Client Retention – The Wrong Way

Don’t do this

A little story time: A couple of years ago, I worked on a project where I wrote what I thought was solid code. Fast forward to recently—I got contacted by the same contractor who I hadn’t heard from in a while. They asked me to come back and do some updates. I was feeling good, sent them a proposal (maybe with a slightly high budget 😅), and didn’t hear anything for about a week.

Then, they came back with a new offer, and I decided to take it. When I finally started working on the project again, I noticed something strange: the code had been changed. Turns out, after my initial proposal, they hired another engineer to handle it. And here’s the kicker—they couldn’t fix it either! 😂

So, now I’m staring at this code I wrote two years ago, trying to figure out what past-me was even thinking. It’s both hilarious and humbling to realize that even I’m struggling to make sense of my own work from back then.

The moral of the story? Write code your future self (or the next dev) can actually understand. Clean code isn’t just a best practice—it’s a lifesaver when you’re knee-deep in a project you thought you left behind!

Has anyone else had a project come back to haunt them? Let’s hear your coding horror stories! #CodingFails #DevLife #ThrowbackCode #LessonsLearned