I am so deadly serious - do not continue working if your invoices are late.
You don't have to be a jerk about it, just explain to your primary contact that you need to be paid and you pick up tools again when the money has arrived.
BUT it is on YOU to properly negotiate reasonable payment terms. And if you don;t know or don't trust the client then require payment in advance until a stronger commercial relationship can be settled in. Do not be a baby - go research business contracts and payment terms.
Do not be afraid to lose business from companies that are squeamish about paying you - in fact actively avoid such companies.
So true. And I'll add, no matter how trustworthy you believe the other party to be based on reptutation, relationships, or otherwise-- they should understand requiring assurances. The worst backstabs are from the people you know and who should know better. And a lot of people will justify it to themselves if they get in trouble. They will continue telling themselves that they are fundamentally good people and it just didn't work out as they rip you off for a lot of money.
Sadly this is true and lesson anyone who has worked freelance has probably learned - either that or I'd wager they no longer do freelance.
Its easy to say don't be afraid to lose business, but when you're starting out, the economy is rough or all you have are the one or two clients, that's a different matter entirely.
One thing I've learned is that you always have to do the leg work, you can't assume someone will do the right thing or keep their word.
Develop a system where even bad clients, can't do too much damage i.e. upfront deposits, milestone-based payments. You have to control cash flow risks, if you are gonna take risks know what risks you're taking and when to get out.
There are also bad suppliers who don't do their leg work. I've "fired" some companies who did great work for me because they couldn't be bothered to send a bill - I know I owe someone some money, but I don't know how much as despite begging they won't tell me how much or where to send it (I only have a phone number) - this bill could get larger, and they can come after me at any time for it...
Please don't be them. If you do good work make sure that you get your bills sent on time.
> Sadly this is true and lesson anyone who has worked freelance has probably learned - either that or I'd wager they no longer do freelance.
Sadly, while this is true, there are plenty of folks still doing freelance who have not learned this, and there always will be. It's just one of those lessons that quite a lot of people have to learn from experience, even after reading posts like this. The exact same reason why companies will continue to get away with taking advantage of freelance work.
> Do not be afraid to lose business from companies that are squeamish about paying you - in fact actively avoid such companies.
My boss said that the ones who have negotiated the best deals are the ones that are late paying, complain about just about every bill and will write angry letters when my boss index adjust pricing.
He said it taught him to never offer a really good deal for a regular customer (ie where the upside isn't very obvious).
I'm not sure that's the best takeaway here, in that it gets the causation wrong. It's not the deal that made the customer bad, it's that the bad customer insisted on getting a deal, whereas a good customer usually knows what quality costs and is prepared to pay.
The takeaway here is probably that the fix isn't just "never discount", but it's to screen for the kind of customer who treats a good deal as an invitation to strengthen the relationship.
This is really the key. The "deal" has to have something for both parties. The vendor gets some kind of lock-in, prepayment, guarantee of future business, whatever it is, and in exchange the purchaser gets a discount.
Where I live the phone companies do this: you can get a discount every year by calling them and saying you will change companies unless they give you a better price. They always do and the only people paying normal prices are the ones who can’t be bothered to call them every year to request the discount!
And dealing with a lot of that crap is more trouble than many of us want to be filling our days with. Micro-optimizations I might have done as a student I mostly don’t do today.
These companies are scum. I don't want to be part of this march to the bottom of caring for your customer. Big companies are also different because of the firmness with which they are locked in to the purchasing infrastructure (among other reasons).
Sure, all major US cellular carriers are scum and abuse customers in similar ways. So you'll be part of the march to the bottom whether you want it or not.
It is possible to switch to a smaller VNO with better customer policies. But then your cellular data gets dropped during heavy network congestion, which is probably worse for most of us.
A professional knows what they're worth and what they need to deliver. On-time payment according on an agreed-upon schedule is table stakes. That's the most fundamental requirement. Nothing happens without that.
As an electrician currently self-stopped (for both non-payment & absenteeism, two months no contact, so far) I'm not budging. When you didn't show up for our last two on-site meetups (and still haven't contacted), I thought about filing a lien... but decided to just keep you from having tenants (by not finishing AC/water/electric). You'll get around to it..?
When I told this LLC/owner "you obviously aren't in a rush because you obviously aren't visiting the jobsite/me" I sort of expected him to show within a few days. Then a few weeks. And now we're entering a few months.
You have weeks of my punchlists (unresolved to do), I have weeks of questions (what do you want?) and you won't even do simple things like turning on power/water.
It doesn't have to be messy. A lot of the messiness is self inflicted by contractors who are desperate for work and would be better of just getting a regular employee job instead.
100% agree, and to add it can be tough sometimes to walk away from a cool project. I had worked on a project building scientific trial software, an app to review 3D lung scans, and an ML model to detect lesions in lung scans. It was really empowering, but after the first scientific trial the customer stopped paying their bills and ended up in back payment of $1M. My boss closed the project which sucked but it ultimately cost the company and people’s jobs. Just not worth interacting with bad people if they stop the agreement. There is most likely more money later but there is also money that is on time with other customers.
Unlike in the article where a contractor was promised payment and no payment was made, the cofounder here knows already that the company can’t pay until they raise funds, and has planned for this accordingly, by living off of personal savings or contract jobs. They also understand the risk they’ve taken on and are comfortable trading their time for possibly zero returns.
I feel like it's easy in hindsight to say some tough sounding advice in the form of "be a hard-ass", but idk, I feel like there are plenty of real life cases that contradict this advice- taking a chance on a referral to work on something you find interesting. Of course the big-money clients will be fine with a hard-line stance and they have money to pay at the end, but that work tends to be less interesting.
OTOH, one other clear subtext of the story is the "savior" attitude of a lot of tech people, who think that, if they weren't using version control before, think, "oh, I'll just tell them about this great thing, and because it's much better they will definitely listen to me and implement it - it's only logical". But the harsh reality is that "better" things won't affect an org that went along that far and dug themselves that deep.
Never underestimate an org's ability to shoot itself in the foot, even if you think you know better. That includes getting your money from them.
We’ve also learned this lesson the hard way. These are now the clauses we require in every project we do:
- Payment is due X days after receipt of invoice, or immediately after the consultant has addressed any quality issues, whichever is sooner
- Late payment shall incur interest at 8% above the BoE base rate and a late fee of 100 GBP as per the UK Late Payment Legislation. Partial payments on invoices shall apply to late fees, interest, and then principal, in that order.
- In the event of a late payment the invoice for the next deliverable shall immediately fall due.
