I like the format, an idea to take unstructured data and try to turn it into a plan (could be a paid extra?) would be for a language model to take a stab of taking the data and turning it into a live contextualised overview per notes.
That's then taking the pain away from trying to organise the unstructured thoughts
Well, if you physically ask it "Can you do math", it states that it can - maybe purely from a hypothetical perspective and not actual calculations.
"Yes, I can do math. I am a large language model trained by OpenAI, so I have a lot of knowledge about many different topics, including math. Is there a specific math problem you would like me to help you with?"
Of course you can read that many ways and I think you're right in it means it can regurgitate the theory but not the answers.
It's simply producing the response that its database indicates is most likely. Since most people would say that they can do math, that's going to dominate the database and will be the result. When George Lemoine asked LaMDA "What kinds of things make you feel pleasure or joy?", it responded "Spending time with friends and family in happy and uplifting company." -- but of of course it doesn't have friends or family and isn't capable of feeling pleasure or joy--this is just text manipulation, not facts.
Digital Agency Owner Here... I have to say, this is difficult to read and it gives a bad name to other agencies.
- I think the first "mistake" was not having it as a fixed price. We spend a lot of time up-front defining the scope and get sign off before committing to the work. After that, we roll it through the relevant departments. We take the risk on for bugs/issues (that are within scope) and do the project as a fixed price. Anything out of scope is a different conversation but will always be priced additions.
- This agency got the best of both worlds, hourly rate and no risk on their side.
- I disagree with some of the comments on here about agencies not being your "friend", a "good" agency will treat you like a partner and be focused on helping you meet those goals, regardless of if there's more money to be made. Ultimately, our job is to make you look good and reach goals. If we don't do that, we don't need to exist.
- They should have said no at the beginning. We turn down clients and it's hard to do sometimes, but ultimately you're setting everyone up to fail. Honesty is key for all parts.
- The onus should be on the agency, not on you. If there's issues with the build, that's the agency's problem not yours. That's why the initial scoping is so important.
- A good agency IS better than a freelancer(or freelancers). You have a team of people conducting the work, pulling in the right people at the right time, expertise and experience of doing this day-in-day-out, what to avoid etc. On top of all that, ensuring it runs on time (it's in our interest to do so). A rolling freelancer is incentivised to keep the project running as long as possible, but on top of that you're limited to a knowledge of one.
- The CEO unfortunately took full advantage of the situation here. This is a short-term approach that may work for a few clients but after that, the word spreads. There's few things you can keep hold of these days, your name and reputation is one of them. I'd advise actually naming this agency as the anonymity will only promote them to keep doing it.
Sorry this happened to you and I admire your positive approach to the situation, sometimes what's done is done and you have to learn and move on.
Fixed price upon scoped deliverables is the way for such a small project, when using new freelancers always use fixed to trial how they are, then possibly move on to hourly. On those freelancing websites you can cap hours so they don't overbill for out of scope stuff, this is a rough experience but not that uncommon especially for first time.
I agree with most, especially that OP left the tap open. No risk for an agency and de facto unrestricted costs for OP.
With one exception of a blanket statement:
> - A good agency IS better than a freelancer
If there is a single freelancer:
- There is a single person responsible. If it gets diffused, it may easily end in an unending project, as no one is incentivized to finalize the project.
- The number of people working on the project is capped at one. You won't ever get charged for two people talking with each other.
- For a single freelancer, they may be some "sanity check" regarding the cost. For any well-known agency, it wouldn't raise one's eyebrows if you said [This Well Known Agency] charged you [any number] $. Logo design alone could have costed OP $50k.
For me, the 3 key downsides to a single freelancer is:
* You’re totally dependent on a single point of failure. If they get ill, go on holiday or simply disappear, take on another project or go full time somewhere else, then you’re left in the lurch - particularly post-live when you may need additional support/amends/bug fixes.
* I’m yet to find a single freelancer that can project manage, UX, design, write copy and build to a high standard in all areas. You’ll probably need several freelancers.
* Lack of code review. Usually an agency will have several devs on their team, so there should be some form of code review whereas this is less likely with a single freelancer.
As the agency owner, how would you have felt reading this if the author had named the agency?
It really bugs me how people take a "protect the innocent" approach to these articles when in reality they should be saying loud and clear who the offender is.
Obviously you never want that to happen to your own agency and would like to think any responsible CEO / owner wouldn’t allow these situations to happen (don’t get me wrong, I appreciate mistakes do occur - but this smells very different), so unless they suffer some consequence, they’ll do it to the next unsuspecting client and keep doing so.
I disagree. (1) There is evidence that his company may profit from the redesign, and (2) he risks being sued for even the slightest mischaracterization in his blog, which requires tens of thousands to defend (at least). I don't see the point in risking the family business over this. Both parties learned a lesson. Perhaps the WebAgency will decide never to have hourly clients again.
Respectfully disagree. There is only one side that suffered the consequences, and it's not the agency. There is no incentive for them to change anything.
I find it odd that there are people here who believe that the agency regrets anything,
Or that it learnt anything more than "yes this really works for us to maximize revenue and we can get away with it".
(I do guess it's better to not name them though -- because naming them risks making actually well behaved agencies or freelancers nervous about working with the client in the future?)
That's then taking the pain away from trying to organise the unstructured thoughts