Tell us your naughty stories
Paul Graham recently mentioned that one of the characteristics Y Combinator looks for is "naughtiness" -- an intolerance for bureaucratic rules, a history of beating the system. Go read about it here: (http://paulgraham.com/founders.html)
So what are your stories?
378 comments
[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 303 ms ] threadNormally I believe that sort of thing involved the maintenance staff, etc, at who-knows-what expense.
Another time I started looking through a cardboard box that had been sitting outside my cube for months. It had office supplies and things in it. I started eyeing items like a stapler.
The guy in the next cube pops out and says "those are her personal effects!". Apparently the older woman in the opposite cube (I never met her) popped her clogs at some point, and this was her unclaimed stuff.
Oops!
(Okay, that's unintentionally-cringe-inducing-naughty, not hack-naughty. But I find it amusing these days.)
I trashed it all anyway.
Then I stole a conference room called Battle Ship, moved into it with my big purple chair, end table and lamp, renamed it Pirate Ship, and repurposed it as a library for quiet hacking. I posted to the company group, "I sank your battleship," with a humorous story, and it was a hit. I drew a sketchup file of a remodeled room with pyramid foam like at YC, an egg chair, and a data scientist brain washing video on a pull down screen from the overhead projector. I knew I was at the right company when the official response was to rebuild the room to my design (it was even dirt cheap to do so). We brainwashed our first candidate this week.
Finally I promoted myself because I didn't like my old title. That's going well so far.
Probably none of this would have gone as well without a supportive boss running cover I never saw, but if you mean well, are a type A, and are totally committed... at most companies you can get away with anything that advances the mission. As in all walks of life you have to sell.
Shenanigans like these taught me how the system operates, so now I can get real things done the same way.
Rubyists, javscript hackers, the data obsessed, information designers... all badly needed.
When they asked me for "something to have lunch with", I'd lower my voice and say "it's not possible now" then quickly glance at the person behind me.
Neither I nor them had to pay anything.
I am guessing corrupt officials basically request money from you for no reason- and it's expected you give it to them (for no reason as well). Then, they just call it a "bribe". But I'm guessing... pardon my cultural ignorance.
At places where I don't get a business card, I borrow one from the executives and have it cloned at a card shop with my own info. Usually I will get two or three boxes each with different titles and then pass these out at conferences with a title appropriate to whatever I am discussing with someone.
Speaking of conferences, I have never asked for permission to go to them. I just do, and then submit expenses.
I give them out all of the time at conferences and other grad students here are always surprised that I have "official" university business cards.
In certain cases it's far easier to apologise later than ask for permission first.
Its attributed to Grace Hopper, a Rear Admiral in the Navy and a programmer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Murray_Hopper http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper
I worked for Smiths Industries, and my buddies were smart enough to register "si.com". Sports Illustrated was a little too slow (ultimately they bought the domain - my buddies got nothing, life is not fair).
Anyway, someone on a University of Michigan lab email list forged an email... the "from" was a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, with a bunch of "CC:s" to other "SI models" and CC:ed the UofM email list. The email was pretty well done, something to the effect of "Hey Tyra, do you know why we are getting this strange email from this UofM lab?" There were a surprising number of students that fell for it.
At the time, I was responsible for catching bounced email and dealing with it. For the next couple of months I was entertained by lovelorn UofM students trying to hit on Tyra and all her friends. :-D I saved all the email in an archive, but lost it at some point, moving between computer systems. :-( One of my life's major regrets.
It says false at the top, but goes on to explain it did actually work for a period of time, by shorting out the mechanism.
One kid was even electrocuted when he tried it on an ungrounded machine!
First class yo this is bad. Drinking orange juice out of a champaine glass. Is this what the people of Bel-Air living like? Hmm this might be allright. But wait I hear prissy, bourgeois and all that. Is this the type of place they should send this cool cat. I don't think, I'll see when I get there. I hope they're prepared for the prince of Bel-Air.
Well ah the plain landed and I came out. There was a dude that looked like a cop standing there with my name out. I aint trying to get arrested yet I just got here. I sprang with the quickness of lightning and dissapeared. I whistled for a cab and when it came near, the license plate said FRESH and it had dice in the mirror. If anything I can say this cab is rare. But I thought naw forget it yo homes to Bel-Air.
