I was a contractor for Lazlo326 from the end of 2015 till the end of 2022. I am writing this comment, so that other contractors know what to expect and so that the rest of the employees know what relationship Lazlo326 had with me, potentially with other freelancers. I will try to be as objective as possible, although not completely possible due to how it all ended.
Everything started well (2016) and the relationship was fine - I was almost exclusively communicating with Mike Pinkus, today’s CTO. He was very engaged in the POC and gave me the freedom to experiment and develop products from scratch. Everything was pretty decent (except the payments were always late and I had to exchange a bunch of emails just because..) until the end of 2019.
I have to say, I am very grateful for these years. I really had a good time (Mike Pinkus and the rest of a (past?) team). I felt like I was a part of the team. Thank you for that.
Then the relationship began to deteriorate. Even though I struggled to bring something new to the table by investing my own money (10k+) and eventually succeeding, nobody cared even slightly.
Meanwhile, I was repeatedly told I was a part of the family, that my contributions were essential, but the reality was different. There were several talks about team expansion in the form of a local subsidiary since I was working for them for so long on core products, but that never came to fruition. Since communication from the middle of 2020 became impossible (they completely ignored me), I turned to something else.
In the beginning of 2021 we connected again, I was offered to expand the team (Mike Pinkus), with multiple other perks and benefits. I gladly accepted. I founded the company and then things rapidly deteriorated. CEO - Chris Demetree cancelled everything, Mike cut every communication with me and I was offered a contract where the monthly amount was not clearly specified. On top of that payment was tried to be additionally restricted by VIP of Engineering - Russell Jackson who was telling that the budget became constrained (suddenly ??), but at the same time they were hiring on LinkedIn (that was not mentioned to me).
Knowing that I was reluctant to accept such agreement, since the terms changed rapidly with no prior notification. At the end, I wrote an email with all the items that are unacceptable in an attempt to try to normalize the relationship. I never received a reply. That was the end.
I am angry and disappointed that after almost 7 years of loyalty I was giving a lot and wanted the product to succeed - I repeat, I hired freelancers from my own pocket (10k+) for a POC, at the end was discarded like nothing; newcomers came to leading positions and I was pushed away by lies and faulty promises until the last option was to leave after I tried everything else.
I guess that B2B relationships have to be purely transactional regardless of kind words (“part of the family”), strong promises. I guess we are all expandable. I am really sad that everything ended like that - at least I deserved the truth and proper goodbye if nothing else was possible.
Bottom line: ???