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[Craig Stern]

Question: how long is it normal for contract artists/programmers/writers/etc. to go without responding to emails?

As someone who depends upon contractors for completion of my games, this kind of behavior makes me incredibly nervous. It puts me in the awkward position of having to blindly guess whether they're still working on their part of the game. I end up having to make a choice: do I (a) risk losing valuable development time by just assuming that they're still plowing ahead silently, or (b) do I risk losing money by hiring a replacement under the assumption that they've abandoned the project?

Despite the fact that it puts me in a terrible position, I've found that contractors do this a lot. So I'm putting this question out to TIGS to answer: what the hell? And more specifically: how long is it normal or acceptable for a contractor to go without writing you back after you ask them for the current status of their work?

[TeeGee]

I believe in a simple rule of thumb: don't work with people who do things like that.

It's obvious that sometimes life gets in the way of things, and accidents happen occasionally. But if it's regular for a person to have problems with communicating, just find someone else. If someone can't find the time to even answer your emails, they can't be trusted to do any more complex tasks on time.
Being busy is no excuse too. I'm swamped with loads of things most of the time, but it's not like I can't find those 5 minutes to at least fire a quick reply. Even if it's: "Got it, will get to you next week". I don't know why I wouldn't want to keep my co-workers to the same standards, it's not like it's a big deal anyway.

The benefit of replacing problematic team members is not only in the short-term stress release, but also in creating a base of people you know you can trust in the future. One of the reasons I was able to go full time indie, is that I really trust my team members. We go a long way back, and they never failed me. Which doesn't mean that they never were late with something, or didn't disappear from the internet for a month. But I always knew it beforehand, and could always catch them by phone or otherwise if necessary. I know that they treat is as seriously as I do, that we have good understanding, and that I can take the risk of going indie, without having to worry that someone will suddenly disappear and kill the project.

[Dacke]

Perhaps you should write contracts with your contractors?

For example, agreeing on milestones and compensation relating to the completion of them.

[TeeGee]

From my experience, if someone doesn't want to take their job seriously, no contract will help. Even if they are legally bound to do the job, they'll do a shitty job, which you will have to replace later anyway.

[Dacke]

I've been bad at contacting people quite a few times. I used to take on too much work. The shame of being unable to complete the work prevented me from getting in touch and communicating my problems. While I didn't ignore emails sent to me, I can still understand why someone wouldn't reply. The thought "I'll just work twice as hard and then reply" is too tempting sometimes. For me, it was a combination of incompetence and taking work too seriously. I was never that I didn't take it seriously.
 
When I was talking about contracts, I was mostly thinking of using them as a schedule. So that both parties know when a specific part of the work should be done. That way, if you can't get in touch with the contractor at the agreed upon time, you know that you can move on. The contract would make sure that you wouldn't have to pay the contractor if they're out of contact, letting you hire a new one for the job.

[TeeGee]

I've been bad at contacting people quite a few times. I used to take on too much work. The shame of being unable to complete the work prevented me from getting in touch and communicating my problems. While I didn't ignore emails sent to me, I can still understand why someone wouldn't reply. The thought "I'll just work twice as hard and then reply" is too tempting sometimes. For me, it was a combination of incompetence and taking work too seriously. I was never that I didn't take it seriously.

I'm sorry, but none of this matters to the employer, even if they are your friend in real life. Your personal reasons don't change the fact that the job is not being done, and the lead doesn't even know what's going on. A professional should be able to know his or her limits and when to stop accepting commissions. By accepting a task you can't really complete, your are not only coming off as unprofessional, but also risk the death of someone's beloved (or just important, if it's a job) project.

Not contacting the lead is the worst thing to do in such situation. Even simple: "I'm going to be late by a week, sorry" at least gives a chance to re-schedule the project or hire additional help, before it's too late. The longer you wait before notifying your employer about your failure, the harder it gets. Eventually you end up doing nothing, the project either gets canned or goes over budget/schedule to replace you, you are too ashamed to contact them again, they give you bad PR among their peers, and everyone loses.

When I was talking about contracts, I was mostly thinking of using them as a schedule.

I assumed deadlines and schedule are granted for any more serious project.

[Dacke]

I know that I didn't act correctly back then. That was the point of my story. I wanted to explain that it had nothing to do with me not "taking the job seriously". I shared something I am deeply ashamed of, in the hopes that it may helpful knowledge for someone who works with inexperienced contractors. A good idea might be to talk about such insecurities at the start of the project and make sure to keep regular contact.

I have no experience of how "more serious projects" work. But the way Craig Stern is talking about his problems, it doesn't sound like he has established with his contractors what will happen on schedule-misses combined with lack of contact. A schedule (and an agreement that no payment will have to be made on schedule failure) should solve some of the described problems.

[TeeGee]

I have no experience of how "more serious projects" work. But the way Craig Stern is talking about his problems, it doesn't sound like he has established with his contractors what will happen on schedule-misses combined with lack of contact. A schedule (and an agreement that no payment will have to be made on schedule failure) should solve some of the described problems.

I agree. I automatically took it for granted that there were schedules and deadlines set, but if not, it's definitely the best first step in getting more control over the project's flow.