I pulled up to the house about 7 or 8. And I yelled to the cabby "Yo homes smell ya later". I looked at my kingdom I was finally there to sit on my throne as the Prince of Bel Air.
I was always flying in economy but I would check in on line and print my real boarding pass, then modify the PDF of the boarding pass and change it to a seat in business with whatever other indications where necessary for a genuine business class passenger (e.g. the word BUSINESS or PREMIUM in big letters). I got all that information by picking up a discarded boarding pass at the airport.
Then I could arrive at the airport and skip all the lines using my fake boarding pass to go down the special business class channel and then use my real boarding pass to board the plane.
I only did this at airports where boarding passes were manually verified.
Also would be a pretty good hack to do some duty-free shopping in the international terminal - at security they usually only seem to glance at your boarding pass and wave you through. Who's to say you don't just go shopping and walk back out the arrivals exit?
Technically internships were supposed to be unpaid, but I didn't know that. I almost let the cat out of the bag that I was just going to work early at the end of the year presentation on my internship to other students, the teacher and a vice principle, but quickly recovered following my teacher's scramble to cover our asses.
By the time I was done, her lip was split, her wrists were bleeding from the rope cuttin into them, one of her eyes was swollen shut, she was missing two teeth, her small tits will entirely black and blue, her pussy was bleeding, and I’m fairly sure that several bones in her feet were broken.
When I let her down, she crumpled on the floor and went into a fetal position and just hugged her legs to her chest and sobbed quietly.
I suddenly got very aroused seeing that, so I pulled out my dick (I has actually hit puberty 12, and was hairy, balls dropped and everything functioning) and started jerking off quietly. Eventually, I started to breathe harder, and she noticed what I was doing, and she just looked at me with this look of absolute horror on her face.
It was at that moment that I climaxed and sprayed probably my biggest load of cum ever all over face and chest.
Then, I picked up her torn shirt from the ground, wiped off my dick and tossed it to her.
I told her to clean herself up and that if she ever told anyone, I would go to her house and kill her while she slept, and that if anyone asked who hurt her, she should say a bunch of high school kids did it.
When I think back on it, I think she was the first girl I ever loved.
Click on the link and flag it: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1822990
Students were not allowed to have TVs, so the other part of the hack was to be in a video production class to be allowed to have a monitor, but open it up and splice a tuner to a BNC input then use a coax to BNC coupler, so the monitor looked absolutely normal from the outside.
Awfully complicated to end up watching USA's "Up All Night" B movies hosted by Gilbert Gottfried.
Where the hell did you go to school, Utah?
The stupid EU put an end to it by changing the gambling laws and prohibiting casinos to give out coupons for chips - someone might get addicted - instead the new coupons allowed free entry and a drink, but until then it worked like a charm.
The casino people were a little freaked out at first, shooting us suspicious looks but after three weeks they got used to us...;-)
This was first done by people from MIT I believe.
http://www.amazon.com/Eudaemonic-Pie-Thomas-Bass/dp/05951423...
Recently I ran across another book about the same group, "The Predictors: How a Band of Maverick Physicists Used Chaos Theory to Trade Their Way to a Fortune on Wall Street"
We did not really have an optimal betting strategy, at least nothing that can be proven scientifically, there is no such thing. But after some time we started to bet on the wheel, e.g. "Voisins du zero" or "Jeu zero" and we knew all the croupiers and some of them had an unbelievable regular way of running the ball and spinning the wheel and the ball would thus drop in a slightly more predictable area of the wheel - at least when it hit one of the bumpers and would then drop into the wheel. So we waited with our bet until our favourite croupier would throw the ball from a place, where we felt it should land close to the zero and call a zero game.
Naturally that did not always work and we'd have losing streaks of even two weeks where we went home without any money at all, but once a month or so we'd go out with over a hundredfifty euros. On average we did slightly better than expected (400 were admittedly the better months, sometimes it was a little less than three hundred), but we remained ahead even after a long time, so my guess is we were either lucky or the idea of predicting according to the croupiers regularity worked. We had the feeling it worked on two of the ten croupiers the others threw less regular.
Anyway it was definitely more fun than just whitewashing the chips. (One was not allowed to immediately exchange the "lucky" chips one would get for the coupons for money.)
