Andrii Yeeremenko

I and Andriy Yeremenko met here on the freelance platform and decided to work together on an ambitious project to develop an online survey system. We were full of enthusiasm - I saw an interesting technical challenge here, and Andriy, a representative from the client "Active Group," couldn't wait to receive the finished product for his business.

At first, everything was going smoothly. We quickly found a common language, thoroughly discussed the system requirements, and agreed on the work stages, budget, and deadlines. I enthusiastically started working and regularly showed Andriy intermediate results. Andriy was satisfied with what he saw and dutifully fulfilled his part of the agreement in terms of payment for completed stages.

But one day, something unexpected happened - military personnel showed up at my door with a draft notice. The risk of being mobilized to the front forced me to urgently seek ways to defer. In order to have time to handle all the matters, I had to suspend work on the project. Fortunately, Andriy understood the situation and gave me the necessary time to deal with it.

A month passed, and I was able to return to work. But then the first misunderstandings began. It turned out that Andriy expected to see some features that were not in the initial technical task. In particular, he was not satisfied with the implementation of the financial module. I insisted that I had done everything that was agreed upon and even more, as Andriy and I had a discussion about future functionality, and developing additional functionality at this stage requires separate discussion and is not included in the current budget.

Tensions gradually escalated. Andriy started demanding access to the source code for some ephemeral "verification," although according to the agreement, the code was supposed to be transferred only after the project was fully completed and paid for. Additionally, the working test server demonstrated the full range of completed work for the current iteration. I refused, suspecting that Andriy wanted to get an almost finished product without payment and pass it on for further development to another contractor. Trust between us was rapidly eroding.

Finally, I couldn't take it anymore and filed for arbitration, hoping that an independent arbitrator could resolve the situation. But then a new problem arose - the arbitration process dragged on for weeks, and during the proceedings, strange things started happening around me, culminating in the disappearance of my hard drive, which led me to contact law enforcement authorities. As a result, Andriy, disappointed by the lack of progress and overall saddened by the disappearance of my hard drive, announced that he had lost interest in the project due to all these delays. He demanded to close the project and refund the payments made.

Thus, due to unclear requirements, lack of communication and trust, as well as a series of coincidences, the promising project never came to fruition. This story vividly illustrates how important it is not only to be able to agree on the shores but also to maintain mutual understanding, flexibility, and trust despite all the trials and force majeure events that each of us faces in life.

I hope that we will draw the right conclusions from this experience and be able to approach cooperation on new projects more thoughtfully and professionally in the future.