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

[LondonManc]

Oxymoron

As is business intelligence

[Big Blue Plymouth]

I've just re-read your original post.

The impression that comes across is cognitive dissonance.

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"

deliver simple stuff quickly, then prioritise and tackle the bigger stuff later.

Yep - the focus should of been on how they didn't actually really need the industry standard cutting edge solution. In the short term, the resulting performance from doing everything async probably would have been worse - whether or not that would have been perceptible but, if so, that would have got me canned as well. But they were they ones banging the asynchronous drum, not me.

I used to see this all the time with SOA - client says everything has to be behind a wcf service with all the attendant latency of serialising everything to xml and squirting it down the wire to another process. I don't think any of those services were ever going to be consumed by anything other than the applications for which they were developed.

I would still have told them to get shot of LinqToSql though

[LondonManc]

Yep - the focus should of been on how they didn't actually really need the industry standard cutting edge solution. In the short term, the resulting performance from doing everything async probably would have been worse - whether or not that would have been perceptible but, if so, that would have got me canned as well. But they were they ones banging the asynchronous drum, not me.

I used to see this all the time with SOA - client says everything has to be behind a wcf service with all the attendant latency of serialising everything to xml and squirting it down the wire to another process. I don't think any of those services were ever going to be consumed by anything other than the applications for which they were developed.

I would still have told them to get shot of LinqToSql though

I stood in as an emergency DBA (not my normal day-to-day work) for a client where a previous hiring manager had moved to. Fixed a big pain point in the first couple of days and got offered perm. Journey was a p.i.t.a so I politely declined.

[d000hg]

I mentioned a host of things - No DI (in fact no awareness of SOLID principles in the design), business logic in controllers, nothing being done asynchronously (they said they wanted asychronous). So he gets out a piece of paper & starts asking for a breakdown of what needs to be done & how long it will take.
I told him roughly what sort of things needed to be done - e.g. probably having to get shot of the LinqToSql stuff & use EF if they want everything to be truly asychnronous as EF gives it to you out the box.

Oh, you're one of THOSE people. "If it's not all written according to the current trends and in-vogue APIs, it's a sack of tulip and needs throwing in the bin"

[Cirrus]

Oh, you're one of THOSE people. "If it's not all written according to the current trends and in-vogue APIs, it's a sack of tulip and needs throwing in the bin"

To be fair, they did seem to ask him to do that.

The dilemma is how you react.

I remember going to a bank in Hamburg. It was one day's consultancy and I was going with my Consultancy's Head of Germany. The bank had asked for advice on how to control access to sensitive data in a particular programming environment. As I worked through where they were I realised they had a mainframe environment without any basic file access control whatsoever. These things are standard nowadays but for mainframes you would have to buy software. Typically this was RACF or ACF2. They had neither.

Remember this was a (well known) bank. It had high profile, sensitive accounts.

At the end of the day I presented to a group of highly Germanic managers where I advised them it wasn't sensible for us to solve the particular issue they raised when this was part of a much more serious problem.

They looked at me as though I was only useful for making table lamp shades with my skin. If there had been an old Luger lying around, I'd have been filled full of lead.

We got no business out of them but the Consultancy supported me.

Everyone here would say the truth really didn't help anyone but I was young.

And who knows: I might do the same again...

[m0n1k3r]

In the first one they were treating me like a permie and micromanaging the f**k out of me. Basically I pointed out I'm not used to working that way, they didn't like it so off I went. And I was glad to be out.

This one was completely different and seems to be based on them not liking the answers I gave to their questions. They asked what needed to be done to make their APIs "industry standard" and I told them as I explained in my OP. In all other respects I kept my head down - in at 8:30, 1 hour lunch & out at 5:30 just like the other permies.

So, completely different scenarios. Admittedly the common theme is the contractor at the centre of it all but I'm just hoping this is a run of very bad luck whose timing couldn't be worse what with a house move & bigger mortgage looming.

I've been contracting for 12 years & have never had any issues like this before. I don't know if expectations of what a contractor does & behaves has changed over this period but from my perspective that certainly seems to be the case. Also, I'm a lot older and the people I work for are a lot younger and I sometimes sense a disconnect between 2 different mindsets.

I've been in and out of a number of temp manager roles for the past number of years, and - surprise, surprise - there is a great disconnect between how experienced contractors tend to think of themselves and how customers think of them (I avoid the term 'client' because it implies that there is a senior decision maker in the picture who you work for directly).

For most buyers, a contractor = temp = agency worker = short term addition to what they already have in-house = safe pair of hands = contingent labour.

Most contractors calling themselves independent contractors in reality tend to think of themselves as an independent consultant or independent professional services specialist.

