Customers want to save money and see projects finished. That anyone can reason with.
Someone inside the company trying to climb the corporate ladder? Different story.
Otherwise, you never feeelanced on the cheap.
I am certain that I went through the same problems you did in the past, maybe I just have a different way of dealing with them, or maybe I had even worse problems than you did but I have a different frame of comparison. We never stopped to compared notes.
All I'm saying is: for me dealing with business owners, end-users, CEOs and CTOs was always way easier than dealing with proxies. That's all.
When a customer starts saying “we need to build X”, first ask what the actual problem is etc. It takes actual effort, and you need to speak their language (understand the domain).
But if you have a PM in the middle, now you just start playing telephone and I don’t believe that’s great for anyone involved.
