Developers and vendors

Negotiating from a technical position

The hardest conversations a non-technical owner has are with technical people. Not because anyone is dishonest, but because you cannot check the claim being made.

See the three levels

All areas

Three levels from $500/mo

How deep I go is your decision

Level of involvement

Founder Technical Advisor $500
Technical Development Lead $1,500
Vibe Coding $3,000

Hands-on work, top level only

Servers
CI/CD
Staging
Production delivery
Git
Technical documentation

On the advisory and leadership levels I analyze, decide and review. I do not set up infrastructure and I do not write the product code.

What this covers

The conversations that cost the most

Proposals and estimates

What it would fix, what it quietly does not include, and whether the number is a plan or a guess.

Hiring and interviewing

Questions built from your real system, and a way to read the answers without being able to write the code yourself.

Disagreements

When you are told something is impossible, or necessary, or urgent, and you have no way to tell which.

Handover and exit

What you need to get back from someone who is leaving, and how to check that you actually got it.

How it goes

You stay the decision maker

You forward what you received

The proposal, the estimate, the message, the argument. Whatever form it arrived in.
I tell you what it actually says

Including the parts that are reasonable, because a second opinion that always says no is worth nothing.
You get the questions to ask back

Specific, answerable, and hard to deflect. Usually more useful than a verdict.
I can talk to them directly

From the leadership level upwards, if you would rather the technical conversation did not go through you.

What this is and is not

This is not

A legal opinion on your contract

A way to get a vendor to lower a price by intimidation

A replacement for the developer you are assessing

This is

A technical read of what you were told

The questions you would ask if you knew the field

A second opinion with no stake in the outcome

Someone technical on your side of the table

Start with the area that worries you most

Pick the level of involvement that fits, describe your product, and we begin there.

Choose a level