Hiring Specialists - the Good, the Bad & How to Work Nicely With Others

A recent project required a quick turnaround and skills that were on the edge of my competence. I hired a subcontractor, which was a good idea, but not without its challenges.

As noted in this post, I’ve been working on a rather large project — an animatronic cartoon cowboy version of me inspired by the Vegas Vic cowboy… of Las Vegas. This has required some different techniques for completion, including working with an artist named Jay to cartoon-cowboy-ify me.

Me… as an animatronic cowboy

Going non-solo here was a good decision, but it wasn’t without its stresses. Read on for more about the pros and cons working with someone else, and my thoughts on how to do it well.

A little background: My client (Hackster.io) gave me the assignment to make this Vegas Cowboy roughly a month before it was needed for the Autodesk University 2026 show in Las Vegas, Nevada. This was a rather tight timeline, meaning that I ideally needed the art back a week or two. I could have tried to draw a cowboy myself, but offloading this cutout would free up my time to make the cowboy’s animatronic structure, and the result would likely be much better when finished.

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And yes, I could have just come up with some AI rendering of a cowboy, but Jay suggested taking pictures of me and using it as the base for the model. I would have never thought to to this — or done it on my own as it seems a bit self-aggrandizing — but it did turn out nicely.

All that said, on to the pros, cons, and tips for working with others:

Working with others: The Good

If you do things correctly, working with others can be a great experience. It’s like a force multiplier — your client pays you, you pay collaborators, and the client gets a great project. This allows you to accomplish more than you could have on your own, and potentially even make more money. In this case:

• The project’s art turned out way better than what I could have done on my own.

• Jay uses a known (to him) supplier to get it printed appropriately.

• Offloading the project’s art saved me a lot of time. This is always useful, but in this case it was especially valuable since I had a tight deadline.

• I was able to hire someone and give him money in exchange for something useful. This is generally a nice thing to do, especially if you’re working with someone you like.

Working with others: The Bad

As good as working with others can be — and it was here — it’s not without its downsides:

• It Costs Money — This isn’t necessarily bad (more on this later), and as stated above it’s cool to pay people you like. However, if this isn’t managed properly it can kill a project’s profitability. Not bad per se, but something to keep in mind.

• Communication can be difficult — Again, more on this later, but it takes skill and time to properly communicate your requirements.¹

• It is stressful depending and waiting on others — Jay/the printer he used got the cutout back to me in a timely manner, but I was stressed out before I had it in my hands. Perhaps they wouldn’t get it done on time; maybe the scale would be grossly off… Maybe this would be be because of some miscommunication between me, Jay, and/or the printer that could be my fault!²

At the end of the day, none of these were a substantial impediment to successfully completing the project. As I write this, it’s all boxed up and ready to ship to the show.

How to play work well with others

It was awesome that I know Jay, and I could be confident he would do a good job because I’m familiar with his other work. And he/the printer did. But I still worried about it. If I had to find someone like him at a moment’s notice, this would have difficult, especially since I would have to trust something critical to an unknown person.

So, here are my thoughts on how to work with others, with the caveat that I don’t actually do it that often:

1. Get to know interesting/useful people before you need their skills — This isn’t always simple or possible. I know Jay through a local hackerspace (i.e. shared workshop) that I was a member of for several years, and such organizations seem to be filled with people with eclectic skills. What this “space” will look like in your context might be different, but don’t be afraid to get out there and network. Better to have the contact(s) waiting for a problem than have to search around when you’re in a panic.³

2. Expect communication/back-and-forth after the initial order between you and the person you’re working with. If all goes well, this can lead to a better result, but understanding requirements and iteration does take time, which you need to factor in to the overall project. Also, know when to accept recommendations and when to push things in your direction. What this means will vary depending on the job.

3. Get pricing/terms in writing — Initially Jay quoted me a rough price… based on a rough price that the printer gave him. Long story short, the printer ended up charging Jay much more than he had been told initially, and Jay asked me to pay more than what I was initially expecting. Which I did without much argument or hard feelings as the price was partially contingent on what the printer would charge.
   
   Under normal circumstances, I should have gotten pricing upfront, in writing, and Jay should have probably done the same with the printer. In both of our defenses, things often get a bit nebulous when there’s a time crunch. At the end of the day though, I’m just glad the cutout got back on time and the project is ready to ship. All that being said, get pricing/conditions in writing if you can!
   
   Also notable, the printer in question made a… personnel change to avoid this sort of inaccurate quoting in the future, verbal estimate or not. Their quality was quite good, so I would be happy to work with them (through Jay) in the future.

   

   That is a nice looking servo driving one of the arms!

