How to balance client expectations with the reality of a large scale project
During the pandemic I completed a full stack web dev course and am looking for my first real web dev job. It's been tough to find something without the background of a computer science degree. I've been in contact with a small company that has taken on a portfolio of a few clients who need "front end web dev" work as it was described to me. I spoke with them and I like them. We kind of agreed at a lower end rate ($25/hour) as freelance work to just have a bit of work that I can start to add to my portfolio and get some real work experience under my belt. They admittedly don't really know anything about web dev work but as a sort of "trial run" they've given me a project to work on. The project in question is basically what is described as a site where their family and close friends could make posts (text, pictures, and possibly video) and comments. So in essence they want a personal facebook of sorts. They want login credentials and have gone as far as saying that it would potentially require some moderation functions as well since they anticipate the possibility of random users potentially abusing the site since it will be "public".
This project really seems well beyond the scope that I was anticipating and I feel way over my head. I've done projects with similar functions in my we dev course but it was in a team of 4+ people and took at least a couple weeks to complete. This seems like something I COULD do with my full stack knowledge but it just isn't something that I think they fully grasp the scale of such a project. It's a much different thing to create a website where a company just creates pages for users to navigate and interact with VS this, which is basically almost a full fledged social media platform. Since I have a part time job, I wouldn't be able to put more than 2-3 days a week into any work for them and this project would seemingly take me months to complete with that time commitment.
I don't think the company is willfully trying to take advantage of me or creating unreal expectations, but I do believe they just are pretty clueless about what a project like this would entail. I also don't think they really know the difference between frontend, backend, and full stack. I would definitely consider this to be a full stack project.
So my question is really how do I go about navigating a client's expectations with what is feasible to create in an appropriate budget and an appropriate amount of time? Since I like the company I don't want to just tell them this isn't something I can do and give up on working with them. I also feel like their clients' websites wouldn't be as demanding of work as this project seems to be. Idk... Just having serious worries about this but want to put my best foot forward. Any suggestions?
Posted Jul 13, 2022, 11:43 AM UTC
Can you use an open source social solution, something like Mastadon?
If not that is definitely a "fullstack" project and then some.
Discuss your concerns with them, and if they still want to proceed keep working on it if you need the income.
Though, this sounds like a lot of effort for what would seem a really small market. I would worry that at some point somebody will realize its not feasible and pull the plug. It can be hard to get that last check sometimes when someone realizes they flushed a bunch of money already.
Yea, I agree that it certainly would be a bit of a waste of money. Considering it is just like a "trial" project to see if they want to work with me for their clients as well. This is just like a personal site for the owners of the company that they can use to keep in touch with their close friends and family.
To give a little more insight into the situation the company I'm speaking with is not focused on any sort of web development. They currently solely deal in physical media but bought a portfolio from a competitor which included a little bit of website management the first company was maintaining for their clients. So they're really diving into new territory that they know nothing about.
I'll have to see if I can use an open source project. That's a great idea. They are currently working through GoDaddy for their web hosting so I would think that would lend another set of restrictions to their projects? I've only used sites like heroku or even just hosting simple pages directly through GitHub in my web dev course. I'm still very new to the whole industry.
There are places that offer Mastadon hosting. I wouldn't build anything at GoDaddy.
It would be easy enough to get on Heroku, someone did a writeup.
Working on poorly managed web projects can be frustrating. I can't imagine they'll do a great job of managing things given its a sideline, its not easy.
Send them my way if they want to hire someone with mad hosting and web dev experience to build it out for them. ;-)