Ah, but there is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_criterion
Let's say I bet black, if it lands red, I lose $100, if it lands black, I win $200, if it lands on zero, I lose $50, and have the opportunity to try again.
18/38 times I lose $100. 18/38 times I win $200. 2/38 times I lose $50, and get to try again.
Without doing the math, I believe that puts the value of the cert around $47.
Here's one: How to deal with the police. Their work is boring and it's not unusual for them to go long stretches of time without being paid. They see you coming up the road-- They're curious and you look interesting. They motion for you to pull over and unless you've managed to get so close that you can plausibly claim you didn't see the baton waving you'd better obey them.
The hack: For goodness sake don't sit their dumbly and wait for them to speak up! If you do they'll have to justify pulling you over. "Document!", and you're screwed. The next thirty minutes are spent going through your papers and your belongings while they look for any pretense to hit you up for a fine/bribe. Yes, it's corrupt, but understand that is the only way of life for them. Empathy and understanding will get you much further than casting judgment.
Be the first to speak. Raise your helmet visor, smile and ask for help of some kind. Even something as simple as, "Skolka kilometer Volgograd?" will do. When they answer, nod, smile, shake their hand and say, "Speciba."
There's a 75% chance you're done and you can go on your way. The remaining 25% involves a longer conversation with limited English (and compliment them on their English no matter what) and pointing out your route on a map and where you're going. They may offer you a drink or to share a meal. Feel free to do so if you have time.
I never once paid a bribe which must be some kind of record.
If you did what I did, you first assumed that kilometer was the same in both languages, then that Volgograd was a proper noun (due to being capitalized) and used the context of 'pointing to a map' to infer that it was a place of some kind. That means that Skolka is a question word due to the question mark at the end of the sentence. From there, it's hardly a stretch to assume that Skolka means something like 'how many', because there aren't many questions involving distance and a place that it would make sense to ask.
The context of smiling and shaking their hand means that "Speciba" is a word expressing appreciation, so you can confidently translate it as something like "thanks."
By the way, people's tendency to misspell things the way they sound is what allows philologists to figure out how proununciation worked in past centuries.
Thank you! Interesting!
When I went out the train, I've put my worried face and I walked hurriedly to the guy on the exit gates (there's always a guy manually opening the door). When I got fairly near, I flashed my travel card asking in a worried voice "What's the quickest way to Terminal A?" Worked like a charm.
He had just moved to New York from a Texas border town in the 70s. Being a starving grad student, he was a white guy living in Spanish Harlem, a pretty sketchy neighborhood at the time.
When walking home at night, he'd avoid the sidewalks and walk in the street so that he was less of a target and could see people coming.
One night he was walking home and saw three tough looking guys notice him and veer off the sidewalk to follow him. They were walking behind him and gaining fast.
Instead of running, he turned, and, in flawless Spanish (learned from his days growing up on the US-Mexico border) greeted them, told them he was lost, and asked them for help finding his way.
He said the guys looked slightly confused before one offered help, and the three guys ended up walking him to his door to make sure he got home safely.
It was his first time at NY, and he didn't know which neighbourhoods were safe, so he went driving his rental car through some shady neighbourhood - and of course some shady looking individuals approached him.
He quickly asked in Spanish for directions, and the guys told him not to come back, as this was an "unsafe neighbourhood" and "their territory".
The structure of the dining hall was this: There were several tables outside the building, and more tables directly inside, and then there was the entrance to the kitchen/buffet area with the food. On the right side of the entrance, there was a cashier who swiped people's cards as they came in. People would go in, get a tray of food, and come out to eat; later, they might bring their tray back in for more food. Those who went back in just passed by the cashier to the left; you didn't have to pay twice to get seconds.
So, here's what I did: Send in a friend, who picks up two trays at once (still stacked; it looks almost the same as a single tray) with an extra plate (again, stacked under another) and comes out. Out at the table, I take his extra tray, put an extra plate on it, maybe scrub a bit of food on it, put on his lanyard, and carry the tray "back" in to get "seconds". No one ever questioned me.