- The consultant shall be entitled to shift deadlines on deliverables in the event of a late payment as a result of any work disruption, without incurring any liability.
- Payment shall be made in X currency, or an exchange rate at X date on Oanda.com shall apply.
- The client is responsible for any bank fees incurred by their, or any intermediary bank. In the event of a SWIFT transaction it shall be made with the OUR payment code.
- The jurisdiction in the event of a conflict shall be England and Wales. Neither party shall be bound by arbitration.
- The client and consultant shall both indemnify the other up to the total value of the contract and shall not under any circumstance be liable beyond X GBP.
We also no longer share downloadable links of our deliverables until they are paid up. They get a view/comment only link for reports/data etc.
We’ve found that clients that aren’t willing to accept these terms won’t pay you either way.
We determine the net days on the invoice based on the credit rating of the client. Ironically, the good clients pay within 2-3 days normally, and the difficult ones are very “long tail”. About 1% of contracts tend to fully or partially default on their payments.
We’re in a particularly credit poor industry but our average delay due to late payment is 23 days. Those clients where we stop delivery pay on average 11 days sooner than those contracts where we don’t stop delivery.
This is based on around 2,000 invoices sent over the last 5 years.
Oh and another lesson! Ensuring that each deliverable invoice is small enough that it falls under the simplified claims procedure (in the UK it’s 10,000 pounds) greatly simplifies collection.
It costs something like 80 quid to file for recovery in court and in our experience invoices are immediately paid up when a “Letter before action” is sent.
You burn the relationship, but arguably you probably don’t want it anyway.
I believe this is what we call small claims court in the United States. The threshold varies by state, but it is a very effective way to deal with recalcitrant companies both large and small.
I think OP needed "emergency service is cash up front".
In a different domain, this is the painful lesson of almost anyone who tries to help people in a bind -- you can try to help, but yours is unlikely to be the advice that sets them straight, so you shouldn't get too invested with unproven or, especially, proven unreliable actors.
Good lessons in here, but the part about giving up on legal action because they told him they’d dissolve the entity is questionable. This is where it pays to have a good relationship with a lawyer who will be up front about your chances and the cost of legal action. The sum discussed falls into the difficult range where it could take enough hours to try to collect that you’d be worse off than where you started if the lawyer can’t deliver anything.
However them dissolving the entity and moving their assets and IP around is also not free and will incur overhead, if they actually did it.
Threatening to dissolve the entity seemingly admits that they do have something worth collecting against. In my experience the companies who run out of money just tell you that they’re out of money and they also start losing key employees and your email contacts because they’re not getting paid either. If the company continues to exist and they’re threatening you to not sue, that might be a sign that they do have the money but they’re relying on intimidating contractors to not try collecting it.
Legal action is not free, so all of this has to be weighed.
EDIT: I should explain how I know this. Younger me took a job with a startup that got in over its head with spending but the CEO didn’t want the party to stop. His strategy was to stop paying any vendors and use the remaining cash flow to only pay past invoices for vendors that we needed something from (more work, more product) or anyone who looked like they were going to sue us. If someone got lawyers involved, they got paid. Needless to say I didn’t keep that job very long.
It isn't, but you can't get blood from a stone and squeezing costs money.
It sounds like the entity that the contract is with has no real assets and/or is based in a jurisdiction which is hard to enforce judgements in. That's a case where you need to get paid up-front, which is the real lesson in this article.
Worked in the SF tech scene since 2010, and so many founders who I found through YC/HN and AngelList failed to pay me over the years.
Often paid late, but FIVE times, I never got paid at all, one time it was several thousands over the course of months and I almost pursued it in court, but in the end I took the L.
It's always these incubator types, they're the absolute worst clients. They have the cash in the bank too, they often just forget or feel entitled and don't want to back down.
> The weirdest part to me, receive a call and just get up and go? Priorities?
The author does contracting in niche topics. When your contracting domain is uncommon you have to go where the work is.
You can charge higher prices for niche work and therefore tolerate more time in between contracts. This person may be spending more time not working and with his family than the typical FTE in this arrangement, even if the jobs occasionally require them to fly somewhere for a month.
Reads to me like the author is trying to elicit some empathy. It just sounds like he was just fine leaving his family for a job. Not getting paid couldn’t have factored into that decision.
He doesnt provide any context for that if so and if you look around the site, doesn't seem like the case at all. More like he just decided on the phone something interested him enough to bounce indefinitely.
One thing I learned from consulting is if you position yourself as the "fix your mess" guy you have to be very defensive. Ask for more up-front, and bail at the first sign of underpayment.
Be pleasantly surprised when a poorly run project is being run by nice, honest people. Prep for the opposite.
You're not just delivering expertise, you're stepping into a situation where incentives are already misaligned, expectations are fuzzy, and there's often a cashflow problem hiding somewhere
Actually sort of darkly clever– they turned OP into an unwitting investor.
Project goes well, he gets paid and they're best buds, and he doesn't even realize he was scammed (by intent). If not, well there's no point suing a failed company.
Never do anything on faith or as a handshake deal. Always ensure you get paid (hint: escrow is kryptonite for weasels). Trust everyone, just not the devil inside them.
I have a friend who retired but still does some contract work. They were on salary their whole career and are not used to sending invoices and tracking down payments. One of their clients was late paying and my friend wasn't concerned, but I encouraged them to be diligent about insisting on being paid on time. I have been a freelancer for over a decade and in my experience, the further away you get from a bill, the less real it becomes to the person who owes it. They start forgetting what the project was, or worse, start questioning why they even have to pay for it. You have to stay on top of these things or they can spiral out of control.
Your blog is a treasure trove - thanks for sharing.
Do you still cut your own hair ;) ?
But yes us folks in the creative world can learn a few things from the corporate world when it comes to contracts and payment schedules. Mike Monteiro's talk 'F*ck you, pay me' comes to mind.
Have a contract that encodes "fuck you, pay me" into the terms. Ideally, have an actual lawyer take care of the contract and the enforcement. There's a lot of law-y stuff out there that won't hold up in reality. Mortgage companies don't take payment in excuses from your clients, so neither should you.
What's an "AR bus"? How can augmented reality windows work on a bus unless you are (a) tracking the passenger's head and (b) there's only one passenger?
Screens outside the windows (not on the windows) can provide parallax, no need to track heads. However, in this case:
> They were attempting to pull off AR effects on the transparent OLED windows of the bus without accounting for lens distortion, field of view, parallax, occlusion, etc., and were frustrated and mystified when things didn’t appear to line up. They were completely naive to what depth and scale cues are and how to deploy them.
