Start of another (overpaid, underworked) contract in the UK IT world!

[oliverson]

At that rate I'd work a week and retire

When I graduated from Uni I went to an ERP consultancy and became a 'technical consultant' in Oracle and Unix. I knew what I was doing mostly but they were billing me out at £ 1,250 a day back in 1999 and I was on £ 25k + a VW Passat. I did get despatched to Finland and Portugal though so it wasn't all bad.

There's a guy around my parts who pitches for projects and then hires contractors to fulfill them. He's a one-man band. What I want to know is where the hell are all these projects advertised?

[BlasterBates]

When I graduated from Uni I went to an ERP consultancy and became a 'technical consultant' in Oracle and Unix. I knew what I was doing mostly but they were billing me out at £ 1,250 a day back in 1999 and I was on £ 25k + a VW Passat. I did get despatched to Finland and Portugal though so it wasn't all bad.

There's a guy around my parts who pitches for projects and then hires contractors to fulfill them. He's a one-man band. What I want to know is where the hell are all these projects advertised?

They´re not advertised, you are invited to make an offer. You need to develop contacts, convince some PM you´re the man. The way in is to work for a consultancy and become a PM and then win the trust of the clients. Once you´re known you may be able to get smaller projects.

[portseven]

Cloud is a great testing ground but its never going to live up to its hype.

+1 to that, I recently wrote the cloud hosting policy for one of the UK banks. Cloud is great for dev environments or rimes when you need infra for short periods of time to crunch through some anonymous data. I can't see anyone running their swift gateways or core banking systems on amazon any time soon

The RTO for cloud falls apart for hosting stuff 3yrs or more

[Scrag Meister]

When I graduated from Uni I went to an ERP consultancy and became a 'technical consultant' in Oracle and Unix. I knew what I was doing mostly but they were billing me out at £ 1,250 a day back in 1999 and I was on £ 25k + a VW Passat. I did get despatched to Finland and Portugal though so it wasn't all bad.

There's a guy around my parts who pitches for projects and then hires contractors to fulfill them. He's a one-man band. What I want to know is where the hell are all these projects advertised?

Read exactly what I responded to

[bobspud]

Agree. There are other drivers too. Often bringing in one of the big 5 consultantcies is a sign of weak management.
It's a classic case of "I don't really know what to do, I'll bring in consultancy X. If it works I'll look good. If it fails its not my fault because I bought in the best and they failed."

If you think that hiring in a company that will return the favour to you when you need it, is a sign of weak management then you need a lesson in the benefits of networks.

[Stan.goodvibes]

10 years ago I was doing Excel VBA in a fundy and when I got asked to automate something I'd say 'two weeks'. It would take about 2-3 days (the rest of the time I was at the pub or doing stuff online or just stuffing around) and at the end of two weeks I'd deliver and the back/front office Mgr would tell my boss it was amazing I had saved so much time blah blah and my boss would tell me I was great and 5 years later I was 5th the longest serving IT member (from a 3 month contract).

Everyone was happy, I got paid loads - win/win.

Today I'm on contract until 31/12/2012 and I have about 1 months worth of work to do by then. I'm doing certs and going to the gym and basically getting paid to study.

Moral of the story: news of the death of contracting is a little premature. There are still overpaid/underworked roles out there

[ChimpMaster]

10 years ago I was doing Excel VBA in a fundy and when I got asked to automate something I'd say 'two weeks'. It would take about 2-3 days (the rest of the time I was at the pub or doing stuff online or just stuffing around) and at the end of two weeks I'd deliver and the back/front office Mgr would tell my boss it was amazing I had saved so much time blah blah and my boss would tell me I was great and 5 years later I was 5th the longest serving IT member (from a 3 month contract).

Everyone was happy, I got paid loads - win/win.

Today I'm on contract until 31/12/2012 and I have about 1 months worth of work to do by then. I'm doing certs and going to the gym and basically getting paid to study.

Moral of the story: news of the death of contracting is a little premature. There are still overpaid/underworked roles out there

I guess you're one of the lucky ones, then. It does seem that many are suffering - such as those that work at banking clients right now.

[fullyautomatix]

10 years ago I was doing Excel VBA in a fundy and when I got asked to automate something I'd say 'two weeks'. It would take about 2-3 days (the rest of the time I was at the pub or doing stuff online or just stuffing around) and at the end of two weeks I'd deliver and the back/front office Mgr would tell my boss it was amazing I had saved so much time blah blah and my boss would tell me I was great and 5 years later I was 5th the longest serving IT member (from a 3 month contract).

Everyone was happy, I got paid loads - win/win.

Today I'm on contract until 31/12/2012 and I have about 1 months worth of work to do by then. I'm doing certs and going to the gym and basically getting paid to study.

Moral of the story: news of the death of contracting is a little premature. There are still overpaid/underworked roles out there

It might happen but its rare. Most clients have wisened up to these kind of tactics and if I may say something controversial, what you are doing is very unprofessional and brings us all a bad name. If a plumber came round and charged you 5 days for something that can be done in 1 day, would you not be pissed at the end of it ?

I always estimate a task accurately, give or take a couple of days here and there, and get the task done within the time frame.

[oliverson]

It might happen but its rare. Most clients have wisened up to these kind of tactics and if I may say something controversial, what you are doing is very unprofessional and brings us all a bad name. If a plumber came round and charged you 5 days for something that can be done in 1 day, would you not be pissed at the end of it ?

I always estimate a task accurately, give or take a couple of days here and there, and get the task done within the time frame.

I agree. How can you be proud of ripping off your client?

[Peter Loew]

I think there's an incredible mark-up for just being in IT for a lot of roles.
Look at PMO / PM / BA - if these were outside IT would the rate be the same?

Now when a company buys into a niche or bleeding edge technology and the first thing they want to do is customise the heck out of it - then they'll have to pay through the nose because of a scarcity of resource.

Another thing that mystifies me is that companies are quite willing to use expensive contract resource for mundane and skill-less tasks becuase they just get on and do it.

The amount of time I've seen experienced PMs just fill in spreadsheets or knock-up slide packs and neglecting the actual project amazes me. Client thinks, oh we need more PM resource, no you need more secetarial resource, typing pools must have saved so much money!

Architects spending all their time drawing in visio - how about handing a sketch to a 16 yr old school leaver and getting them to draw it up?

If I were paying, I'd want my staff doing the high skilled roles and leave the admin to admin staff.

*says someone faffing on a forum.

DITTO