I’d also rather not be tech support for everyone. I already get a lot of tech-supporty calls about things I wasn’t hired to do and aren’t my area of expertise. God forbid anyone ever think you’re “good at computers.”

I got into a freelance UI art job for an iPhone app for HostGator and did not realize until a few handfuls of hours into it that I was effectively subcontracting beneath a coder who was making the app itself. The idea was that he would get paid and then pay me (which suited HostGator Owner just fine, as we’ll see). The owner of HostGator, who the coder was reporting to directly, was apparently very difficult to please and was refusing to pay the coder any payments (I have no way of knowing the coder’s quality, admittedly) — the HostGator owner did, however, really like my work and offered me a full time job at HostGator in Texas plus moving expenses. It was flattering, but I wasn’t interested in Texas.

In the end, Freelance Coder guy had to beg HostGator Owner to get paid for part of the job to make rent and I never got paid at all. Awkward all around – both Freelance Coder and I were naive not to demand deposits and contracts in writing (nor did we sign NDAs, so hey!). It’s easy to get screwed when layers of business and bureaucracy are involved, so a freelancer absolutely needs to get a contract when dealing with a business. (And HostGator Owner should have paid me if he liked my work so much!)

In the end, I won’t make that mistake again (actually I did make it again, but that’s another story; GET A DEPOSIT AND CONTRACT) – and I don’t plan on becoming a customer of HostGator.