Can you elaborate? It seems to me that unless the screens are that far outside that they are where the target object is, two people that are offset laterally wrt the target object would have to be displayed something that's offset on the screen.
I've started operating in really granular units of work. Like less than $1000 per. Cash on delivery. This won't work with all clients and all jobs, but there are places where it does work very well. Advantages include being able to avoid paper contracts altogether. Verbal agreements and a 4 column xlsx that is reviewed monthly are all that seem to be required with some of my clients.
If I don't get paid for one day of work, I will probably get over it in a few hours. If I don't get paid for six months of work, we will have a serious problem. The tighter and more incremental we can make the delivery process, the less likely anyone gets screwed.
If a party is pushing hard for long-term contracts or large up-front sums of payment, I would walk away from that transaction unless there was a literal golden goose sitting in their lap.
I am also trying to set granular milestones and get paid every 1000€. Not provide 20000€ work and then start looking for my money. I can live with a loss of 1000€, but missing 20000€ will impact negatively my mortgage and investment plan.
There's not any incentives to pay you when they're in China and there's no legal recourse from the US. Even in the US suing is often times not worth it economically and getting someone to pay after a win is painful too if they don't just file bankruptcy. Escrow or upfront only is the best way to go.
The company was California-based, they were offering services in China. At least, that was my read. The contractor was also in California.
Honestly, this seems to be bad advice from their recovery services. Suing is 100% recommended here. There are plenty of lawyers that will work on a pro rata basis for account recovery in California. Sure, you lose a portion of your 35k; but you get more than you would have letting them get away with paying zero.
There's also laws in place to keep companies from "closing up shop" and opening in a new entity. It doesn't necessarily erase your debt (it can, but only in rare circumstances). And, even if they do get around it, it keeps them from pulling the same shenanigans going forward, in the state.
Not saying I know better but this contradicts what I heard from multiple collections companies with in-house legal - they all said suing would not be worth the ~$2,500 upfront fees and that the debtor would just vanish. The debt still exists so I'd love to think otherwise! Feel free to HMU if you have a specific lawyer/practice in mind ;
When you walk into a shitshow like this, the first thing you do is secure your payments. Anyone who is in such bad shape like how OP described it means that they are desperate, and desperate people will do and say anything to get help.
It is most likely going to not pay anyone so you need to make sure you're paid above and beyond anything else otherwise walk.
That's not the middle ground. That's the other extreme, where people are desperate for work so they will say they can do anything in order to get work.
That doesn’t really sound like “being ripped off,” as opposed to “betting on a lame horse.”
The people behind this were irresponsible, childish, and exemplars of the Dunning-Kruger effect. They weren’t really hardline crooks. Crooks are probably a lot more organized.
I have gotten myself invested with similar crowds. There’s usually a charismatic spokesperson, leading the chaos.
They likely didn’t plan to rip him off, but paying him wasn’t really something they thought about. Real crooks put lots of planning into taking money.
> Multiple very junior developers were touching (binary, TouchDesigner) code and deploying straight to production via thumb drive, with zero version control. In fact, they didn’t know what version control was.
I suspect many startups fit that description. If they survive, then they usually pull themselves up by the bootstraps, eventually. Many of them collapse, taking everything with them.
I think you’re right and it’s fair to reframe this that way, in that in a certain sense, despite my naivety, I was the adult in the room and should have seen what they couldn’t.
But then given what I’ve learned since I think I can say with some certainty that this particular group saw the writing on the wall and were willing to use the skilled labor and time of an endless army of cannon fodder to try to staunch the bleeding or take one more long shot at getting final payment, and doing so without the agreement or awareness of the people they enlisted to the risk they were participating in.
When the wheels start coming off, morals are first over the side.
In some cases (think Theranos), it can go all the way into straight criminality. Most times, it just reaches the point where everything collapses, when the supports rust away.
Contract terms can vary greatly depending on the situation and the company you’re working with.
Early/frequent payment terms are always good to have but you may not always have the leverage for it depending on where you’re at as a contractor.
Takes getting ripped off a times before insisting on better terms I guess. It’s like bombing your first job interview… you can prepare but it just needs to happen.
The fact that this is so many words makes me worry the author underappreciated the main lesson: risk exposure.
When you go out of pocket - you are out of pocket and the risk is all yours. If that one thing was different then all the remaining risk is on the client - they don't want to do version contr - ok cool you still get paid.
Usually when you have to pay in to get paid out (outside of a direct investment scenario) it's a scam. The people who fall for the Nigeria Prince thing are operating the same way.
No longer a contractor but I used to offer a 10-15% discount for paying upfront. Almost every client took this deal. Earned a little less but never lost sleep over payments.
> They were carpetbaggers and dilettantes convinced by their own inexperience and the advice of a onetime VJ that they could pull off something I’d twice helped quote to be brought home by a cadre of hardened killers with shitloads of math and know-how at eye-watering prices. They were way way way over their heads and were in no way interested in updating their priors in light of the shit they were swimming in.
And yet, somehow, you gave them the most important time you had for their promises.
> The faith was that if they could’t pay, they’d let me know because I was actively digging their asses out of a hole they’d dug, and doing so tirelessly and professionally, without complaint.
I get what the author is saying here. But it's a bad idea to treat one's work team with deep communal devotion in this way, as if they are a kind of dysfunctional family-- or, in the author's case, apparently higher in status than real family.
Doing this without proper remuneration creates a market distortion, and that is bad for capitalism.
He says "trust your gut" about 12 times, but the whole lead up has 0 mention that he was worried he would not get paid. His only gut feelings seemed to be around tech issues.
There's no such thing as a company temporarily being in dire straits. These kind of companies are always in dire straits and crisis - it's a business tactic to not deliver and not pay. Just stay away, whether you're a customer, a contractor, an employee or if they want to be your customer.
In a fight between a piece of toilet paper backed by millions in legal spending vs a rock solid contract backed by nothing -- the toilet paper (even if it is used toilet paper) will win every single time.
no it isn't. why you did not sue them? success rate of international arbitrage (New York Convention) proces into China is 90% success rate. USA/EU companies who sue Chineses companies in China for breach of contract seem to be winning rates. Enforcement of USA curt orders do not need to go thorugh Chinese courts again, and are enforced by local authorities (local sharks) with success rate of 80% for foreign firms suing chinese firms. fees are also fairly low. case is straightfoward.
if author went and sue, likely he would get his money back.
The page is actively hostile to me using reader mode on my phone. It keeps resetting my scroll progress to the top of the article. This is the second time I’ve run into this (first was within the last two weeks).
