Mike Monteiro: F*ck You, Pay Me on HackerTube: recommended by 12 Hacker News commenters across 9 separate months, 2015–2026.
talk · evergreen
Mike Monteiro's CreativeMornings talk on getting paid for creative and freelance work, covering contracts, working with lawyers, and refusing to work for free. It is delivered with blunt humor.
HN regulars send freelancers and consultants to it whenever clients don't pay or contracts come up.
“I watched this video from Mike Monteiro and I always refer to it since.”
20 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
Fuck you, pay me for those of you uninitiated, this talk by Mike Monteiro is awesome - about not getting paid in creative services: ▶ this video
in “Job descriptions should show a salary or salary range” · View on HN
I watched this video from Mike Monteiro and I always refer to it since. It's about getting paid for the work you do. ▶ this video
in “I didn't get paid, so I open-sourced my client’s project” · View on HN
You really need to watch this (very famous) talk by Mike Monteiro, called "Fuck You, Pay Me": ▶ this video Especially the section where his attorney starts talking (at about 7:20).
in “Freelance Isn't Free Act Passes in NYC” · View on HN
Please watch this: Fuck You, Pay Me: ▶ this video The $1250 I spent once to have a business attorney draft up a template for my services agreement is the best $1250 I ever spent in the past 7 years. That $1250 makes me money , because I never have to harass clients to get paid, because they know I have legal recourse if they don't. Since then I've maybe paid him $1000 to deal with things clients wanted to redline in my service agreement. That $2250 total (which is a legitimate business expense) is a pittance compared to what I would lose for a single unpaid invoice. Meanwhile, I always hear from freelancers that don't get paid, but claim lawyers are "too expensive". You know what's really expensive? Getting $0 for the last N days you worked instead of $X. $X is a hell of a lot more money, and unless you have a contract in place, you expose yourself to that possibility every time you engage with a client.
in “Freelance Isn't Free Act Passes in NYC” · View on HN
I also recommend watching this talk if you have not seen it already. Mike Monteiro: Fuck you, pay me. ▶ this video
in “No Pay, No Work; Early Career Lessons” · View on HN
As a palette cleanser and loin girder: ▶ this video (You already guessed it was Mike Monteiro.) For this project: Did they refuse to pay actively ("We won't pay you."), or passively (No replies to emails.) The latter might be incompetence. As others mentioned, specific legal advice depends on respective jurisdictions, but an offical lawyer's letter sometimes wakes up legal when accounting is drifting. Did you deliver the final access to the code / server / credentials? If not, gently bring servers, DBs, platforms to a halt pending final payments. Future projects: Contract, always. Up-front commencement payments, always. Price yourself higher in the initial quote, and ask for staged payments, such that by the time your delivery schedule is 50-75% done you are 100% paid. You control the source code accounts, you control the server credentials, you control the database access credentials, you hand over final access after the final check has cleared.
in “Ask HN: Freelancer's Dilemma – Client Won't Pay Despite Clear Agreement” · View on HN
Oh you just revived sweet memories of my times as a freelancer. As a freelancer, it's sometimes hard to get around the simple idea that you are your own company and that you must act like one: protect and defend your work at all cost. It took me months of time wasted, and thousands of dollars of work stolen to accept the fact I need to change my behaviour, as a freelancer you have roughly two approaches: - set boundaries early on, don't start any work with a predefined and agreed upon down payment, if the work is more than a few days long: set milestones as need be with payments required. - lawyer up, be flexible with clients (delays in payments are a common occurrence with any company) but don't be afraid to go after dishonest clients, if you can't afford it or don't feel like going this path then you need to set up as many contingencies as possible upfront (see previous point). A classic video that might help you get in the right mindset: ▶ this video
in “Ask HN: Freelancer's Dilemma – Client Won't Pay Despite Clear Agreement” · View on HN
Very good advice for consultants and freelancers: ▶ this video TL;DR: Make good consulting contracts with a proper lawyer
in “I'm an engineer that needs to sell my services. Any good books on sales?” · View on HN
You give people something cool for years at no cost and now they're pissed that they have to compensate you for your labor. The way that people value software these days is completely insane. People writing you hate mail are bad clients that you don't want and you can feel free to ignore them. Also watch this video that was doing the rounds on HN a couple of years ago: ▶ this video Your app looks neat - I'll go try it out.