4. Just because someone is your friend, you still need to pay them — It’s an interesting dynamic when you work with someone you know who would possibly do you a favor if you asked, because you have to get across a message that is essentially: Give me a reasonably low price, but I don’t want a gift, and I don’t want you to suffer for the privilege of working with me.⁴
   
   I’ve come across this situation before when I needed a component made quickly as part of an assembly that I was selling. The person/company that I asked to do the job might have made it for free if I asked nicely, but not paying them would be improper. They did a good job, quickly and at what seemed like a fair price. However, trying to drive a hard fair bargain, while also not requesting too much special treatment, is a somewhat unusual position to take.⁵

5. Make sure you charge enough so that you can pay subcontractors enough too. This hasn’t been the case for all my projects, but here I was able to pay Jay what he requested while still (fingers crossed) turning a profit.
   
   This is something to consider whether pricing one-off work or making doodads to sell on a site like our sponsor SmallRun. Eventually you might want to contrat things out and/or work with a distributor — which cut into your profit margin, but can potentially increase your volume and decrease your hassle/part. If you don’t set the price high enough initially, your options may be more limited.

And, since you asked (maybe), here’s a little preview of the almost finished cowboy in action. I’ll eventually publish a more involved writeup here on Hackster, and they’re supposed to publish a full video of it as well.

Conclusion: Yes, work with others

At the end of the day, this project would not have gone as well had I not worked with Jay. Yes, it was stressful in its own way, and did cost some money out of the project’s budget, but it was worth doing so in both respects.

Now, however, it’s on to the next working-with-others challenge, getting the Neon Cowboy to Las Vegas for display. With the exception of a few shoulder cuts (one seen in the middle of my spare parts/tools on the left) it’s all stuffed in a large Pelican case that was likely designed for rifles rather than random animatronic displays:

The Venetian in Las Vegas, where the event takes place, appears to be well set up for this kind of thing, with a FedEx Business Center on-site to receive and distribute packages. Locally, I’ve become friendly with Ken at the Mail Room here in Palm Harbor, Florida. I’m sure he’ll be able to advise me about the right way to send this — and charge a fair rate. It’s good to know people.⁶

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More on this particular adventure soon. As you may have noticed, my publishing schedule has been a little wonky as of late, in a large part because I’ve been quite busy with client projects. Also, I’m publishing this on a Friday, rather than my usual Wednesday at 11:30 AM ET, as I’m literally going to send this package off in a hour or so, and I may try to get a post about the conference up next.

So this is all good, but I wanted to get that out there for regular readers. And thank you so much for being a regular reader. Or an intermittent/first time reader. All are appreciated. Slowing things down does give you time to catch up if needed. We can all use a little slack from time to time! -JC

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Thanks for reading! I hope you follow along on this Techadjacent journey. Fair warning: I can and do get a little off-topic in the footnotes. Get in touch: hi@jeremyscook.com, leave a comment, or just reply if you’re reading this as an email!

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Addendum/Footnotes:

1. If you can do everything yourself on a project, you really save a lot of time making decisions, communicating, and delegating. You don’t need a management structure per se, which adds hassle and expense to many tasks. At the same time, you can only get so much done by yourself, so you need this structure to, say, build a skyscraper.

Perhaps there is some sweet spot size-wise where you can hire the right employees that will pretty much do their own thing to the benefit of the company where they’re left alone with little guidance.

2. Like in Spinal Tap, when the guy wants a model of Stonehenge (using a bit of coarse language), but his napkin drawing has “ (inches) instead of ‘ (feet), which is what he really wanted. Everyone ended up looking quite silly and getting frustrated.

3. This goes both ways. If someone else needs your skills, and is willing to pay for it, better to already be that guy instead of hunting around when work is slow. If you’re anything like me, you’ll probably still have to sell yourself to keep jobs coming in, but it’s good to get a jump on things before it’s really needed. See:

4. Jay quoted me a very good rate for his part of the work (even if things eventually got a bit wonky with the printer), so I appreciate that. That said, I get the impression he may have underestimated how long the job would take and/or needed to get more familiar with the tools he was using. As he put it when he submitted the cutout, he was going to look at this project as a learning experience. At the end of the day though the results were really, really good.

5. In this case, my customer fell through, so I was left holding the bag so to speak. While I probably could have cancelled my order, given that I had asked for it ASAP, I decided not to jerk them around. I thought I could probably sell it to someone else, but that didn’t quite work out either.

6. My client is going to reimburse me for shipping. So I’m happy to pay… other people’s money in this case. However, I do use the Mail Room regularly when it’s not someone else paying for it too. I also have a label printer and use Pirate Ship when it’s something rather routine, but sending a giant — or at least quite large — Pelican case to Las Vegas is anything but routine… Or maybe it is. It seems like they are well set up for this sort of thing there.

Also, if you need to call them, call the concierge at the Venetian. If you try to call the business center directly you get into some sort of AI voice-jail doom loop as predicted for THE YEAR 2000: