75th Tumblelog |
A place for Lanny Heidbreder to write while he's too lazy to finish his own site. |
If you are a software developer, please repeat after me:
I will never promise free stuff to my customers that I am not giving away starting right now.
No, really; you need to say this, over and over, until you believe it. Call it Heidbreder’s Litany if you’d like.
I will never promise free stuff to my customers that I am not giving away starting right now.
I will never promise that a product in early beta will remain free when it hits 1.0.
I will never ever promise that the next major release of my software will be free when that release is more than one week away.
I will never make a promise of any kind to my customers that I am not capable of keeping immediately.
If I make the foolish mistake of promising something to my customers, and I realize later that I am going to have to break it, I will, with great humility, constant self-deprecation, and profuse apology, preannounce that I will someday break the promise several weeks or months before actually breaking it.
Too many companies have made this very basic mistake and lived to deeply regret what happened with their customer relations when they broke their promise. They all had their defenders, who would fling accusations and platitudes at the complaining customers: “Cheapskates!” “Freeloaders who don’t want to pay a nickel for anything!” “Developers have to eat!”
Such defenses come from ignorance in the best cases and deliberate deception in the worst. None of these uproars are rooted in cheapness, in the desire to get everything for free.
The seeds of all such discontent are sown when developers make promises they can’t keep. Then they blossom into revolt when they break their promises with zero warning. Other developers, who have the benefit of witnessing these unfortunate occasions, should acknowledge their true cause and vow to avoid repeating them by making no such promises themselves.