in “The Magic Behind the Scenes of Docker Desktop” · View on HN
That really depends; some company's legal department might go overboard with the stuff they make you sign 'or no deal'. Mike Monteiro talks about this in his "Fuck you, pay me" talk [1]. He says that a lot of companies have boilerplate contracts which have outdated provisions like requiring you to hand over printouts of source code, or delivering software on floppy diskettes. The proper response is to have a lawyer yourself who can review the contract and explain to the company's legal counsel that 1) these contract provisions are unreasonable and outdated and 2) that striking these provisions will not create additional liabilities for the company. The reasons these contracts go overboard is because every time the company gets burned, it adds some scar tissue to the contract to prevent that same eventually from occurring again, regardless of whether it's applicable to the task at hand. Maybe it works different in different parts of the world, but we signed some crazy things (which were dealbreakers if not signed) in the past and no-one ever sued us for it I will be extremely honest. You got lucky. You put your head in the mouth of the lion, and it didn't bite. It doesn't mean that what you did was a good idea, it just means that you got away with it. [1]: ▶ this video
in “Fucking Sue Me (2011)” · View on HN
This is some bad advice because there are people who will "Fucking sue [you]". If you want to learn about how a professional deals with contracts, payments, and contracting I'd say to check out "Fuck you. Pay me" [0] that gives a reasoned explanation of negotiations, what to expect, and reasonable ways to react/behave. [0] - ▶ this video
in “Fucking Sue Me (2011)” · View on HN
It's a little late for you, but Mike Monteiro's "Fuck you, pay me!" talk has a lot of good information. ▶ this video
in “Ask HN: I'm owed 8k by a startup that's going under. What do I do?” · View on HN
Reminder of Mike Monteiro's famous 2011 talk, "Fuck You, Pay Me": * ▶ this video Which even Adam Savage (of Mythbusters fame) references: * [link]
in “Ask HN: How do you handle clients who don't pay on time?” · View on HN
>Be paid or don't work. As an electrician currently self-stopped (for both non-payment & absenteeism, two months no contact , so far) I'm not budging. When you didn't show up for our last two on-site meetups (and still haven't contacted), I thought about filing a lien... but decided to just keep you from having tenants (by not finishing AC/water/electric). You'll get around to it..? When I told this LLC/owner "you obviously aren't in a rush because you obviously aren't visiting the jobsite/me" I sort of expected him to show within a few days. Then a few weeks. And now we're entering a few months. You have weeks of my punchlists (unresolved to do ), I have weeks of questions (what do you want ?) and you won't even do simple things like turning on power/water. Fuck you, pay me. [•] < ▶ this video >
in “What Being Ripped Off Taught Me” · View on HN
Hardware is artificially underpaid work, good positions are sparse in the US, and generally most engineers end up in niche coding environments. Most people that land a successful long career, also refuse to solve some clown firms ephemeral problems at a loss. The trend of externalizing costs onto perspective employees starts to fail in difficult fields requiring actual domain talent with $3.7m per seat equipment. Regulatory capture also fails in advanced areas, as large firms regress into state sponsored thievery instead. Advice to students that is funny and accurate =3 "Mike Monteiro: F*ck You, Pay Me" ▶ this video
in “Can a Computer Science Student Be Taught to Design Hardware?” · View on HN
> Does this mean people will be less incentivized to contribute to open source as time goes by? Yes. I certainly don't intend to put any free code online until I can legally bar AI bros from using it without payment. As Mike Monteiro put it long ago, "F** you, pay me" ( ▶ this video )
in “A Research Preview of Codex” · View on HN
> pro-free-cultural moral views Mike Montero would like a word "Who in this room is now, or has at some time, been in creative services? "Who here has, at some time, had trouble getting paid by a client for work they were doing? "Raise your hand if any of these are familiar to you: "'We ended up not using the work.' "'It's really not what we wanted after all.' "Alright. Who's familiar with Goodfellas ? "Alright. 'We got somebody internal to do it instead.' "'Fuck you. Pay me.'" "'Fuck you. Pay me.'" ▶ this video
in “Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work” · View on HN
People who don’t pay (or watch ads) are no different from the greedy dickheads who offer to pay artists and developers in “exposure”. Ether pay, or don’t use. Fuck You, Pay Me: ▶ this video
in “YouTube ads appear to be ramping up, with as many as 10 unskippable ads” · View on HN
I have lived this many times over. You will always have clients like this, these are the best ways I have found so far. 1: do not give net 30 day terms unless a client has earned them or applied via credit. Some exceptions can be made for large firms, but many small to medium businesses are terrible about paying. Large businesses might be a little slow, but almost always pay consistently the same, unless there is a known issue. 2: If you do give net 30 terms (or anything more then 10 days), provide a discount for payment within 10 days. This makes almost all larger businesses prioritize your invoice and get you paid. You may think it is minor, but many businesses do this over hundreds or sometimes thousands of invoices and they save significant amounts of money doing so. 3: Make payment details clear within your TOS/contract. For my smaller consulting clients, if their invoice was unpaid after 3 days from the due date I stopped all work and they lost their spot in line for services. So essentially most of those clients had 7-10 days to pay me or I halted all work. I also had it up front that if that happened 2 times within a short period (defined in the contract) that all future work (if accepted) would be prepaid. This was part of my non-negotiable contract terms. For my SaaS product, I used similar terms, we billed their credit card for small/mid sized clients (generally under $2k/month) and if their card was denied or we were unable to collect that months service after 5 d
in “Ask HN: Slow paying client and how do you deal with them?” · View on HN
> if a business invests $20k in training and $80k in salary, there is nothing stopping another employer from offering $90k in salary after training is complete. Then that business will have to pay better. You want me to stick around? Fuck you, pay me[1] (or give me some other reason that is compelling--to me, not to you--to stay). [1]: ▶ this video
in “Business Can Pay to Train Its Own Work Force” · View on HN