If anyone else finds themselves in this position, don't ever entertain fixed-price bids unless you're absolutely desperate for work. Instead, insist on an hourly rate (at approximately 1.5x - 2.5x market value). You're essentially an expert consultant brought in to address a very specific need that the company has yet doesn't want to invest in mastering themselves.

Reframe a fixed price as "this will be X amount of hours". Invariably, nobody knows what kind of "gotchas" will be encountered during dev, and with fixed price, you're absorbing that risk yourself. As an hourly rate, that risk is borne by the client. This also applies to shifting scope; if the client shifts scope mid-way, they will bear that cost in an hourly setup instead of you.

This reads like a case of 'all about me'-ism. It sounds like this person negotiated their salary, and then decided the company didn't value them _because_ the company agreed to raise it when asked. If your goal is to have people throw money at you which you don't ask for, you are going to have a tough time working. A company that's willing to double your salary when you point out the offer is low sounds pretty great to me.

It then sounds like some other timelines were shifted, but rather than engaging with the company to learn what was going on, they silently invented more 'disrespect'.

Building a product is hard. It's also expensive. Many many companies go out of business trying. The company being somewhat reasonable with money, and moving other deadlines around to accomplish their goals, is not evil in and of itself. It sounds like OP needs to learn how to engage constructively, communicate their concerns and questions, and empathize with the people they're working with a bit.

It makes a certain kind of sense. The marketing for these products has always revolved around denigrating software emulators as total, inaccurate trash, which is completely unfair for a lot of reasons (byuu used to have a great blog post about it but I think it is gone). But of course, you've gotta convince people they "need" to spend hundreds of dollars on emulation when it's available for free otherwise. Turns out they took the message to heart.

I think Analogue was more than reasonable here?

They offered an entirely reasonable amount of money for anyone who didn't live in the valley (most people), then we're flexible enough to double it when it wasn't enough.

They asked the person to sign a reasonable NDA that sounds much less restrictive than anything I've ever had to sign, and they were out? 6 months of non-competition on a direct competitor in a tech job is nothing.

I don't even understand the use-case for this device. Who saved all their cartridges, but not their Gameboy? You may as well get a cheaper and more versatile retro handheld. The idea that hardware emulation is somehow better than software emulation when the end results feel indistinguishable to the user seems like a pointless argument.

Yesterday someone posted a review of the Analogue Pocket (only got 3 upvotes), and the review was very favorable.

I like the idea of updated hardware and features in that form-factor, but was put off by the negatives. I would definitely buy a revision if they make one though.

The author's treatment was not great though, so I hope the company does better in the future.

Edit: here is the review: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29541242

For Firefox users, enable browser.ui.zoom.force-user-scalable in about:config to enable zooming on user-hostile websites like this that try to disable zooming.

I wonder if people here actually read the Discord chats. There's literally nothing there that warrants outrage. Speak up if you want different terms, the Analogue guy asked her multiple times for estimates/terms/cost and preferences. If someone is an expert in a field she/he should be able to communicate the cost clearly. It seems to me she just got upset at a lowball offer, let tension build up and then backed out. Not very professional and honestly quite misleading. Maybe Analogue should have known better but I don't blame them, this is regular business negotiations, you should not take it personally. Just say no and move on or name your price.

I'm all for advocating for yourself during negotiation...but I don't like that it seems she gave them one set of reasons for why she turned the job down, and then turned around and gave the entire internet a different set of reasons.

The DM screen caps in this post are beyond damning. I didn’t realize Analogue’s business practices were this shady but I guess that is to be expected from all large corporations.

Thank you for sharing this important story.

The Analogue backlash is here, baby! Love me some petty emulation scene bickering.

I'm interested in the Analogue Pocket (NDA lifted yesterday, preorders opener an hour ago, I put mine in), so I used the Agnolia HN search for stories related to this topic.

This story had 0 comments and was far off the front page. I read the article, found it interesting, and upvoted it. That seems to have bumped it to the front page to snowball.

The author could improve their communication skills. Specifically, without more details, it seems like their negotiation was weak. Good negotiation get's you an amount you're happy with. If you aren't happy then you shouldn't take the work, full stop. The story should have ended there.