Negotiating FDE Fees: A Buyer's Guide
The honest guide to negotiating FDE fees: four levers that actually move price, three asks that backfire, and the contract clauses worth real money.
Read article → FDE FundamentalsThe Invisible Work FDEs Do That Never Ships
Half an FDE's value is in work that never ships: interviewing operators, mapping ghost processes, and decoding spreadsheets that have become institutional religion.
Read article → Case Studies & StoriesScope Explosion: One Week Became Three Months
How twelve 'small' requests turned a one-week dashboard into a three-month ordeal—and the V2 parking lot rule that stopped the bleeding.
Read article → Tools & StackMonitoring Small Apps on a $0 Budget
The error started Tuesday; the email arrived Friday. Health checks, error alerts, job heartbeats, and one status page: the $0 monitoring stack.
Read article → Prototyping & DeliveryThe FDE Handoff Checklist: Leave Without Breaking
The deliverable of the final month is your own dispensability. Docs, access, runbooks, the bus test, and the tapered exit that leaves nothing broken.
Read article → AI & DataAI Agents for Customer Support: A Reality Check
The demo was perfect; Tuesday is not. Where AI support agents genuinely deflect tickets, where they torch trust, and the 90-day rollout that works.
Read article → Industry PlaybooksThe FDE Playbook for E-Commerce Brands
Twenty-three apps and a nightly CSV ritual: where e-commerce margin actually leaks, and the five custom builds that pay for themselves inside a quarter.
Read article → Hiring & CareersHow to Measure an FDE's Performance
Commits measure motion; FDEs are paid for progress. The three-layer scorecard of outcomes, adoption, and trust, plus the 90-day review rhythm that proves it.
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