I hope this is a bug in my phone’s handling of something and not intentional. Until I know otherwise, I’m treating sites where this happens as deliberately hostile for the same reason as always: ads. I use reader mode to escape ads that my ad blockers miss but also to avoid poor design or hard to read fonts and the like. My response is the same as ever: I closed the article.
I was owed billable hours from Stanford University but refused to do any further work until the outstanding invoice was paid. Their accounts payable department didn't want to, so I had to tell the client "sorry" and walked away. It's really weird because I didn't have a problem in the near past then and was even an FTE at one point. I'm unwilling to work for free or for imaginary, low liquidation preference equity of a worthless startup.
Ordinarily, I would sign master agreements and set PO terms up-front. Typically, the better customers would agree to very strict requirements / objectives for a particular time period for a specific price. Any deviations would require negotiation. Hourly is fine too but there must be regular milestone deliveries so that there's demonstrable value for money being conveyed rather than an appearance of a milking-oriented consultant. Expectations must always be managed.
> End clients can’t tell the difference between these bozos and me. I don’t know what to do with that information but it feels bad.
This is unfortunately all too common. It's hard for someone who isn't an expert in the specific field to separate a smooth grifter from a more typical sales pitch
I don't want to name what my quick Google search revealed, but if you search for augmented reality bus Beijing there aren't many options and it fits the authors characterization of their fleet consisting of ~20 buses.
Back in my younger days I found a bunch of liberals who were claiming to run a software company. They were really into the social justice BS.
After about a month of employment, I was told I was being rude to ask for payment. Apparently they neglected to tell me that they actually only pay their employees 60 to 70 days after they start.
Of course the first red flag was them doing the 1099 dance for slightly above minimum wage. I had been forced to do that before, but guess what. They paid us every single week.
Quiting without notice was one of the greatest feelings with these clowns. By this time they had started to ask me to literally work for free. "Unpaid training". They stopped scheduling me for paid hours anyway, so no notice needed.
Right after that I worked for some conservatives. They paid me early. My first year I got a large raise.
There were some awkward moments like the CEO telling me who to vote for. But for the most part it was awesome.
I still consider myself to be very liberal, but I don't want to work anywhere that does a lot of virtue signaling. Your beliefs don't make you a good person, your actions do.
OP wasn't ripped off, OP just forgot to define their contract. Like, entirely.
Nobody forced OP to work 11-14 hour days. Contracting 101 stipulates that you define your hours ahead of time. You come in, you provide your expertise, and you leave at the end of the day. Let the client's junior employees work long hours. Not your problem.
OP brought their own equipment, which is totally fine but "who provides equipment" is also in the contract from the start. OP should have made a list of equipment that the client will require to complete such a project and stipulate a client budget be set aside to cover any shortcomings as they arise.
The contract is where you define when you get paid. "Deposit is XYZ quantity, non-refundable. Contractor will be paid for the upcoming week in advance by X date. Failure to remit payment will halt work."
I understand that the point of this blog piece is that it was a learning experience for OP but this stuff is pretty obvious isn't it? This is pretty much what comes up when you google stuff like "how to get into freelance contracting." I'm shocked and feel bad for OP for letting things get this far. Sadly, they were not ripped off by anyone but themselves.
These types of situations are endemic to my industry, for better or worse. I wasn't intending to complain about the working conditions by way of making it seem as though any of those things were unusual — I was providing that context by way of saying I conducted myself as a professional does in these situations. I've been in this (immersive, interactive, creative tech) industry for 20 years and those conditions are absolutely expected onsite when commissioning, installing, or preparing for a live event. Refusing to work beyond say an 8-10 hour day would leave the project unfinished and we work on a 'show must go on basis'. With that said, doing this for 20+ days without a break is unusually grueling, even for this industry.
Be paid or don't work.
I am so deadly serious - do not continue working if your invoices are late.
You don't have to be a jerk about it, just explain to your primary contact that you need to be paid and you pick up tools again when the money has arrived.
BUT it is on YOU to properly negotiate reasonable payment terms. And if you don;t know or don't trust the client then require payment in advance until a stronger commercial relationship can be settled in. Do not be a baby - go research business contracts and payment terms.
Do not be afraid to lose business from companies that are squeamish about paying you - in fact actively avoid such companies.
So true. And I'll add, no matter how trustworthy you believe the other party to be based on reptutation, relationships, or otherwise-- they should understand requiring assurances. The worst backstabs are from the people you know and who should know better. And a lot of people will justify it to themselves if they get in trouble. They will continue telling themselves that they are fundamentally good people and it just didn't work out as they rip you off for a lot of money.
Sadly this is true and lesson anyone who has worked freelance has probably learned - either that or I'd wager they no longer do freelance.
Its easy to say don't be afraid to lose business, but when you're starting out, the economy is rough or all you have are the one or two clients, that's a different matter entirely.
One thing I've learned is that you always have to do the leg work, you can't assume someone will do the right thing or keep their word.
Develop a system where even bad clients, can't do too much damage i.e. upfront deposits, milestone-based payments. You have to control cash flow risks, if you are gonna take risks know what risks you're taking and when to get out.
There are also bad suppliers who don't do their leg work. I've "fired" some companies who did great work for me because they couldn't be bothered to send a bill - I know I owe someone some money, but I don't know how much as despite begging they won't tell me how much or where to send it (I only have a phone number) - this bill could get larger, and they can come after me at any time for it...
Please don't be them. If you do good work make sure that you get your bills sent on time.
> Sadly this is true and lesson anyone who has worked freelance has probably learned - either that or I'd wager they no longer do freelance.
Sadly, while this is true, there are plenty of folks still doing freelance who have not learned this, and there always will be. It's just one of those lessons that quite a lot of people have to learn from experience, even after reading posts like this. The exact same reason why companies will continue to get away with taking advantage of freelance work.
>>companies will continue to get away with taking advantage of freelance work.
Think of ¡all the exposure! doing this free labor for us will give you! /s
or:
I'll cook you dinner if you do this days of work for me /serious?!
> Do not be afraid to lose business from companies that are squeamish about paying you - in fact actively avoid such companies.
My boss said that the ones who have negotiated the best deals are the ones that are late paying, complain about just about every bill and will write angry letters when my boss index adjust pricing.
He said it taught him to never offer a really good deal for a regular customer (ie where the upside isn't very obvious).
I'm not sure that's the best takeaway here, in that it gets the causation wrong. It's not the deal that made the customer bad, it's that the bad customer insisted on getting a deal, whereas a good customer usually knows what quality costs and is prepared to pay.
