Stealth Client Request

Check out this email we received from a “potential client” (wink, wink). As soon as I read this it reminded me of Alex Muse’s blog post, Avoid Undue Diligence like the Plague. The first thing that really makes me laugh is that Eddy can’t even tell me the name of the company he is asking Squeejee to work for. The last time I entered into negotiations with a secret company I ended up mopping alien slime from floors and scooping poop from a talking dog (I later found out the name of the company was M.I.B.). All kidding aside, why would you ever offer up any details about your business to someone who doesn’t even trust you enough to tell you their name? You can read my response to Eddy below.

From: Eddy XXX <eddy.xxx@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 8:07 AM
Subject: Ruby on Rails Developer Requirement
To: wynn@praexis.com

I’m a Quality Services Manager of a San Fransico Bay based Email
Campaign Product Inc. and I am try to gather information that will
support our offshore Development decision. Our privacy policy does not
allow me to disclose further information regarding our company.

I am looking for information related to hourly rates, maturity of
infrastructure, technical skills and communication options (direct vs
onsite or in country). We need 2-3 ROR developers with 2 years of exp.
for more than 3 months with work on our social networking themed
product to be launched by end of this year. Since I am in a tour in
India I will not be able to be on a call/chat for direct interactions
till mid of august. I am expecting a complete proposal with few sample
work in ROR.
bq. Please let me know if you can help with this request.
bq. I look forward to working with you.

Eddy

Dear Eddy,

We would love to help your San Francisco Bay based company with your RoR needs. We can start in August as that is the time we will be finished with a very lucrative project. You see we are helping another confidential and secret client that has vast holdings in Nigeria. We are helping them move a large amount of money and our fee is $38,000,000! Thanks Prince Isa Ahmed, General Abacha will never get his hands on your Father’s money now. So Eddy to answer you other question about rate. Based on our past Nigerian deals our hourly rate works out to $412,468.00 USD an hour. Our infrastructure is very mature and when it’s not we make it sit in the corner. Our technical skills are very technical and our communication can be multi-national as you have seen with our work in Nigeria. We would love to work with your GREAT company even though we don’t know who you are or what you do.

Thanks in advance,
Chris McCroskey
Squeejee