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I also had a computer hardware class in high school that the teacher would often leave for extended periods of time. The other students and I get enough systems running and scrounged a router so that we could play multiplayer Warcraft II during class (which was an old game even back then). We pulled this off for about a month before we got caught. It turned out the teacher really didn't care anyway.
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When I lived in rural Mexico, I used to tape pictures of Jesus to the outside of my packages that I sent home so that the shady people in the mail system wouldn't mess with them.
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My old boss used to add useless revisions every time that I sent him an email saying that part of a project was finished such as "Change the font up to 12px on that navigation please. What? It's already at 12? Can you make it 12 and a half? No, 13px is way too big but I want it bigger than 12 so just fix it OK?"...yeah, that guy. Anyway, I found that if I sent him emails at the end of the day, he would not read them until the following morning when he had the most emails to respond to. Therefore, sending him finished tasks at the end of the day meant fewer useless revisions. I found that outlook has a "delay delivery" setting so as I finished tasks through the day, I would que them to send at about 7:30 at night, when I could be sure that he wasn't working. Lo and behold, the endless revisions went down by about 90% and I got a lot more stuff done.
All of the professors in the science department at my university would tape lists of their student's IDs and their test grades outside their office through out the semester including finals. When looking for classes for the following semester, I just had to look at which professors gave better grades on average and sign up for their classes. The difference was quites staggering.
Some professors consistently failed roughly half of their students while others would have over 3/4 the class with A's consistently. Granted, there were some variable to consider like which course was being taught and the fact that some groups of students are sometimes simply better performers than others. But there was no way I was going to see that kind of data displayed publicly and not take advantage of it.
This does not hold true for large classes where the median grade is an A, however; those are usually genuinely easier.
Oh, it absolutely works these days; it's even easier. My undergraduate institution publishes median grades for each course.
There's a bit of an uproar though because they're going to start printing the median grades on students' transcripts...
I started saving all of my questions for him until these pass-by's. I started giving him so much more stuff, that he began seeing me coming and would jokingly say "Oh, piss off!"
I later heard of another colleague who would answer an additional job request with the question "Okay, what DON'T you want me to do?"
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My last year of college I was low on funds, so at the beginning of each term I would go to the school library and see if they stocked any of the textbooks. I could usually find 1 or 2. I'd check them out and keep them the whole term, paying only a $5 late fee - vs. the $100 textbook cost. (In case you think this is inethical, based on the past checkout records, nobody ever checked these books out)
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Hack I wish I'd thought of: A college buddy spent the first day of summer vacation going into all the bars in downtown Portland and getting info about their happy hours. He had every day of the week mapped out and got dinner and a beer for $1/night.
Cutting the margin down still covers costs considerably, but happy hours are a 'loss leader' to get you in to a bar that would otherwise be less occupied, and perhaps as a signal for those driving by looking for a 'happening' bar, which is usually done toward the end of happy hour.
There might also be motivation to get you somewhat drunk so that you'll stay after happy hour and not realize that you're paying full price for beers.
Happy hour has been illegal in Massachusetts since 1984.
No correct answers were 'C'.
In fact, according to the recent reddit thread, some test designers are encouraged to enforce equal proportions of each option. While stupid, it lowers the threshold to n=3 or so.
I am, however, under the impression that if what you want to do (as here) is to minimize the probability that you get completely shafted by having had the test-setter choose answers complementary to yours, you should choose yours in a way that makes that probability low. Random choices are a very effective way of achieving that. [EDITED to add: not because "a random key fits a random lock" but rather the reverse: with non-negligible probability[1] the test-setter is not choosing at random but in some relatively low-Kolmogorov-complexity way, and you want to keep away from those parts of the outcome space.] Of course, having a really good model of the test-setter's decision process would be even better, but if you had that you'd just use it to ace the test.
[1] I initially missed out the word "probability". I edited it in. Sorry.
If you think he was stupidly wrong to issue the original challenge, downvote that. If you think he was right to issue the original challenge and stupidly wrong to back down when I argued, downvote me since presumably I'm even wronger. But what the hell sense does it make to downvote someone for being prepared to change his mind in the face of disagreement?
Incidentally #1: For an exposition of Eliezer's slightly-unconventional (but, for the avoidance of doubt, neither insane nor desperately ignorant) views on randomized algorithms, and some interesting discussion, see http://lesswrong.com/lw/vp/worse_than_random/ and http://lesswrong.com/lw/vq/the_weighted_majority_algorithm/ .