The takeaway here is probably that the fix isn't just "never discount", but it's to screen for the kind of customer who treats a good deal as an invitation to strengthen the relationship.
> strengthen the relationship
This is really the key. The "deal" has to have something for both parties. The vendor gets some kind of lock-in, prepayment, guarantee of future business, whatever it is, and in exchange the purchaser gets a discount.
The discount doesn't just come out of nowhere.
> It's not the deal that made the customer bad, it's that the bad customer insisted on getting a deal
That was indeed the point, guess I conveyed it in a poor way.
That's OK, it's clarified now.
This. A bad customer made a desperate situation worse because of their inexperience, neglect, shady motives, or a combination of the three.
Where I live the phone companies do this: you can get a discount every year by calling them and saying you will change companies unless they give you a better price. They always do and the only people paying normal prices are the ones who can’t be bothered to call them every year to request the discount!
And dealing with a lot of that crap is more trouble than many of us want to be filling our days with. Micro-optimizations I might have done as a student I mostly don’t do today.
These companies are scum. I don't want to be part of this march to the bottom of caring for your customer. Big companies are also different because of the firmness with which they are locked in to the purchasing infrastructure (among other reasons).
Sure, all major US cellular carriers are scum and abuse customers in similar ways. So you'll be part of the march to the bottom whether you want it or not.
It is possible to switch to a smaller VNO with better customer policies. But then your cellular data gets dropped during heavy network congestion, which is probably worse for most of us.
A professional knows what they're worth and what they need to deliver. On-time payment according on an agreed-upon schedule is table stakes. That's the most fundamental requirement. Nothing happens without that.
And also: political organizations and churches always must pay up front.
>Be paid or don't work.
As an electrician currently self-stopped (for both non-payment & absenteeism, two months no contact, so far) I'm not budging. When you didn't show up for our last two on-site meetups (and still haven't contacted), I thought about filing a lien... but decided to just keep you from having tenants (by not finishing AC/water/electric). You'll get around to it..?
When I told this LLC/owner "you obviously aren't in a rush because you obviously aren't visiting the jobsite/me" I sort of expected him to show within a few days. Then a few weeks. And now we're entering a few months.
You have weeks of my punchlists (unresolved to do), I have weeks of questions (what do you want?) and you won't even do simple things like turning on power/water.
Fuck you, pay me.
[•] <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U>
And for a rush job, don't be afraid to demand half the payment up front, or some other good-faith gesture on the client's part.
This is all correct in principle, but in practice it's a lot messier
It doesn't have to be messy. A lot of the messiness is self inflicted by contractors who are desperate for work and would be better of just getting a regular employee job instead.
I can imagine the type of work you do heavily influences the chance of begin paid during/before work finishes too…
100% agree, and to add it can be tough sometimes to walk away from a cool project. I had worked on a project building scientific trial software, an app to review 3D lung scans, and an ML model to detect lesions in lung scans. It was really empowering, but after the first scientific trial the customer stopped paying their bills and ended up in back payment of $1M. My boss closed the project which sucked but it ultimately cost the company and people’s jobs. Just not worth interacting with bad people if they stop the agreement. There is most likely more money later but there is also money that is on time with other customers.
What if you’re a cofounder or founding engineer and the company hasn’t raised yet?
Unlike in the article where a contractor was promised payment and no payment was made, the cofounder here knows already that the company can’t pay until they raise funds, and has planned for this accordingly, by living off of personal savings or contract jobs. They also understand the risk they’ve taken on and are comfortable trading their time for possibly zero returns.
I feel like it's easy in hindsight to say some tough sounding advice in the form of "be a hard-ass", but idk, I feel like there are plenty of real life cases that contradict this advice- taking a chance on a referral to work on something you find interesting. Of course the big-money clients will be fine with a hard-line stance and they have money to pay at the end, but that work tends to be less interesting.
OTOH, one other clear subtext of the story is the "savior" attitude of a lot of tech people, who think that, if they weren't using version control before, think, "oh, I'll just tell them about this great thing, and because it's much better they will definitely listen to me and implement it - it's only logical". But the harsh reality is that "better" things won't affect an org that went along that far and dug themselves that deep.
Never underestimate an org's ability to shoot itself in the foot, even if you think you know better. That includes getting your money from them.
We’ve also learned this lesson the hard way. These are now the clauses we require in every project we do:
- Payment is due X days after receipt of invoice, or immediately after the consultant has addressed any quality issues, whichever is sooner
- Late payment shall incur interest at 8% above the BoE base rate and a late fee of 100 GBP as per the UK Late Payment Legislation. Partial payments on invoices shall apply to late fees, interest, and then principal, in that order.
- In the event of a late payment the invoice for the next deliverable shall immediately fall due.
- The consultant shall be entitled to shift deadlines on deliverables in the event of a late payment as a result of any work disruption, without incurring any liability.
- Payment shall be made in X currency, or an exchange rate at X date on Oanda.com shall apply.
- The client is responsible for any bank fees incurred by their, or any intermediary bank. In the event of a SWIFT transaction it shall be made with the OUR payment code.
- The jurisdiction in the event of a conflict shall be England and Wales. Neither party shall be bound by arbitration.
- The client and consultant shall both indemnify the other up to the total value of the contract and shall not under any circumstance be liable beyond X GBP.
We also no longer share downloadable links of our deliverables until they are paid up. They get a view/comment only link for reports/data etc.
We’ve found that clients that aren’t willing to accept these terms won’t pay you either way.
We determine the net days on the invoice based on the credit rating of the client. Ironically, the good clients pay within 2-3 days normally, and the difficult ones are very “long tail”. About 1% of contracts tend to fully or partially default on their payments.
We’re in a particularly credit poor industry but our average delay due to late payment is 23 days. Those clients where we stop delivery pay on average 11 days sooner than those contracts where we don’t stop delivery.
This is based on around 2,000 invoices sent over the last 5 years.
Oh and another lesson! Ensuring that each deliverable invoice is small enough that it falls under the simplified claims procedure (in the UK it’s 10,000 pounds) greatly simplifies collection.
It costs something like 80 quid to file for recovery in court and in our experience invoices are immediately paid up when a “Letter before action” is sent.
You burn the relationship, but arguably you probably don’t want it anyway.
> simplified claims procedure
I believe this is what we call small claims court in the United States. The threshold varies by state, but it is a very effective way to deal with recalcitrant companies both large and small.
