Four dishes and two bottles of Snow Beer sat on the table at the street-side eatery. Fang Yuan poured three glasses, filling his own the least.
Two people sat across from him, one a frontend developer and the other a backend developer, both employees at major tech companies taking freelance jobs after work. Fang Yuan had once worked as a product manager at an internet company and had dealt with plenty of developers. Later, he had been unable to endure the exhaustion any longer and quit. But he could not stand being idle, so he started a community mutual-aid nonprofit called Warm Neighbors—warm neighbors—aimed at helping elderly people living alone in older residential communities. It now had over two hundred volunteers, all managed through WeChat groups and Lark spreadsheets. He had always wanted to build a system and had found these two people. The three had already discussed the requirements once at a café. They had quoted one hundred thousand yuan. Fang Yuan had asked whether there was room to negotiate, and they had said they would go back and discuss it.
This dinner was the result of that discussion.
"Brother Fang, we looked over the requirements carefully," the backend engineer said first, still holding a handful of edamame. "Volunteer scheduling, event registration, backend management—the frontend and backend together would take two months. One hundred thousand really is our lowest price."
Fang Yuan piled on a smile. "Yes, yes, I understand. We're a nonprofit with no revenue. Could you possibly lower it a little more?"
The two exchanged a glance.
The frontend developer put down his chopsticks. "Eighty thousand. That's already less than what we make at our jobs."
Fang Yuan said nothing.
He could not come up with eighty thousand either. Warm Neighbors had only a little over seven