Should I walk away from this one?

[Sardaukar]

I'm 2 weeks into a 3 month contract that is looking like something of a poisoned chalice. I'm contracted with a consultancy to provide services on their client's site. I was interviewed by the consultancy, and never met the client before the first day of the contract.

It has now become obvious that the consultancy have massively misrepresented my area of expertise to the end client, and I'm being asked to work on things which are completely irrelevant to my skillset and experience (it's almost on par with hiring an electrician to unblock your drains...).

I've never walked away from a contract before, but I'm starting to think it's the best option.

The only thing keeping me there is that I genuinely don't like to let people down after I've made a commitment. But the other side of that coin is that as I'm on monthly invoicing on 30 day payment terms, if the client do decide they're not getting what they're paying for and pull the plug within the next 6 weeks, then, realistically, I'm not getting paid for any work I've already done. As the location requires a 5 night stay away from home (costing me £500 a week), there's a significant financial risk to trying to blag it.

Any other thoughts?

[jmo21]

It has now become obvious that the consultancy have massively misrepresented my area of expertise to the end client, and I'm being asked to work on things which are completely irrelevant to my skillset and experience (it's almost on par with hiring an electrician to unblock your drains...).
<snip>

The only thing keeping me there is that I genuinely don't like to let people down after I've made a commitment.

They started it by misrepresenting your skills.

[BolshieBastard]

I'm 2 weeks into a 3 month contract that is looking like something of a poisoned chalice. I'm contracted with a consultancy to provide services on their client's site. I was interviewed by the consultancy, and never met the client before the first day of the contract.

It has now become obvious that the consultancy have massively misrepresented my area of expertise to the end client, and I'm being asked to work on things which are completely irrelevant to my skillset and experience (it's almost on par with hiring an electrician to unblock your drains...).

I've never walked away from a contract before, but I'm starting to think it's the best option.

The only thing keeping me there is that I genuinely don't like to let people down after I've made a commitment. But the other side of that coin is that as I'm on monthly invoicing on 30 day payment terms, if the client do decide they're not getting what they're paying for and pull the plug within the next 6 weeks, then, realistically, I'm not getting paid for any work I've already done. As the location requires a 5 night stay away from home (costing me £500 a week), there's a significant financial risk to trying to blag it.

Any other thoughts?

Here

[Midland White]

Think, what would the Kwisatz Haderach do in this situation?

[I just need to test it]

Thanks to Imposter Syndrome I spend most of my working life in this situation.

I'd keep going. I'd build relationships with the client. I'd seek to add value wherever I could.

In time I'd let it be known that I don't have an in depth knowledge of the particular subject area and hope that they had seen enough of you to realise your dilemma rather than them assume you are incompetent.

Can you put pressure on the consultancy? They must have subject experts who might be able to offer remote support. Or are you really too far out of your depth?

I'd have thought that regardless of the outcome re: termination and invoice payment your expenses will be covered.

Good luck. It's a tough, lonely situation to be in.

[TheFaQQer]

Should I walk away from this one?

Yes

[kaiser78]

I'm 2 weeks into a 3 month contract that is looking like something of a poisoned chalice. I'm contracted with a consultancy to provide services on their client's site. I was interviewed by the consultancy, and never met the client before the first day of the contract.

It has now become obvious that the consultancy have massively misrepresented my area of expertise to the end client, and I'm being asked to work on things which are completely irrelevant to my skillset and experience (it's almost on par with hiring an electrician to unblock your drains...).

I've never walked away from a contract before, but I'm starting to think it's the best option.

The only thing keeping me there is that I genuinely don't like to let people down after I've made a commitment. But the other side of that coin is that as I'm on monthly invoicing on 30 day payment terms, if the client do decide they're not getting what they're paying for and pull the plug within the next 6 weeks, then, realistically, I'm not getting paid for any work I've already done. As the location requires a 5 night stay away from home (costing me £500 a week), there's a significant financial risk to trying to blag it.

Any other thoughts?

Did you not ask for a job spec / role outline before going on client site, even if through a consultancy, to see what you were going to be doing and especially if it requires you to be paying additional hotel / travel costs ?

[Sardaukar]

Can you put pressure on the consultancy? They must have subject experts who might be able to offer remote support.

No unfortunately not - and I think that's the root of the problem. They don't have these particular skills in house, and they didn't even know enough to identify how difficult and specialised a task this is.

Did you not ask for a job spec / role outline before going on client site, even if through a consultancy, to see what you were going to be doing and especially if it requires you to be paying additional hotel / travel costs ?

Oh yes. I discussed the project in detail with both the consultancy technical lead and the client's account manager, and the client's non-negotiable requirement to fulfil a specific piece of functionality using a certain third party software package was never mentioned. They explicitly told me how good a match my CV was for their technology choices.

I think what's really happened is the consultancy technical lead has dropped the ball and failed to identify the implications of this particular requirement until after they'd quoted a fixed price for the work, and now he has a convenient contractor to take the blame.

The more I think about this, it's harder to think of a scenario where it ends well for me. The best possible outcome is I spend three months doing a mediocre job at something that looks extremely out of place on my CV and won't do me any favours when I start looking for my next contract. And the other outcomes are much worse than that.

So on that basis, I think I'll have 'a discussion' on Monday...

[cojak]

For a realistic assessment of your situation, read this Death March (Yourdon Press Series): Amazon.co.uk: Edward Yourdon: Books

If you are a hopeless optimist and decide to stay, read this » “I Don’t Know” * G. Jason Head

[SQLSwerver]

Reminds me of the recession, I walked off one gig and fired from another as they wanted 400 lines of code rewritten in a couple of days and thought a DBA would do the job as fast as a Programmer.

Desperate times put desperate men together.

That said your discussion may have some unforeseen outcomes of its own; not impossible that the client may quietly say, "Actually, I know full well you are a long way from being a match but lets just say recruitment had to be best effort, sooooo...how's your Google Fu?"