I think the hidden advantage here isn't even enforcement, it's filtering
It seems like none of these terms would have saved OP though
I think OP needed "emergency service is cash up front".
In a different domain, this is the painful lesson of almost anyone who tries to help people in a bind -- you can try to help, but yours is unlikely to be the advice that sets them straight, so you shouldn't get too invested with unproven or, especially, proven unreliable actors.
>> "emergency service is cash up front“
Neatly distilled I believe you are correct
> Ironically, the good clients pay within 2-3 days normally, and the difficult ones are very “long tail”.
Why ironically? Isn't that exactly what you'd expect?
The ironic part is that the clients that don't need the looser payment terms (more time to pay the invoice) are the ones that get them
Kind of mirrors "it's expensive to be poor"
Good lessons in here, but the part about giving up on legal action because they told him they’d dissolve the entity is questionable. This is where it pays to have a good relationship with a lawyer who will be up front about your chances and the cost of legal action. The sum discussed falls into the difficult range where it could take enough hours to try to collect that you’d be worse off than where you started if the lawyer can’t deliver anything.
However them dissolving the entity and moving their assets and IP around is also not free and will incur overhead, if they actually did it.
Threatening to dissolve the entity seemingly admits that they do have something worth collecting against. In my experience the companies who run out of money just tell you that they’re out of money and they also start losing key employees and your email contacts because they’re not getting paid either. If the company continues to exist and they’re threatening you to not sue, that might be a sign that they do have the money but they’re relying on intimidating contractors to not try collecting it.
Legal action is not free, so all of this has to be weighed.
EDIT: I should explain how I know this. Younger me took a job with a startup that got in over its head with spending but the CEO didn’t want the party to stop. His strategy was to stop paying any vendors and use the remaining cash flow to only pay past invoices for vendors that we needed something from (more work, more product) or anyone who looked like they were going to sue us. If someone got lawyers involved, they got paid. Needless to say I didn’t keep that job very long.
> A contract is toilet paper
It isn't, but you can't get blood from a stone and squeezing costs money.
It sounds like the entity that the contract is with has no real assets and/or is based in a jurisdiction which is hard to enforce judgements in. That's a case where you need to get paid up-front, which is the real lesson in this article.
Worked in the SF tech scene since 2010, and so many founders who I found through YC/HN and AngelList failed to pay me over the years.
Often paid late, but FIVE times, I never got paid at all, one time it was several thousands over the course of months and I almost pursued it in court, but in the end I took the L.
It's always these incubator types, they're the absolute worst clients. They have the cash in the bank too, they often just forget or feel entitled and don't want to back down.
NEVER work for a YC founder.
> I missed the month of May with my 2-year-old kid. My wife cared for a 2-year-old alone.
The weirdest part to me, receive a call and just get up and go? Priorities? Did you write this blog post from the doghouse?
> The weirdest part to me, receive a call and just get up and go? Priorities?
The author does contracting in niche topics. When your contracting domain is uncommon you have to go where the work is.
You can charge higher prices for niche work and therefore tolerate more time in between contracts. This person may be spending more time not working and with his family than the typical FTE in this arrangement, even if the jobs occasionally require them to fly somewhere for a month.
You need a job to sustain a family. From the post it seems like author accepted the sacrifice for the amount he was supposed to be paid.
Reads to me like the author is trying to elicit some empathy. It just sounds like he was just fine leaving his family for a job. Not getting paid couldn’t have factored into that decision.
> It just sounds like he was just fine leaving his family for a job.
Or... maybe he needs income to exist.
He doesnt provide any context for that if so and if you look around the site, doesn't seem like the case at all. More like he just decided on the phone something interested him enough to bounce indefinitely.
One thing I learned from consulting is if you position yourself as the "fix your mess" guy you have to be very defensive. Ask for more up-front, and bail at the first sign of underpayment.
Be pleasantly surprised when a poorly run project is being run by nice, honest people. Prep for the opposite.
You're not just delivering expertise, you're stepping into a situation where incentives are already misaligned, expectations are fuzzy, and there's often a cashflow problem hiding somewhere
Actually sort of darkly clever– they turned OP into an unwitting investor.
Project goes well, he gets paid and they're best buds, and he doesn't even realize he was scammed (by intent). If not, well there's no point suing a failed company.
Never do anything on faith or as a handshake deal. Always ensure you get paid (hint: escrow is kryptonite for weasels). Trust everyone, just not the devil inside them.
Also, mandatory: https://creativemornings.com/talks/mike-monteiro--2/1
> “Starting work without a contract is like putting on a condom after taking a home pregnancy test"
Choice quote from the linked talk (aptly titled "F*ck you, pay me").
I have a friend who retired but still does some contract work. They were on salary their whole career and are not used to sending invoices and tracking down payments. One of their clients was late paying and my friend wasn't concerned, but I encouraged them to be diligent about insisting on being paid on time. I have been a freelancer for over a decade and in my experience, the further away you get from a bill, the less real it becomes to the person who owes it. They start forgetting what the project was, or worse, start questioning why they even have to pay for it. You have to stay on top of these things or they can spiral out of control.
Your blog is a treasure trove - thanks for sharing.
Do you still cut your own hair ;) ?
But yes us folks in the creative world can learn a few things from the corporate world when it comes to contracts and payment schedules. Mike Monteiro's talk 'F*ck you, pay me' comes to mind.
---
https://www.mikemonteiro.com/
https://creativemornings.com/talks/mike-monteiro--2/1
Sometimes you just have to get scammed to be able to recognize scams. Seems obvious to outsiders, but can be hard to see when you're in it.
Some favorites:
- No way they would actually screw me over! We're buds/they got me tiger balm/they paid some/I did them a solid
- Thin veneer of safe fallbacks that doesn't hold up under scrutiny. Legal or other 'repercussions'
- Endless delays and excuses (though it's usually too late by this point)
Yeah, a lot of it only becomes obvious in hindsight because each individual signal is easy to rationalize away
Evergreen advice from the design side: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U (Mike Monteiro: F*ck You, Pay Me)
Watched a couple of times, but I don't fully understand the message in this video. Can someone ELI5?
The message is to have a contract and insist on being paid according to the contract, and refuse further work until you get paid.
Have a contract that encodes "fuck you, pay me" into the terms. Ideally, have an actual lawyer take care of the contract and the enforcement. There's a lot of law-y stuff out there that won't hold up in reality. Mortgage companies don't take payment in excuses from your clients, so neither should you.
What's an "AR bus"? How can augmented reality windows work on a bus unless you are (a) tracking the passenger's head and (b) there's only one passenger?
