I dont understand why a Developer needs access to "my machine"
 

When he is working on a simple 3 page CSS/HTML project? Can someone explain this? I think its b.s. and his rate is $80 hourly! Is this a sign of a bad developer??

In shortly, yes. I would need access to your machine only if you have trouble installing it.

shortly.. yes that he is bad u mean?

Yes. 8 char

It's not necessarily an unreasonable or malicious request. My guess is you see some issue he is unable to recreate in his own environment and needs to see it first hand to see what is wrong. We do it sometimes too - albeit usually something more complex like broadcasting live video etc, not really on a simple website. Probably you have your display settings in your OS set to zoom or your browser zoomed.

$80 is not expensive, and if he's billing hourly you probably want him to resolve this as quickly as possible - if he has to spend hours figuring out how to recreate the issue (which is the first step to fixing it) it'll cost you more then just letting him use chrome on your computer for 3 minutes.

Konrad knows best on this... and the fact that you needed to ask the question implies that you should always go with someone you trust and vetted them. In short some circumstances it is required - I won't comment on pricing since every programmer knows what their services are worth and what they need to do - so likely he's trying to do his best

I don’t see the issue.

If you’re worried about security just make him his own FTP login where all he can do is access whatever domain name you’re working on and that’s it.

What is "my machine"? Are you referring to your PC or your server?

If he's asking for access to view a problem, as konrad suggested, an alternative option is to use Loom or a similar service to create a quick video of the issue at hand.

Loom: Async Video Messaging for Work | Loom

I use this daily.

i'm guessing server. most likely a remote dev.

give them ftp to a secure folder if you don't trust them. you can move the files yourself.

#

No it's a sign that you're a retard..

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh uh nope

I can't think for the life of me, why I'd ever need access to a clients computer for a few HTML pages...

be cautious.

When doing HTML/CSS, here's two reasons that can cause some fuckery that you can't see, and you must by this point know that there's all types of clients. There's guys that won't check this and say it's fine, there's guys that won't know how to check this, etc.

https://prnt.sc/oKW-y0Uk37mh
https://prnt.sc/3Z7ZK-KfiNSQ

or they are on some super old mac from 2009 that can't run the newest chrome so they are 20 versions behind, or they say theyare using chrome but are actually using brave browser "because it's the same thing", or they have some fucking adblock or other plugin causing issues, or they set domain in hosts file to another ip and forgot about it, or a million other unpredictable things.

Like I said, we do this too - albeit rarely for html/css. It's more common with complex stuff like webrtc issues. We've also teamviewered cam models' computers to solve things like this.

$80.00 is the typical fee for a good developer. You can pay more than this and you can pay less than this, but typically the ones who charge less tend to be less skilled, or a little shady, or both. "You get what you pay for" applies to developers too.

It sounds like he is creating a website for you since you mentioned HTML and CSS. He may have developed the website on his own machine first then provided the code to you for you to install on your own server.

If the code works on his machine and not yours, there are several reasons why: You may have insalled it in the wrong directory for example, or some file permissions may have changed, or the server environment may be different, etc.

If you are asking him for help, it is faster and easier for him to connect to your machine and install it properly.

In my opinion, it is safe to let him do this. You trust him enough to create your website and code, so you may as well trust him to access your server too. And besides, at $80.00 an hour, he's probably not interested in messing around. He would much rather earn your repeat business.

In case it doesn't work out for any reason, there are plenty of good programmers to be found. We do alot of custom programming these days, and Konr4d / Mechbunny has a great reputation too. But before doing anything drastic, let your programmer do the work AND do the installation. There's no reason to do anything else at this pont.