Sergey and the investment project

When a project is almost beyond saving, someone usually says, "I will handle it." In our case, that person was Sergey.

Every town has its legends

Every team has stories that can only be filed under "failure." They are stressful while they happen, but with time they turn into good memories. Someone says, "Do you remember...?" on a team call, and a minute later everyone is laughing.

We decided to share a few of our own failures. You may laugh with us, or perhaps recognise your team in them.

A staffing problem

One of our services is building websites on Tilda. It is not our flagship line of work, but we like the platform and use it when it makes more sense than custom development.

Only one person on the team handled those projects: Ivan, a developer from Ukraine. He was a great specialist and a kind man. In four years together we had already been through enough to settle into a comfortable, predictable working relationship. It seemed that nothing from the outside could disturb it.

This happened two months after the war began in 2022. Part of the team was in the middle of relocating, but that did not stop us from accepting new leads on the run.

Vanya was in shock at the f#cking nightmare outside his window and asked to pause all work with the team. It was not as though we had a choice, and none of us really knew the right way to behave. We supported the decision, almost apologetically, and agreed not to bother one another for a while. We would see how things developed and resume working together later. We never did.

That left us with a staffing problem. It also turned out that we had forgotten how to hire people. I knew about staff turnover and HR departments mostly from YouTube. We needed a specialist "yesterday" because several projects were already waiting.

Challenge accepted. We gathered for an evening planning meeting. A few experts repeated advice from other experts about the correct way to hire a team member. Every elaborate method shattered the moment I reminded everyone that we needed a person immediately. In the middle of the noise someone shouted, "Freelance!" Someone else replied, "Shut up," then added, "Sorry, that slipped out." Historically, our relationship with freelance marketplaces had been tense. They felt like a relic from a past in which clients wanted to enslave contractors and the contractors did not object very much. In our memory, freelance meant trouble. But the situation demanded action.

The next day, Elizaveta joined the team. We chose her by portfolio, put her through a very compressed boot camp and dropped her straight into the project.

Trouble arrived from exactly where we expected it

The project did not go well for Liza. To be fair, it did not go well for the client either. He treated everyone around him with contempt and was terrible at setting tasks. Our suggestions were rejected, and joint calls brought us no closer to finishing the project.

One evening we found ourselves with nothing left except the consequences. We had blown every deadline trying to please the client and had one night before the final presentation. I decided to "close the studio," take a loss on the project and bring in a professional designer. He would create and approve a proper layout before the build. Until then, the site had been assembled directly in Tilda to satisfy the original timing and budget.

At the evening meeting we began looking for the staff designer who could play Superman. The search took several seconds because everyone already knew who our Superman was. All that remained was to tell him to get coffee quickly because he had a sleepless night ahead.

We called Sergey, the designer, together with the project and sales managers. We explained every atom of the situation. We stressed that we were a team and shared responsibility, even if he had never seen the project before. We showed him the new designer's work and explained exactly what needed to be corrected. Sergey asked a few questions that did not seem especially important and announced that he would save the city. We had never doubted it.

Sergey is a man with an active approach to life. He is interested not only in design but in life in general. Team spirit and rescuing people are central to his character. He does not always understand whom he is rescuing, or, more importantly, how.

We wished Sergey a good night and went calmly to bed, thinking, "What a wonderful team we have. Look how quickly we solve unusual problems."

In the morning I was in no hurry to turn on the computer because I knew the city was under reliable protection. I made Turkish coffee, held a short team call and leisurely started my workstation. Sergey was not online yet. Fair enough. The man had worked all night; let him sleep. The presentation was still three hours away.

Thirty minutes before the presentation, we finally had to wake Sergey with a phone call. The layout arrived. He kindly sent the source file in the messenger and waited for praise. I opened it, smiled, and we had a short conversation that woke me up better than any coffee:

Artem Korovay, 13 April 2022
Hi! Does it not bother you that the project is about investments, while you have designed a video-production website for them? :)

Sergey Belov, 13 April 2022
F#ck.

Artem Korovay, 13 April 2022
All right. We will try telling them they should change industries.

The word "f#ck" worried me a little, but I was sure that a half-awake Sergey had simply clicked the wrong project on his desktop. I waited for a second attempt. Five seconds passed, and another thought arrived: where were the three laughing brackets after the expletive? Where was "Sorry, wrong file"?

After five minutes of nervous waiting, I asked him directly. Sergey was not joking. He had saved the wrong city.

I still do not know how this failure happened. Ten minutes later we were already inventing an explanation for the client in which not only had everyone fallen ill, everyone had died. We would be resurrected very soon and then make the investment website.

We eventually finished the project under the client's threatening gaze. We charged nothing and moved everything to his hosting for free. I did take a loss, but not as a hero. More as an asshole. We received a public review. It was not especially fierce, but you could feel where the swear words wanted to be. The platform's moderation would not have published it otherwise, and the client clearly knew that.

This was not Sergey's first failure and he will appear in the blog again. We did not love him any less afterwards. We simply stopped asking him to work through the night.

The lesson

Even when a project looks simple, check the brief one more time and make sure the team understands the service it is delivering. Know how the likely problems can be corrected before they happen. Poor preparation can turn an already difficult project into a loss for everyone involved.