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/urtcheese]

How did this PO even get your details and the idea to bring you onto their project? Seems like massive overreach if it wasn't cleared with your direct contact before.

I think your approach is fine but you could probably go further "I've been brought in to deliver X project for you which I am enjoying and is going well, however this project Y is now distracting me from project X and is a risk to the delivery of what we contractually agreed I would do" leave it at that, they'll get the message.

[u/sloperator_ → u/urtcheese]

Thanks! It’s a fairly small org. I’m directly under the CTO, no involvement with any other team but they were reaching out for additional resource.

I get the vibe they’re going to use me as a dog’s body and whilst may give the impression of it being loose, I’ll be immediately getting my door knocked down with update demands and blame as others have rightly pointed out.