Screens outside the windows (not on the windows) can provide parallax, no need to track heads. However, in this case:
> They were attempting to pull off AR effects on the transparent OLED windows of the bus without accounting for lens distortion, field of view, parallax, occlusion, etc., and were frustrated and mystified when things didn’t appear to line up. They were completely naive to what depth and scale cues are and how to deploy them.
Can you elaborate? It seems to me that unless the screens are that far outside that they are where the target object is, two people that are offset laterally wrt the target object would have to be displayed something that's offset on the screen.
So is it an actual moving bus or just a simulation of one? I have not heard of the concept before
I've started operating in really granular units of work. Like less than $1000 per. Cash on delivery. This won't work with all clients and all jobs, but there are places where it does work very well. Advantages include being able to avoid paper contracts altogether. Verbal agreements and a 4 column xlsx that is reviewed monthly are all that seem to be required with some of my clients.
If I don't get paid for one day of work, I will probably get over it in a few hours. If I don't get paid for six months of work, we will have a serious problem. The tighter and more incremental we can make the delivery process, the less likely anyone gets screwed.
If a party is pushing hard for long-term contracts or large up-front sums of payment, I would walk away from that transaction unless there was a literal golden goose sitting in their lap.
I am also trying to set granular milestones and get paid every 1000€. Not provide 20000€ work and then start looking for my money. I can live with a loss of 1000€, but missing 20000€ will impact negatively my mortgage and investment plan.
The same founders who require employees to work 24/7/365 while they jack off to Hentai all day are the same ones who don't pay:
HockeyStack, Greptile, Velt all had problems paying me and all required 7 day a week, overnight, etc.
There's not any incentives to pay you when they're in China and there's no legal recourse from the US. Even in the US suing is often times not worth it economically and getting someone to pay after a win is painful too if they don't just file bankruptcy. Escrow or upfront only is the best way to go.
The company was California-based, they were offering services in China. At least, that was my read. The contractor was also in California.
Honestly, this seems to be bad advice from their recovery services. Suing is 100% recommended here. There are plenty of lawyers that will work on a pro rata basis for account recovery in California. Sure, you lose a portion of your 35k; but you get more than you would have letting them get away with paying zero.
There's also laws in place to keep companies from "closing up shop" and opening in a new entity. It doesn't necessarily erase your debt (it can, but only in rare circumstances). And, even if they do get around it, it keeps them from pulling the same shenanigans going forward, in the state.
Not saying I know better but this contradicts what I heard from multiple collections companies with in-house legal - they all said suing would not be worth the ~$2,500 upfront fees and that the debtor would just vanish. The debt still exists so I'd love to think otherwise! Feel free to HMU if you have a specific lawyer/practice in mind ;
This was a California company and contract, but your comment does apply to their situation with their client
When you walk into a shitshow like this, the first thing you do is secure your payments. Anyone who is in such bad shape like how OP described it means that they are desperate, and desperate people will do and say anything to get help.
It is most likely going to not pay anyone so you need to make sure you're paid above and beyond anything else otherwise walk.
You forgot the middleground where there are thousands of laid off people who can do your exact job and undercut you etc.
These founders hire/fire through hundreds of us, they don't give a shit.
If you say 1 thing they don't like they go to the next.
That's not the middle ground. That's the other extreme, where people are desperate for work so they will say they can do anything in order to get work.
How many of those people have experience with augmented reality? Probably not that many.
$35k seems pretty low for this job. Hindsight is 20/20 of course.
That doesn’t really sound like “being ripped off,” as opposed to “betting on a lame horse.”
The people behind this were irresponsible, childish, and exemplars of the Dunning-Kruger effect. They weren’t really hardline crooks. Crooks are probably a lot more organized.
I have gotten myself invested with similar crowds. There’s usually a charismatic spokesperson, leading the chaos.
They likely didn’t plan to rip him off, but paying him wasn’t really something they thought about. Real crooks put lots of planning into taking money.
> Multiple very junior developers were touching (binary, TouchDesigner) code and deploying straight to production via thumb drive, with zero version control. In fact, they didn’t know what version control was.
I suspect many startups fit that description. If they survive, then they usually pull themselves up by the bootstraps, eventually. Many of them collapse, taking everything with them.
I think you’re right and it’s fair to reframe this that way, in that in a certain sense, despite my naivety, I was the adult in the room and should have seen what they couldn’t.
But then given what I’ve learned since I think I can say with some certainty that this particular group saw the writing on the wall and were willing to use the skilled labor and time of an endless army of cannon fodder to try to staunch the bleeding or take one more long shot at getting final payment, and doing so without the agreement or awareness of the people they enlisted to the risk they were participating in.
I've seen similar, at a bigger scale.
When the wheels start coming off, morals are first over the side.
In some cases (think Theranos), it can go all the way into straight criminality. Most times, it just reaches the point where everything collapses, when the supports rust away.
Contract terms can vary greatly depending on the situation and the company you’re working with.
Early/frequent payment terms are always good to have but you may not always have the leverage for it depending on where you’re at as a contractor.
Takes getting ripped off a times before insisting on better terms I guess. It’s like bombing your first job interview… you can prepare but it just needs to happen.
> End clients can’t tell the difference between these bozos and me. I don’t know what to do with that information but it feels bad.
this is only getting worse with ai.
all the artifacts of good work are there but none of the depth.
The fact that this is so many words makes me worry the author underappreciated the main lesson: risk exposure.
When you go out of pocket - you are out of pocket and the risk is all yours. If that one thing was different then all the remaining risk is on the client - they don't want to do version contr - ok cool you still get paid.
Usually when you have to pay in to get paid out (outside of a direct investment scenario) it's a scam. The people who fall for the Nigeria Prince thing are operating the same way.
No longer a contractor but I used to offer a 10-15% discount for paying upfront. Almost every client took this deal. Earned a little less but never lost sleep over payments.
Why not make your rate 15% higher than your desired rate?
That way your “discounted” rate is the rate they should have paid and they feel like they got a deal.
This reads less like a "got ripped off" story and more like a perfect storm of every classic consulting red flag showing up at once
> They were carpetbaggers and dilettantes convinced by their own inexperience and the advice of a onetime VJ that they could pull off something I’d twice helped quote to be brought home by a cadre of hardened killers with shitloads of math and know-how at eye-watering prices. They were way way way over their heads and were in no way interested in updating their priors in light of the shit they were swimming in.
And yet, somehow, you gave them the most important time you had for their promises.
> I missed the month of May with my 2-year-old kid. My wife cared for a 2-year-old alone.