But that is not how customers view them. Part of the reason is what they wanted in the first place (an off-payroll temp, aka contractor). Another reason is in the title itself - contractor. And another reason is that recruitment agencies present themselves as employment businesses, which is just another name for "temporary work agency".

The best way is obviously to find customers direct, which requires a lot of time and contacts, which most independent specialists don't have. The second best way is to become an independent supplier ("associate") to a consultancy. You would be representing them and work under their name, but as you work for them as part of their team to provide services to their customer, they are not an intermediary and so many pieces of legislation and regulations (agency worker, conduct regulations etc) won't apply. When was the last time you presented yourself as "Hi, I'm X, an associate consultant at Hays", handing over your Hays business card?

It is a very different model.

[m0n1k3r]

To be fair, they did seem to ask him to do that.

The dilemma is how you react.

I remember going to a bank in Hamburg. It was one day's consultancy and I was going with my Consultancy's Head of Germany. The bank had asked for advice on how to control access to sensitive data in a particular programming environment. As I worked through where they were I realised they had a mainframe environment without any basic file access control whatsoever. These things are standard nowadays but for mainframes you would have to buy software. Typically this was RACF or ACF2. They had neither.

Remember this was a (well known) bank. It had high profile, sensitive accounts.

At the end of the day I presented to a group of highly Germanic managers where I advised them it wasn't sensible for us to solve the particular issue they raised when this was part of a much more serious problem.

They looked at me as though I was only useful for making table lamp shades with my skin. If there had been an old Luger lying around, I'd have been filled full of lead.

We got no business out of them but the Consultancy supported me.

Everyone here would say the truth really didn't help anyone but I was young.

And who knows: I might do the same again...

Honesty pays in the long run. And it helps peace of mind, and professional integrity.

[SueEllen]

To be fair, they did seem to ask him to do that.

The dilemma is how you react.

I remember going to a bank in Hamburg. It was one day's consultancy and I was going with my Consultancy's Head of Germany. The bank had asked for advice on how to control access to sensitive data in a particular programming environment. As I worked through where they were I realised they had a mainframe environment without any basic file access control whatsoever. These things are standard nowadays but for mainframes you would have to buy software. Typically this was RACF or ACF2. They had neither.

Remember this was a (well known) bank. It had high profile, sensitive accounts.

At the end of the day I presented to a group of highly Germanic managers where I advised them it wasn't sensible for us to solve the particular issue they raised when this was part of a much more serious problem.

They looked at me as though I was only useful for making table lamp shades with my skin. If there had been an old Luger lying around, I'd have been filled full of lead.

We got no business out of them but the Consultancy supported me.

Everyone here would say the truth really didn't help anyone but I was young.

And who knows: I might do the same again...

Actually in that situation you did the correct thing. Germans and people from Nordic countries prefer you to tell them the truth even if they don't like what you tell them. If you lie to them and they find out later they get even angrier.

This is one of the culture differences between countries that has been brought up a few times on this forum.

[tarbera]

A consultant is a person who asks to borrow your watch so he can tell you the time.

We had CapGem in to "fix" the systems back in the day (we already told management what issue was, and how to fix) they pulled us into an all day workshop, we explained it was the COBOL modules not linking into the SAP subsystem on the mainframe, CapGem go away and write a 40 page report (all graphs and fancy stuff) and presented to our companies directors (£120K bill please) - directors give the report (and large budget) to the dev manager and tell him to follow all the recommendations, he glances at the report and nods his head, he calls the people that were in the workshop into his office and locks the door. He asks us 3 questions

1. Q. When did you start using COBOL rather than RPG - A. Never we are a RPG shop only

2. Q. Did anyone put in SAP because the last time I looked we used JBA business 400 as our application software, A. sniggers all round

3. Q. Where the F**K can I trade our AS400 computer in for a Mainframe???

[Lance]

We had CapGem in to "fix" the systems back in the day (we already told management what issue was, and how to fix) they pulled us into an all day workshop, we explained it was the COBOL modules not linking into the SAP subsystem on the mainframe, CapGem go away and write a 40 page report (all graphs and fancy stuff) and presented to our companies directors (£120K bill please) - directors give the report (and large budget) to the dev manager and tell him to follow all the recommendations, he glances at the report and nods his head, he calls the people that were in the workshop into his office and locks the door. He asks us 3 questions

1. Q. When did you start using COBOL rather than RPG - A. Never we are a RPG shop only

2. Q. Did anyone put in SAP because the last time I looked we used JBA business 400 as our application software, A. sniggers all round

3. Q. Where the F**K can I trade our AS400 computer in for a Mainframe???

Lovely story. Net result the company just pissed £120k to CG for no benefit at all. And if they try to get their money back CG have notes and minutes with you lot telling them a load of horse tulip.
Well done.