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Ask HN: How to do freelance work that is reclaimable?

3 points by leowoo91 ↗ HN
Most of the projects I see, their coding depends on the outsourced company it started. I would like go into consultancy business but when things go side ways and it comes time to leave my customer, I would want them to remain happy.

Here, I wonder if how other companies are willing to take over the existing code? What should I do best to make transition easier for the project itself for encouragement of new team taking over?

Thank you for thoughts.

3 comments

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gregjor
Write clean, simple code. Don’t over-engineer. Use version control. Document design decisions, dependencies that aren’t obvious, and installation/build instructions, and keep those current. Did I mention USE VERSION CONTROL?

My freelance business is taking over legacy software when the original developers quit, get fired, stop answering emails.

leowoo91
I like your points, I assume I will do all. "Document design decisions" is new for me, I will look for standards for that.
axelrosen
I think to some degree you have to accept the disposable nature of consulting. If you want to be responsible for satisfaction years down the road, you could do a product-consulting hybrid, where you do quite a lot of customer-specific dev upfront but as part of a bigger product.

Otherwise you really need to make sure the customer cares about it as much as you do. And many simply don't.