This wasn't because of the customer or not getting paid. This was the author's choice.
> The faith was that if they could’t pay, they’d let me know because I was actively digging their asses out of a hole they’d dug, and doing so tirelessly and professionally, without complaint.
I get what the author is saying here. But it's a bad idea to treat one's work team with deep communal devotion in this way, as if they are a kind of dysfunctional family-- or, in the author's case, apparently higher in status than real family.
Doing this without proper remuneration creates a market distortion, and that is bad for capitalism.
He says "trust your gut" about 12 times, but the whole lead up has 0 mention that he was worried he would not get paid. His only gut feelings seemed to be around tech issues.
Yes, I guess also trust the situation when it looks completely wrong. your gut is not lying when it sees that as well
There's no such thing as a company temporarily being in dire straits. These kind of companies are always in dire straits and crisis - it's a business tactic to not deliver and not pay. Just stay away, whether you're a customer, a contractor, an employee or if they want to be your customer.
“A contract is toilet paper”
A little hyperbolic, but more accurate than not when laypeople think about contracts.
A contract isn’t a magic spell, it is a declaration of shared understanding that can be used for clarity and in legal proceedings.
If you think of a contract as a way to ensure you get what you agreed, yes, it is toilet paper, because a contract doesn’t remove counterparty risk.
In a fight between a piece of toilet paper backed by millions in legal spending vs a rock solid contract backed by nothing -- the toilet paper (even if it is used toilet paper) will win every single time.
A piece of contract toilet paper is still better than a bare hand shake agreement.
> A contract is toilet paper
no it isn't. why you did not sue them? success rate of international arbitrage (New York Convention) proces into China is 90% success rate. USA/EU companies who sue Chineses companies in China for breach of contract seem to be winning rates. Enforcement of USA curt orders do not need to go thorugh Chinese courts again, and are enforced by local authorities (local sharks) with success rate of 80% for foreign firms suing chinese firms. fees are also fairly low. case is straightfoward.
if author went and sue, likely he would get his money back.
> why you did not sue them?
Because they could just dissolve the entity and get away with it. Did you even read the rest of the article?
The page is actively hostile to me using reader mode on my phone. It keeps resetting my scroll progress to the top of the article. This is the second time I’ve run into this (first was within the last two weeks).
I hope this is a bug in my phone’s handling of something and not intentional. Until I know otherwise, I’m treating sites where this happens as deliberately hostile for the same reason as always: ads. I use reader mode to escape ads that my ad blockers miss but also to avoid poor design or hard to read fonts and the like. My response is the same as ever: I closed the article.
I was owed billable hours from Stanford University but refused to do any further work until the outstanding invoice was paid. Their accounts payable department didn't want to, so I had to tell the client "sorry" and walked away. It's really weird because I didn't have a problem in the near past then and was even an FTE at one point. I'm unwilling to work for free or for imaginary, low liquidation preference equity of a worthless startup.
Ordinarily, I would sign master agreements and set PO terms up-front. Typically, the better customers would agree to very strict requirements / objectives for a particular time period for a specific price. Any deviations would require negotiation. Hourly is fine too but there must be regular milestone deliveries so that there's demonstrable value for money being conveyed rather than an appearance of a milking-oriented consultant. Expectations must always be managed.
All this for a $35K contract, that sucks.
> End clients can’t tell the difference between these bozos and me. I don’t know what to do with that information but it feels bad.
This is unfortunately all too common. It's hard for someone who isn't an expert in the specific field to separate a smooth grifter from a more typical sales pitch
Wage theft is the most lucrative and least prosecuted crime in America.
FTA: China
Who are they?
Who are they?
I don't want to name what my quick Google search revealed, but if you search for augmented reality bus Beijing there aren't many options and it fits the authors characterization of their fleet consisting of ~20 buses.
Which they? The contractor, the project owners, etc?
And is who they are relevant to the lesson (stealing time/effort is easy to get away with, you need to protect yourself from that)?
Article contains this:
> I’ll happily tell you who they are - get in touch
Back in my younger days I found a bunch of liberals who were claiming to run a software company. They were really into the social justice BS.
After about a month of employment, I was told I was being rude to ask for payment. Apparently they neglected to tell me that they actually only pay their employees 60 to 70 days after they start.
Of course the first red flag was them doing the 1099 dance for slightly above minimum wage. I had been forced to do that before, but guess what. They paid us every single week.
Quiting without notice was one of the greatest feelings with these clowns. By this time they had started to ask me to literally work for free. "Unpaid training". They stopped scheduling me for paid hours anyway, so no notice needed.
Right after that I worked for some conservatives. They paid me early. My first year I got a large raise.
There were some awkward moments like the CEO telling me who to vote for. But for the most part it was awesome.
I still consider myself to be very liberal, but I don't want to work anywhere that does a lot of virtue signaling. Your beliefs don't make you a good person, your actions do.
A bunch of liberals got into my walls and started chewing the wires.
You realize that your anecdote here is itself virtue signaling, right?
Because, I’m sure multiple people here could tell similar stories with the political leanings of the groups involved reversed.
OP wasn't ripped off, OP just forgot to define their contract. Like, entirely.
Nobody forced OP to work 11-14 hour days. Contracting 101 stipulates that you define your hours ahead of time. You come in, you provide your expertise, and you leave at the end of the day. Let the client's junior employees work long hours. Not your problem.
OP brought their own equipment, which is totally fine but "who provides equipment" is also in the contract from the start. OP should have made a list of equipment that the client will require to complete such a project and stipulate a client budget be set aside to cover any shortcomings as they arise.
The contract is where you define when you get paid. "Deposit is XYZ quantity, non-refundable. Contractor will be paid for the upcoming week in advance by X date. Failure to remit payment will halt work."
I understand that the point of this blog piece is that it was a learning experience for OP but this stuff is pretty obvious isn't it? This is pretty much what comes up when you google stuff like "how to get into freelance contracting." I'm shocked and feel bad for OP for letting things get this far. Sadly, they were not ripped off by anyone but themselves.
These types of situations are endemic to my industry, for better or worse. I wasn't intending to complain about the working conditions by way of making it seem as though any of those things were unusual — I was providing that context by way of saying I conducted myself as a professional does in these situations. I've been in this (immersive, interactive, creative tech) industry for 20 years and those conditions are absolutely expected onsite when commissioning, installing, or preparing for a live event. Refusing to work beyond say an 8-10 hour day would leave the project unfinished and we work on a 'show must go on basis'. With that said, doing this for 20+ days without a break is unusually grueling, even for this industry.