let people mislead you. I've seen 'breach of contract' being touted around all teh time as an excuse.

[oraclesmith]

Take the contract and any correspondence and a print of your blog to a free half hour appointment with the partner of a proper business law firm (ie. one that deals with business and contract law as their main business). They should be able to tell you whether it is worth pursuing and how much it might cost you as they will have had experience of this in the past.

Remember it's not employment law, it's business law and you are claiming a breach of contract. The company obviously believe that your firms staff (ie. you) have violated a clause in the business to business contract which permits them to terminate the contract with your firm without notice.

Next time :-

(a) read the contract properly and make sure you understand the clauses.

(b) don't sound off in blogs etc about any disagreement you have with your client

(b) don't sound off in code comments - it only serves to upset them and give them evidence

(c) raise any issues you have once and once only in a calm and factual manner with a responsible permie manager and record the details (ie. send a confirmation e-mail) .

(d) if they don't agree, remember you are only a hired hand and it's their responsibility if their project goes tits up

(e) remember that permies don't really want you around anyway so don't get their backs up and don't give them an excuse to get rid of you.

[malvolio]

"Walk away. It is really not worth the grief."

Well yes, you can do that. Its the pussies way. If you're a pussy and you're happy to be someones bitch well fine. They're all laughing at you, especially the technical architect. Mal here would take it, he likes taking it here . But you? Are you a pussy? ARE YOU?

Really don't understand, do you? It will cost more than the amount owing to get it back, in time and energy spent as much as legal fees. And having an early termination with loss of earnings means you cannot be taken for IR35 on this contract, whereas demanding that you are being paid notice when there is clearly no work means you almost certainly will be - ever heard of Mutuality? And the extra tax bill will probably be a lot more than four weeks gross less fees.

It's not about macho, it's about business sense and wasted effort..

[VectraMan]

My contract says 4 weeks notice too, but I've always assumed that was worthless. Surely the whole mutality of obligation thing means they're under no obligation to have work for you, and can just tell you not to come in for those last 4 weeks? It's a strange double standard to claim to be paid just for the work that's required, and then also claim to be entitled to compensation in the event of early termination.

The project I was taken on to do is due to be finished about a month before the end of my contract, so I might well find myself in a similar situation soon. Ideally they'll let me go a month early but still pay for the month, but I suspect I'll end up twiddling my thumbs for eight hours a day.

Also have to say that if somebody working for me put information about the project on a public blog, I'd have them thrown out the building and consider it a breach of confidentiality, even if nothing confidential was revealed. That's really very unprofessional.

[TheMonkey]

They owe you hard earned cash. Go after it!!

It's often cheaper to go to small claims and just claim the ceiling amount they handle as you don't need legal representation there which would eat all of your money anyway. I tend to pay a visit to the agency. They can't usually turn you away when you arrive on site without an appointment, especially when they have clients around and you might just start shouting at how crap they are.

Certain agencies treat you like crap and ignore you if you get terminated but it's your job to go after it.

And if you're like me, I think I just got the architect at my current gig either fired or in the deep crap as the product is not scalable due to his current crap design (entire logic tier inside SQL).

[Diestl]

Perhaps next time you want slate a company on your public blog, also if you're job was to implement the design then why cause problems for yourself by arguing about design flaws? As long as you get paid, unless you were responsible for the design, then you have a point.

[MarillionFan]

"Walk away. It is really not worth the grief."

Well yes, you can do that. Its the pussies way. If you're a pussy and you're happy to be someones bitch well fine. They're all laughing at you, especially the technical architect. Mal here would take it, he likes taking it here . But you? Are you a pussy? ARE YOU?

[malvolio]

Or, you take the pragmatic view. tulip happens. You're a freelance, you're a professional, you could care less about the client's staff making bad decisions and screwing up. Get on with the next contract, this one's dead and gone.

Yes, you can go down the legal route, it will take a long time, cost a lot of money and all you acheive is screwing up the time you need for the next role ("Are you fully committed to this new job?" "Well, no, actually I'll need some time off for this court case I'm involved in"...).

Walk away. It is really not worth the grief.