Have I been stitched up or is it time to hang up the keyboard?

[pauldee]

It has to be said all of this reflects very badly on the permie involved. I'very heard this attitude a few times on this forum and it's very sad. When I was a permie I welcomed the input from contractors and consultants coming in and bringing their experience with them. Admittedly their skills were of varying quality but I'd usually be positive about it and hope to learn something from them.

[squarepeg]

Next time make sure you get the permie and the manager into the same room and have a chat about your findings and praise the hell out of the permie and make him/her involved in the discussion about the proposed changes. You not only made the permie look bad, you also dumped a big pile of poo on the manager's CV.

I had to work with difficult permies and contractors. I always see myself as a part of the team, not a know-it-all, and I always tream permies with respect, because they know where the bodies are buried.

[SueEllen]

It has to be said all of this reflects very badly on the permie involved. I'very heard this attitude a few times on this forum and it's very sad. When I was a permie I welcomed the input from contractors and consultants coming in and bringing their experience with them. Admittedly their skills were of varying quality but I'd usually be positive about it and hope to learn something from them.

It's not what you say but how you say it.

A friendly consultant/contractor who tells you and management that stuff is tulip after listening to you, gets further than someone who otherwise keeps themselves to themselves.

[rocktronAMP]

I was hired as a "Contract software developer".

That's what it said in my contract. Those were my expectations but it was only at the end of day 1 that I was made aware that the client expected something very different.

I only had a 30 minute phone interview for this one during which they gave the impression I was coming in as a developer but a developer with more knowledge of Web API than their permanent resource. Which is the case.

Anyhow, either way I still would have had to deal with a disgruntled permie so I can't help feeling the outcome would have been the same even if I'd taken a completely different approach.

Ah ha!

You are not the only brought into a gig on the back of just one flaming *telephone* interview.
In my experience; those contract gig are EASY-IN and potentially EASY-OUT.
Unfortunately, we need the cash and the State of the Market is diabolically so those dumb ass Client Co are winning now.
It's politics, people and silos, the culture of wanting to upgrade the tech stack, transform from a pig into a beautiful fairy, but never quite achieving it. These Client-Co types behaves just like Paul Gascoigne says, "you talk a good game." By choice, I would avoid entirely these ClientCo and they really should die an evolutionary business death like Rumblelows or Woolworths or British Home Stores. But it ain't going happen any time very soon, because these types of Client-Co exhibit David Brent-ism dysfunctions and they will keep living like cockroaches, never actually dying. Other contractors on the forum have tried to ask about how to filter out beforehand bad clients in previous threads, it is not easy to identify them. However, there is huge clue with the one telephone interview stage without a face-to-face interview and also if you need to travel at least 40 plus miles to the site. It is worth keeping your ear to the ground with other contractor in your local network, one bad apple. If you are in the network you might get the heads up before, I wish I was in those networks myself.

[Cirrus]

Minefield

Basically they have a permie who has put all their web api projects together (learning it on the fly) & they wanted my input to bring them up to, as they called it, "industry standard cutting edge solutions".

I've just re-read your original post.

The impression that comes across is cognitive dissonance.


It looks like you listened to what they said and then set off doing exactly what they asked you to. Quite likely, what you proposed was entirely correct.

But what they said is not what you thought they said. What they actually said is "we want industry standard cutting edge solutions ... as long as that doesn't involve any industry standard cutting edge solutions"

This is a good object lesson for everyone on this channel.

Clients can ask for the moon on a spoon. You have to be on the lookout for this and if there is the slightest whiff of this going on then you really need to tread very, very carefully.

[LondonManc]

Sounds to me that the didn't like your approach of taking weeks to fix everything. You're a tulip hot contractor - you should be spitting solutions out left right and centre.

All the 20/20 hindsight advice in the world can't help now but here's some more anyway :
Find some quick wins to get you up on a perch as a demi-god; deliver simple stuff quickly, then prioritise and tackle the bigger stuff later. It doesn't matter how low priority to you something seems - if you've delivered it first week, they'll see that you can hit the ground running. In one gig a few years ago, I did it too well and got asked if I wanted to go permie in only my third week there. Still, pretty much knew the extension was in the bag and sure enough, it was.

[missinggreenfields]

You are not the only brought into a gig on the back of just one flaming *telephone* interview.
In my experience; those contract gig are EASY-IN and potentially EASY-OUT.

In my experience, that's exactly how it works - I discuss the role over the phone with the client, and if it seems interesting then I'll sign up to it. I'm not sure what's wrong with having "just one flaming *telephone* interview" - I've had two face-to-face interviews in total (both public sector).

Whether you can nail it at the interview or not depends on whether it's EASY-IN; whether you have a reasonable contract determines whether it's EASY-OUT.

[LondonManc]

In my experience, that's exactly how it works - I discuss the role over the phone with the client, and if it seems interesting then I'll sign up to it. I'm not sure what's wrong with having "just one flaming *telephone* interview" - I've had two face-to-face interviews in total (both public sector).

Whether you can nail it at the interview or not depends on whether it's EASY-IN; whether you have a reasonable contract determines whether it's EASY-OUT.

Correct. My last three over the phone interviews have all worked out well, including perm offers in two of them and over 18 months of work in another.

[MrMarkyMark]

In my experience, that's exactly how it works - I discuss the role over the phone with the client, and if it seems interesting then I'll sign up to it. I'm not sure what's wrong with having "just one flaming *telephone* interview" - I've had two face-to-face interviews in total (both public sector).

Whether you can nail it at the interview or not depends on whether it's EASY-IN; whether you have a reasonable contract determines whether it's EASY-OUT.

Sometimes the best ones......complete chaos, total panic, no one knows what to do, hard deadline approaching....... ah the scent of much contracting opportunity .

Currently back for a second time, at such a client, now, was here 3.5 years the last time and all off "one flaming telephone interview"

[pauldee]

"industry standard cutting edge solutions".

Oxymoron