Incidentally #2: For the multiple-choice test, even better than choosing random answers is to choose random answers and them check them for low Kolmogorov complexity (in so far as that's possible; there are some theorems restricting it) and generate new random answers if the results are bad. You could turn this into a not-at-all-random algorithm that performs even better, given sufficient (vast) computing power: enumerate, and execute, all "cheap enough" computations that produce sets of answers; use this to put some suitable probability distribution on answer-sets (so that answers generated by cheaper computations are more probable, and then (deterministically) choose your answers to minimize the probability of failure. This is the kind of thing Eliezer has in mind when he claims that every randomized algorithm can be beaten by a derandomized one.
http://www.snopes.com/college/exam/oneword.asp
Additionally, both colleges would put any textbook that was for a class on "reserve" so you could only have access to it for several hours at a time, and students DEFINITELY used it. I don't believe that no other student in the class wanted your textbook.
barry.melton@google's mail service.com
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=rLdNJ2i7qtM_KyzyrJ2eu...
I spent like five minutes trying to figure out what a programming language had to do with engineering dynamics.
So a year in, I only managed to find 35 hours of work one week, so I called up HR and got that overhead number to put down for those extra 5 hours. Next day, I found myself in a meeting with my boss and his boss, being put on some form of probationary "hourly" status, working part time until I could get my workload back up to speed. I could work as few as 24 hours per week, and I'd only get paid for the hours I worked.
So naturally things picked up and soon I found myself working 50 and 60 hour weeks again, and amazingly, my new "hourly" status meant I was getting paid for all of them. HR sent up the necessary paperwork to get me back onto "Salaried" mode and I told them I'd get it right back to them.
1 month later, they sent that paperwork again, and I apologized for letting it go on so long.
Next month, my boss delivered it by hand and I promised to "get right on it."
Finally, after 180 days of billing 60 hour weeks and getting paid for all of it, I found myself back in that same room with my boss, his boss, and now his boss, all of whom wanting to know why I hadn't filled in that paperwork.
I laid out the math for them. Silence... Then uncontrolled laughter from all hands. Congratulations, son. But how about we fill out that paperwork right now?
Probationary statuses are generally considered a bad thing in big companies, and are often used as a first step in building a case for termination. As a cog who's hoping to make a career in one of those big companies, you're expected to want to get off that bad status and back into "good worker" mode as quickly as possible. It had never occurred to anybody that they might have an employee who didn't care about internal promotion or their "career" at the company.
So no, the only reason they pushed it was that it was looking bad for them to have employees on the "underperforming" list. The fact that the penalty for underperformance was essentially a raise was something they had never even considered.
As someone who was almost put on a performance plan for coming to work late, you don't ever want to be put on a PP. Basically, my PP would have been documenting my arrival times for 30 days and if a fair number were out of a 5 minute tolerance range, the PP would be used as a next step for being fired. Basically, a PP is something you sign that is a contract on your job. It provides legal immunity to HR to fire you. Fortunately, my boss and his boss convinced me to shape up and realize what a sword of Damacles a PP is. I started arriving early and realized how laughably bad it looked when I arrived at my whatever times. Not only do you stick out but you make your bosses look bad. In the land of corporate conformity, not following the rules leads to bad things.
Having worked help desk jobs, usually as the 'overnight' guy, I was personally the person that was screwed over when people showed up late, as I couldn't leave the desk unmanned.
Regardless, showing up late, when you've agreed to show up at a certain time, is rude, at the very best. Not every employer care, or will even tie you to a schedule, but if you're on one, disregarding it as nonsense doesn't sound like the best way to stay employed.
But that's something we try to avoid as a team, not some corporate policy managers can hide behind to screw you over and/or cover their asses.
I am a developer and coming in late made little difference as I worked as many, or more, hours as everyone else. At the same time I was probably twice as productive as most of my peers. The CTO felt threatened by how easily I did my job so he wanted to bully me a bit so I wouldn't get a big head or something. He didn't expect me to suicide bomb him over it, but from my perspective I couldn't have that thing hanging over me so I handed in notice after giving it a night's sleep.
