Getting better at spotting dodgy gigs

[suityou01]

It's been ages since I last slept with Suity's nan. She popped a hip last time, but when she takes her teeth out, she's No 1.

You mean you're her beloved "button mushroom"?

[aoxomoxoa]

Pimp needs a developer with XYZ skill, which is incredibly rare here in the UK. I don't have this skill, but have many many many years in a very very similar product.

I was thinking about doing the training course and have some budget in the training kitty. Pimps client has said this would be acceptable. I have experience in other similar products and have successfully cross trained before in a short space of time.

Today client co have decided to fill the role internally....

Was that when they learnt you were the candidate being put forward?

[NibblyPig]

This means that someone has consciously made this decision. This in my mind means they are mental, and the project is on a collision course.

You must be new to IT.

Every company I've ever worked at has made terrible, terrible decisions. As a permie I'd be very vocal and work really hard to keep them from doing incredibly stupid things, such as:

Director: Wouldn't it be cool if instead of a dropdown to select a product, we had this cool carousel like in a bookshop and they could spin it around?
Entire dev team: Err, no, that would be a bad idea because [reasons], none of us know flash either.
Director: So you're saying it'd have to be in flash, maybe we should hire a flash developer.
Entire dev team: What did you not hear what we said this is a terrible idea.
Director: Okay thanks for your input guys
<a week later>
Dev team lead: So the director just finished interviewing a flash developer and really wants to hire him
Entire dev team: <quits>

"We've hired you to do some ASP.NET but the project template/spec isn't quite ready yet" --> "Oh we're really sad to see you quit (permie job) after 3 months of testing (killmenow) because the project still isn't ready yet"

"I see you've joined the company and it's your first programming job, and in 6 months you've learned asp.net, rewritten half our code, and automated so much stuff we've had to lay off a full time member of staff... Well you'll be pleased to know I'm happy to give you a raise of £500... Oh god I can't believe you're handing in your notice this is going to be a huge pain for the board"

[NotAllThere]

There's close to the knuckle banter, and then there's out and out, vicious personal abuse. Sometimes the line is quite fine, especially with some individuals. Three posts that crossed that line have been removed.

[suityou01]

<ignores previous unpleasantness and gently tips cap to mod>

So the ClientCo has now come round to realising that putting internal rookies on the project may put him on a collision course with deadlines. Progress, but why are folks so slow to see this?

So they want to interview next week. But the cutoff for the training course they would like me to complete is this week.

Once again it's back into neutral while the poor agent goes back to them.

Does it really have to be this hard? Dependancy A is the training course. This is now critical path, and your interview deliverable and contract offer deliverable both have this dependency.