Short story here (skip to the end to see the important moral of it all).
Just two days back I had a phone call from a very friendly lady. She has a website and flash application that was in need of help. She mentioned she had a particular (well known) Flash developer working on it and needed a replacement because he had to go to another job. We got talking about what it was a bit and how things were coming along and why things were going wrong and what she may be able to do about it.
Now, some people charge money for any type of consultation but I don't. I'll talk for a good amount of time until I have a comprehensive understanding of what a project is about, whether it's in the middle or not started. Doesn't matter. So I spent about 45 minutes talking to this person.
All in all she was reasonably responsive to my questions and thoughts and provided a decent amount of information for me to ponder on as we got off the phone with the idea of meeting with the developer as well in our next meeting. Which would be the next day (yesterday).
So she calls up and unfortunately she is "out of town" and doesn't have her 3 way calling ability. So in the end the other developer isn't available to talk. So we talk a bit more. I had access to some files that she had expected me to look over. We're talking all of the dev files for the whole project that had supposedly been in development for 4 months. I was like.. you want me to look over all of them? "Let me know what you think" she says. I asked how many issues were remaining and how has testing come along for bugs etc. She says that she doesn't really know, and that there hasn't been any testing going on.
We're talking about an experienced developer here.. something weird is going on here.
She also blows out the question of whether or not I'm a "traditional" developer or an object oriented developer. Wha?? Where did she get this jargon from? My guess is that she's been chatting away with others and getting their opinions on the project and the code. I answered the question but then I asked her what that meant to her. She said she didn't really know.
Without going into every point of what she said and how it didn't add up, by this point I was having so many alarm bells going off I could barely hear myself think. So I ask a few more questions like what's the budget and when do you need it done by (which we still have no idea of what the end goal is) and she says 10 grand a month. Which begs the question... who walks away from 10 grand a month? Any experienced developer can answer that question I'm sure.
So with nothing adding up anymore I thought I'd get a hold of the developer myself. He's a smart cookie and says that I need to go through the client. Good for him. I try that and she stonewalls me. No, you can't talk to him without me around.
That does it. While it all makes sense, I'm not debating the idea of not being able to talk to him, the budget, the project itself, the questions on the type of developer I would be, just about everything about this person is sending my Spidey senses through the roof. I've had this happen very very few times in my work life and really only once in my personal life. I've absolutely regretted not listening to it every time. There is definitely something to be said for instincts and recognizing inconsistencies in a story that while they are small and could possibly be insignificant, are really big problems hidden beneath the surface.
So, that does it (as I said above), and I called her on her story. I immediately got exactly what I expected. "Thanks for talking with me, I don't think we're a fit. Goodbye". Short and sweet. That's good.
If you're questioning things above and saying "you're a bit of a paranoid aren't you?" or something like that, be rest assured that I was right. I can't say how but you'll have to trust me on this one.
Which brings me to the moral of the story: When your brain is telling you that things are OK and you're reading into something too much but your instincts are telling you to run for the hills, run for the hills. Some people are carrot danglers, they are only looking to get something for free, swindle something out of you (whether it's just ideas or actual product) and deceive for their own personal benefit. I've walked away from this one with a clear conscience and hope this short story helps any that may be questioning themselves and what to do in a particular situation. What we had here was a client offering a silly amount of money that somebody else was walking away from (or so she says, none of the above information has been verified by another person involved with the project), while at the same time doing her best to get as much information about the code, developer, project, ideas as possible.