[hanako]

Question: how long is it normal for contract artists/programmers/writers/etc. to go without responding to emails?

In my experience, if you're talking to someone who isn't doing this as their fulltime job, it's not that unusual for them to sometimes take a few days to respond. However, if you send a followup email (along the lines of 'Trying to verify that you got this') and they still don't answer within a day, you probably do want to look for someone else to work with.

Even if the first person eventually gets back to you with everything they promised, they're going to make your life hell all the way from chasing them with pitchforks trying to get anything out of them while they invent excuse after excuse. Throwing good money (and time) after bad!

[Booger]

Perhaps you should write contracts with your contractors?

For example, agreeing on milestones and compensation relating to the completion of them.

Lol, my worst contractor was the one who sent me a contract with everything minutely itemized.

[SundownKid]

There's no excuse for responding super late. There are tons of programs and cellphones that let you be alerted of your email and/or check it. If you take more than 24 hours to respond, you are obviously ignoring the message (unless you're on vacation, in which case you should send a message alerting the boss of the situation). You would respond promptly to a regular job, so why not to a contractor? The problem is that most "freelancers" simply accept the job and abandon it because they either took on too much work, or it was too difficult.

[Hima]

Yeah, I agree with no excuse for responding super late in this day of ages. For me, I have to hear something from contractor once a week. It can be just an email saying hi or whatever. Just to keep in touch and let me know that you're alive. If they don't write me, I write them.

Have you tried using some project management app that might help you with this? I'm using it and it's pretty good so far.

www.cohuman.com

You an assign task and each task is like a thread in a forum that people who are working on it can comment on a task. It really helps my team to get motivated and knowing what to do next.

[moi]

If the contractor goes silent that generally means he won't finsih the job.
Either he has other problems or he lost motivation or he bit more that he could chew.

[Craig Stern]

But the way Craig Stern is talking about his problems, it doesn't sound like he has established with his contractors what will happen on schedule-misses combined with lack of contact. A schedule (and an agreement that no payment will have to be made on schedule failure) should solve some of the described problems.

To the contrary: I have all contractors sign a detailed agreement with a clause stating that they automatically repudiate the contract if they take more than 7 days to get back to me after I request an update on their progress. I've also established deadlines for the completion of specific tasks, and set things up so they receive progress payments only after completion of a certain chunk of the work.

The only good thing I can say about it is that that last bit has saved my butt three times in a row now, with flaky artists vanishing off the face of the earth before they have a chance to do so with my money.

[Evan Balster]

Damn.  All this makes me feel less bad about underestimating the time my present (first) contract job was going to take me.  >_>

I keep in frequent contact, even when I'm not happy with my progress.  If a project started to look unfinishable and one had been naïve in choosing it, though, I could see where one might go silent out of depression.

[bateleur]

I wouldn't wait more than a few days before sending a (friendly) followup email requesting a prompt reply. That said, you're not necessarily doomed - your contractor might just be on holiday for a week and has forgotten to tell you.

Also I've occasionally worked with people who have terrible email habits. For example, one guy literally stopped checking his email at once point because he had "too much stuff" in his inbox and didn't have time to go through it all!

[Miguelito]

Okay Sundownkid, 24 hours is quite rash - there's no general rule when you have to respond to an e-mail. That's one of the things you should clear from the beginning with your artists.

Generally, I'm not sure contracts will help a lot - for smaller types of work, I imagine it's a bit of a nuisance and not worth the trouble to many. Then there's the issue of finding a waterproof agreement for any cases, say international cooperations.
As has been said, a contract does not guarantee good results, even if that's exactly the point of it.

So if you ask me, the sad and horrible truth is that you should ideally try smaller batches and smaller payment increments. Also, try to structure the work in a way that enables you to use as many assets as possible - i.e. by splitting stuff into icons/sprites/characters, without accepting mixed submissions. If you need to go more detailed, then separate by human/monster, by race etc. - try to find a logical way to eliminate risk.

 I know it's possibly not helping at this point and I'm just spewing generalities, but looking at your project I'm a bit sad that you have to deal with this kind of stuff.

 Also, personally I'd never sign contracts with ridiculous stipulations like get-back-to-me time limits. They might sound like a fun addition, but they just end up looking patronizing and suffocating, and you should ideally have some notable monetary offering to back that up. And even then...

[Craig Stern]

Hey Miguelito, I'm sad about having to deal with it too. Believe me, I don't think there's anything "fun" about having to put a get-back-to-me time limit clause into a contract.

[increpare]

Sorry to hear you're having trouble with that, man. 

Hug. 

Nothin' else to say.

[Zaphos]

Also, personally I'd never sign contracts with ridiculous stipulations like get-back-to-me time limits. They might sound like a fun addition, but they just end up looking patronizing and suffocating, and you should ideally have some notable monetary offering to back that up. And even then...

Why is a 'get-back-to-me time limit' a 'ridiculous stipulation'?  It's not patronizing to cover eventualities that do frequently happen in practice.  And the time limit of 7 days Craig mentioned is certainly not "suffocating" ... it sounds pretty reasonable to me.