Apr 06 2008
Do Cowboys Exist?
I’m not talking the “Wild West” kind, more the kind that give the web industry a bad name. I have been lucky in the last 6 years in that I haven’t come across any of these so called cowboys and as a result I was beginning to think they were a myth. A project I have recently become involved in, however, has changed my viewpoint entirely. Yes, cowboys in the web industry do exist and they are giving us a very bad name.
Everybody hears the horror stories that people have apparently experienced but until now I had never been so close to any such activity. You know the kind; project misses its deadline, design work isn’t up to scratch, no reporting on deliverables is made, there is no firm plan, money is demanded, team members are sacked, clients are held to ransom with no functioning product, each party blaming the other for the project’s failings - the list goes on.
I don’t know about anybody else but this sort of thing makes my blood boil.
Admittedly the sort of scenerio outlined above doesn’t come about without failings of some sort on both sides of the equation and rarely is everything listed a part of the same project, but seriously, what sort of self-respecting developer would allow a project to get to that point? It’s totally unprofessional and only results in two parties feeling frustrated and cheated, not to mention the damage done to the client’s impression of the industry for any future work.
You may say this isn’t the way of the cowboy, it’s just a badly managed project. Well it’s that too, but a project can only become that badly managed when somebody doesn’t really know what they are doing. A good web development firm would automatically create a functional specification at the beginning of a project before commencing work, working together with the client to do so. A good web development firm would report regularly to the client giving updates on progress, hours spent, any issues that had come up to date. This is all standard procedure for any kind of company that creates something for somebody else and this is where the cowboy part comes in.
These cowboys who usually take on jobs that are beyond them, often charging top dollar in the process are maligning the honest members of the industry who do things properly, who follow procedures, who ensure their personal development keeps up with the pace of the industry itself and charge what they are worth as a result.
Now, the question really is are these people cowboys or are the rest of us just being pretentious and arrogant? Do we think our interest in the industry, our professionalism, our best-practice methods make us a better developer than somebody who does something the old way or doesn’t follow the same trends? My answser is yes they are cowboys and of course the professionalism and best-practice methods make us better developers, that’s what it’s all about.
Some however, would argue that they just do things differently, the old way, the tried and tested way. They still produce a result (unless it is a scenerio similar to the one outlined above, but that’s something else entirely), so what does it matter? The client should be happy. Unfortunately tghat argument is flawed and can be likened to somebody going to a car dealer and asking for a car only to find a horse-and-cart is delivered on payment. A horse-and-cart will still get you from A to B but it isn’t what you paid for. Just as you wouldn’t pay top dollar for a website developed using 10 year old technology.
So, what do you think? Do cowboys exist or are the rest of us just arrogant and elitist?
Yep, cowboys exist, same as in every industry. The ones I hate the most are those that make their naive clients believe that they HAVE to use the cowboy’s own hosting company or domain name registrar - typically at a vastly inflated rate - and try to lock them into proprietary systems. Obviously there are some CMS systems that require a particular setup, but in general I like to think my clients come back to me because I give them great service, not because I’ve tied them into a particular system and to go elsewhere would mean starting over from scratch.
I’d forgotten those kind of cowboys, yes, they are definitely the worst!
@Kay - Yes those guys to suck big time. I always allow a client to host where they want to, as long it meets our specifications and there aren’t any security issues etc. Most of the time they are happy to use our at cost services.
@Alex - The ones I hate are the ones that convince the client their way of design and development is the best. That their table layouts and font tags are saving the client money and that we are the cowboys with our arrogant ways and unrealistic business solutions. Often they team with a print only designer who is also a guru on web design. I have been scuttled by these cowboys a few times. Grrr! It was cheaper in the end to let them have the client.
That sounds like a very similar scenario to the situation I have just been introduced to. There must be a way that we can educate the client-base about these developers.