This is truth.
Pretending to be what we are not, able to do what we cannot, is not a game. The very least of all the consequences are that we’ll have to one day admit we lied. Often because the pretence can escalate far beyond our control both quickly and quite randomly.
Tobias van Schneider admitted, very honestly, to a very common practice — that of lying about his skills in order to get a job. Or put another way, taking money from people on the basis of fraudulent claims. Just because it is common does not change the fact that this is, by any and every definition possible, Fraud, a serious crime.
Pretence for money and personal gain.
This piece is not to single out Tobias, at all, but rather to talk about the other side of this far too common issue. This is an article about the general issues of people pretending a level of professionalism, knowledge, or ability that they do not have at the time of taking the money.
However earnest their intentions to deliver what is promised, the fact is that they are gambling with other people’s money, without their knowledge or consent. Gambling that they can learn the skills in the time to the level agreed. That’s the most positive possible light this fraud can be viewed in.
I spend a considerable part of my career fixing the damage done by designers and developers who were not, really, quite up to professional standard. I am not cheap, and so that is quite a cost to the people who hired unqualified and sometimes unskilled people.
It is one thing to pay the costs for a specialist like myself to take things above and beyond the standard level, but quite another when additional hours or days of my costly time are spent simply fixing issues that should never have been there at all from a ‘professional’ designer or developer.
My time is supposed to be spent using the more abstract skills in psychology, user behaviour, and how search engines work, to turn a good site into something that outperforms its rivals in every business sense. Not spent on fixing issues with CSS, Javascript, cross-browser support, etc.
I am very honest about my costs, and frequently encourage clients to have simpler tasks done by less expensive specialists. However, and rather sadly, upon learning that they’ve been deceived before, many of those clients may now be unwilling to risk the same again, and so insist that someone they trust do the job — even at my hourly rates.
So, that is just one of many costs that developers who overestimate their talents, or flat-out pretend to a professional standard they don’t even comprehend, let alone meet, often conveniently ignore.
The fact that many websites are actually under-performing to the level paid for — that someone without the experience they pretend not only doesn’t know the skills, but doesn’t even know all of the skills they don’t know, and so cannot possibly come to the true standard — are so obvious that I won’t go into those.
We know the potential costs to the business or individual defrauded. However much some might try to deny them.
What of the costs to the fraudulent developer though?
To begin with, this is the very worst type of crime in many ways. Because it specifically targets those rare, nice people who were prepared to give a developer a break without having a long list of references, knowing your background, etc. The victims are those being the nicest to you, and the least deserving of such fraud.
Then, look at what I mentioned above. When (and it is always when, not if) the client discovers he was taken in and fooled, that client becomes less trusting of all others in future. Believe me, when a client is prepared to pay my rates just to fix very minor issues that any basically competent junior web developer could do just as well, then this is a huge sign about issues of trust.
This means that over time, businesses become less trusting, and more likely to pay far more to go with a reputable agency in future. This pollutes your own future market as a junior freelancer, as surely as defecating where you eat. But not just yours, also the future generations of freelancers and smaller design businesses. The world your children will one day have to go out and make a living in will have far less opportunities and trust.
But here’s the biggest point of all.
You almost certainly didn’t need to lie at all.
When I started out as a web designer myself back in the ’90s, I told people exactly what my level of experience and expertise was. I built sites first for myself to learn how sites went together, what worked and what didn’t. Then friends asked me to build sites for them, and their businesses. Then friends of friends… No pretence ever needed.
It wasn’t long before people were calling me to say “Hello, you don’t know me, but [insert random friend’s name here] told me what you’d done for them and I wondered if you might do the same for me?”
When I started to branch out into specifically the promotion and marketing side, I again was completely honest.
Client: “I love the site, and our customers have been complimenting it … but where are all these millions of people we heard were online?”
Me: “I don’t know. But I can try to find out, and if I learn anything useful I’ll charge you to apply it.”
This never got turned down, and more importantly, the client learned to trust me. I never pretended to knowledge I didn’t have, and they could see it. Instead they saw someone who was always prepared to go beyond what had been agreed before. That’s a positive you can’t buy.
Honestly, you would often actually be better off sometimes pretending not to know something that you do so you can be seen to admit your limitations, than to pretend to knowledge you don’t have. “I don’t know” is such a rare admission in business that it literally shines with honesty. Making it “I don’t know, but I will find out for you” is pure win.
We all have to learn our skills, and to earn our knowledge and experience. In my early years, right through to today, I spend just as many hours on research, learning new things, trying out techniques to gain additional experience, as I spend on paid work.
Over the years, clients have often asked me to try something experimental on their behalf, because that is normal for business. Why do you think we have split testing in the first place? You don’t ever need to lie and pretend to know all the answers, to have all the knowledge. That’s just your inexperience and unprofessional background showing.
What you do need to do is have faith in others. To be honest with them and so expect honesty in return.
Because without that, you are not just committing an actual crime of fraud. You are setting yourself up as the perfect mark for every confidence trick out there.
