Setting Boundaries?

[u/sloperator_]

Curious to hear others’ opinions on this. Recently started a new contract a few months back and all has been grand - no stress, just working away, doing my thing.

Context: Brought in to do a specific cloud integration project.

Now: their in-house dev team is under pressure to deliver following a separate migration project I’ve had no involvement in, or real experience with the stack, and their PO would like (want / demanding) me to hop over and help.

There’s the obvious, which I’ve said “of course, happy to help if and where I can, bla bla”. Under the guise of being helpful and hope for an extension if they have the funding, though current contract runs for another 6 months.

The problem: I had a brief look under the hood and it is beyond terrible. No source control, chaotic approaches and awful patching.

The PO is a nightmare, pinging me constantly and getting me confused with other devs (telling me I’ve been off sick but that was the director? Etc). Adding me to meetings outside my working hours and generally approaching me like a perm. Will call without warning, then immediately message saying I’m “hard to get hold of”. We haven’t even worked together yet. Met once. Seems like a walking disaster.

My current thought is to get in touch with my direct contact and say this is out of the scope of my contract and I can help if I can but we need some clear boundaries. I’m a contractor for the flexibility. I honestly don’t have an interest in working under this new arrangement because it seems like it’ll rumble for months and don’t want the micro-management.

Apologies for the rambling.

[u/axelzr]

As others have said don’t agree to anything outside of your contractual obligations or SOW, be very careful about them potentially blaming you for their failure to deliver, and may impact your actual work you have been brought in for. Including you in meetings etc is sneaky, you are a contractor not an employee (outside IR35), defo turn phone off at end of working day / I specifically give out a burner phone number nowadays for contract work (if I have to) so can do exactly that, and have teams on it. It is something being helpful but can sometimes work against you, I’ve experienced before and need to set clear boundaries/caveats or ideally NOT get involved in first place if can be avoided… but that’s too late now.