Re: The Best Advice May Be Right in Front of You

Re: The Best Advice May Be Right in Front of You

By: Peter Egan

The following is a response to an article I came across on Medium. The article was entitled "The best advice might be right in front of you," and was written by a guest contributor named Ammar Shallel, who works for a public relations firm called Eleven Eleven PR.

The article was about obtaining knowledge, and the point the author was trying to make is that sometimes people that are easily accessible possess the knowledge one seeks, when the person seeking the knowledge may be under the impression that getting a hold of the information seems unrealistic and unreasonably difficult.

Because this post began as a comment, it is written in the first-person and directed toward Ammar and/or anyone else who happens to read his article.

My response to the article linked to above is as follows:

Mr. Shallel, I'd like to first commend you on this excellent blog. For the record I agree with the general point.

Unfortunately, sometimes this method can backfire…

I’m in the process of developing a website for a business I hope to launch within the next few weeks. I had a few questions about which direction would best meet my goals. I simply wanted to know if WordPress had any plug-ins that could do what I needed, if a similar one could be modified and what I should expect to pay for the work.

So I posted my questions on the “WP Plug-Ins” help forum. I did this deliberately. I did NOT want it going on the “Jobs” forum, where I would be inundated with emails, resumes, portfolios and offers without ever receiving a satisfactory answer to my question due to the inherent conflict of interest between myself (who is seeking to pay market value for the minimum amount of work necessary) and WordPress developers, who’s prerogative is to earn as much money as possible. This can be easy to do when the client doesn’t know the extent or difficulty of the work required.

Well, a “volunteer admin” on a power trip moved my post from its original location to the jobs section, and within 24 hours I had received no less than 1,500 emails. There were three total out of those 1,500 that even bothered to make an attempt to help me learn what I need and what I should pay for it.

I had to delete the email address, as the volume had become unmanageable as a result.

Point being is that while yes, in most cases the answers a person seeks are closer than he or she may realize. However, this is not always the case, and sometimes a task that should have taken an hour tops is drawn out for three days.

I was so frustrated with her after explaining my rationale and asking her to just delete it rather than move it to the jobs forum (she moved it anyway against my wishes) that I wrote a blog about it to vent.

The post is here: http://peteregan.net/advice-wordpress-programmer-plugin-developer/