They were in a bit of trouble over it since I was a key team member and it was a big embarassment for the CTO, I even felt a little bad for him, hopefully it taught him a thing or two.
Just .... wow...
Given how often the bigger companies are so focused on 'bottom line numbers', it's really a bit surprising that no one ever looked at that.
"you're expected to want to get off that bad status and back into "good worker" mode as quickly as possible".
THAT I can totally understand.
UPDATE: wr1472 explains the situation below. Sorry for the confusion.
Btw I learned from a high-up exec at a consulting firm that they make a good chunk of their money from the hours you work above 40. In his words: "that is pure profit"...because like you said, you only get paid for 40 as full-time employee. The consulting firm, though, bills by the hour.
The first meeting was because you dared to utilize their promise and get some time in return.
The second meeting was because their usual course of action in such first meetings backfired on them and you were in the room to get brought back into line (specifically, back onto salary.)
You didn't mention quitting in response or forcing them to give you a raise in acknowledgment of your efforts. Did you?
At least you were able to work the system there for a good six months. The vast majority of people finding themselves in that kind of work situation don't tend to fare nearly as well as you did.
HR took me aside and insisted I put down any hours of any day that I worked more than 8 hours as overtime -- at time and a half -- even if other days were less than 8. Yes, insisted!
Well that got me off to a good start, and ruined me for life! Not only did I not have to work 8 hours every day as long as the total was 40 hours per week, the more irregular my hours were, the more money I made! Now I just can't break that habit.
I doubt Oracle treats their summer interns so well.
Apparently, it's California law that hourly employees can only work 8 hours per day, and anything over 8 hours in a 24 hours period is "overtime."
I'm now at an internship with a software company in New York, where the rules are what I consider "normal": Anything over 40 hours in a week is considered overtime, no matter when it was worked. However, the company has a strict no-overtime policy without (hard-to-get) prior approval.
For me, this meant I spent more of my time working in CA, because I was rewarded, while in NY, I work 9 hour days four days a week, then take off after lunch on Friday for a 2.5 day weekend.
Having built the site (technical cofounder, translated as: free coder) I have a backend to all of the user's email addresses (10,000 or so, having been collected since the time I started working on it).
Soon to be ex-partner is kind of a volatile jerk, and I am by nature a little paranoid, so I sent the list to a couple of friends and family members, in case I needed someone to orchestrate a mailing. Kind of like being in a thriller with smaller stakes.
Anyone else leave a time bomb or easter egg?
TL;DR: Take care of your technical co-founders. Better yet, understand how to code for yourself.
By doing something illegal (like stealing proprietary information) you're severely decreasing your chances things working out well.
Next time they will be settled from the outset :)
Years ago I had a client who promised me thousands of dollars to develop a website. At first he tried to convince me to work in exchange for a percentage of the company, but when I refused he said he would pay me cash.
I built the site but never trusted him to pay me so I included a "delete script" that would erase all the code on every html page of the website when a set of three unique parameters were passed to a specific page of the site in a URL.
When I was nearly finished with the site he suddenly called to tell me he was on a plane to meet investors and needed me to upload the site to his live server "immediately" so he could do a demo in a few hours. I uploaded it just as he asked, and then he seemed to become invisible or unavailable for more than a week. Hmmm ...
After many unsuccessful attempts trying to get him to respond to my calls and emails I finally decided to trigger my delete code. He called within the hour to ask what I might have done to "his" website.
I told him he does not own the website because it was still mine until he paid for it. He claimed that I had agreed to wprk in exchange for a percentage of the company, and I laughed.
Eventually he asked if I had a copy of the website that I could send him if he paid me, and an hour after I said "yes" the full amount appeared in my bank account.
I sent him new copies of the html files (without my delete script) and thankfully I never heard from that dishonest unethical opportunistic client ever again.
Lesson learned: Never trust a programming client to do what he promises, even when it is in writing.
From that point on I have always asked my clients to prepay for my programming labor. Most of them complain at first, but I give them a discount when they prepay, and that's usually enough to convince them to trust me to do what I say I will do -- instead of me trusting them to pay me later.
When they learn that I'm honest and always send a refund when they overpay, they never complain about my payment system again ... but they really appreciate the price break I give them when they prepay.