test please delete

[NickFitz]

Exercise bicycling done, green ring closed

[covbob]

10/10. Good rant. It's one of those situations that contractors face where it's worse than HR for a permanent employee.
There's another thread where people are arguing they could never go permanent because of office politics and lots of other reasons, and I can't help thinking that the reasons they give must be because they have only ever worked for a couple of clients and only directly with them (so effectively like a permie). When you stick in multiple layers and complex politics with people taking cuts everywhere, sometimes us and them have things in common.

I hear you there! I suppose it's the challenge of trying to be a "proper business" - supply chain issues are just par for the course.

Having said that some chains are better than others. I did one with HPE as the ConsultancyCo and a government department as the end client and that was fine. They'd integrated into the department's business really well so that approvals for access and the like sailed through. Sadly we were all walked off site two months in after the accountants realised that having four different consultancies all "delivering" on the same programme had burned through the budget.

OTOH I did one the other year which was Agency -> AT&T -> IBM - > ClientCo and that was a nightmare. Everyone wanted a piece of me and approvals for anything had to go the whole chain. The worst thing was that the agency "relationship manager" saw himself as part of the consultancy setup and wanted everything run by him first(even down to being annoyed he didn't know I'd been lent a ClientCo laptop) - after all he had the business relationship with AT&T. In the first week a contractor PM and I both had a load of tulip from him for asking AT&T directly for the laptop we needed for accessing their systems. Doubly so at renewal time - all discussion must go through him. Sadly that didn't apply for anything where we needed him to actually do anything (tulip about hotdesks, working practices, cranking the handle for access requests) where he'd want to know every move we made but sent us straight to AT&T, IBM or the client. Business relationships only matter when there's an upsell or extra margin to be made...

Right, time for conf call with the condemned permies.

[covbob]

I have been very fortunate in not ever having such a complicated chain. I think the closest comparable scenario I've had was when I worked briefly at Nationwide. MyCo -> Agency -> Consultancy -> Client. Never saw hide nor hair of the consultancy - met them once before I was offered the contract and that was it. I worked directly with the client and the agency paid me. Simples.

Lucky position for you! I didn't even know that Agency2 were in my chain until after the third call with a bunch of random Septics. I still don't fully appreciate the machinations as they use different company email addresses with abandon...

Head down, keep invoicing I guess.

[covbob]

And I think I've talked myself out of three Saturdays of work, but actually these days I'd rather lose the money and take the time to myself. Years ago I'd have grabbed every hour going.

[covbob]

Exercise bicycling done, green ring closed

Green ring sounds like you need to visit a doctor.

[covbob]

Condemned permies obviously not bothered - either not on the call or just not bothered. Can't say I blame them.

[covbob]

That was redundant in the "not bothered" department. Sitting on the call silently and not engaging is my suspicion.

[NickFitz]

I have been very fortunate in not ever having such a complicated chain. I think the closest comparable scenario I've had was when I worked briefly at Nationwide. MyCo -> Agency -> Consultancy -> Client. Never saw hide nor hair of the consultancy - met them once before I was offered the contract and that was it. I worked directly with the client and the agency paid me. Simples.

I've not even had anything that complicated really, just MyCo -> Agency -> Client or MyCo -> Client. Occasionally there's been more beyond that, such as MyCo -> Client -> Big Advertising Agency -> Big Online Fashion Retailer, but although I sat in on meetings with the BAA people occasionally, I was mostly just stuck in a corner and left to get on with programming

Head down, keep invoicing I guess.

That's the way to do it!

[DoctorStrangelove]

Ah, this box (Asus Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee) thinks its battery is fecked.

Which it very probably is after 6 years or more.

[covbob]

For all my moaning I'm still here. If I can see out the 12 months of this one and talk about a renewal then I could probably afford that kitchen extension Mrs CB is asking for.