Re: freelance sysadmining - other thread went bonkers
On Sat, Nov 15, 2003 at 12:38:22AM +0100, Arnt Karlsen wrote:
> ..and, learn to say "no way!". An honest "_No!_" up front, earns you
> respect for your spine and integrity. Everything else, you can learn.
I'll drink to that; I've done independent small-time contracting before,
and I'll likely be doing it again come next June. The one thing that
was really hard to learn to do was to let certain clients go on their
merry way, because I knew that having their business would be more pain
than profit.
> > If the customer *insisted* on (*gag*) RH or Mandrake or something, I
> > would definitely charge extra.
As would I, and that's if I'd even keep them as a customer. RedHat and
Mandrake are passive PITAs to support, and you have to keep in mind that
one of your cost-saving 'value-added' factors is all of that nifty
automation handled by the Debian maintainers. Doubly so with the whole
Fedora fiasco (which is one of the reasons why I am no longer a RHAT
shareholder).
Something you might want to consider doing, if you do any custom
software coding for your customers, is to offer them Debianized packages
from your own small apt repository. That way, you can easily distribute
software updates and sources to your clients in a consistent fashion.
--
Don Werve <donw@examen.com> (Unix System Administrator)
Yorn desh born, der ritt de gitt der gue,
Orn desh, dee born desh, de umn bork! bork! bork!
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