Reply to: IT consulting firms

[m0n1k3r]

The niche consultancies tend to use the same contractors repeatedly to cope with 'overflow'. Of course they would prefer to use their own consultants, but they'll never refuse work if those consultants are all assigned.

Quite. And they would often prefer to hire people on permanent contracts if they could, as that makes it easier for them to plan ahead and create a stronger brand attachment, but since so many of the people they really need prefer to contract, they have very little choice.

[Bee]

The way to approach that one is to tell them they need to book a set of meetings and they must propose an agenda for each one. Even if they can't do the agenda, you have a fixed number of hours to do the handover in. Also get them to write the handover document as you go along.

The Handover Document it's crucial for an handover and is done by the contractor , unfortunately very rare, without the notion that the contractor will be "burn".

[Bee]

The niche consultancies tend to use the same contractors repeatedly to cope with 'overflow'. Of course they would prefer to use their own consultants, but they'll never refuse work if those consultants are all assigned.

In the international firms, they will get the consultants on the bench from another country, if they don't find on the bench they will hire an external, they are called sub conctractors. If you are a good contractor without a mind set of consultant hater you can have a long term contract.

In this case my advice is to be hired directly by the Consuling firm for obvious reasons.

[Bee]

I guess you must be contracting in Process area, rather than technical. When you accept a contract for e.g. as a Scrum Master, you are expected to help/train the team to follow/adopt Agile practices, however if you are contracting as a Developer / Tester / Designer do you train them? In the second context you are there to do the job, not to provide training.

If you are contracted as a Scrum Master, you need to apply in your team, if your team has only a certification or awareness you just need to make them understand the workflow and put in practice. This a simple methodology and I don't see this as an issue or consider a training.

What is stopping the client to employ a trainer?

If you obtain the services of a Builder, would you expect him to teach or train you?

None, the Consulting firms pay all the certifications for the permies and not all the certifications in the market are useful. If you know the basic best practices (and can be their own) you realize that majority of the methodologies are the same crap and you don't need to waste your money.

[itjobs]

...
Yeah, as I said. If they're not bright enough to learn it on their own, they'll not be able to really do much with a handover. However, any work that can't be handed over sufficantly will disparage your reputation, if you care about that, you really don't want you being obtuse to be the reason the hand over failed. Can't do much if they're just useless though...

Handing over is quite different from training. Handing over is essential for BAU and a professional ethic for us contractors but training is not. There is a distinction here. But I agree with handing over part. I do this all the time

I use the water hose method ... Just swamp them with info, keep the level of info at expert level, keep it strong. Also make the pupils write a schedule and tell you what they need training on. Quite amusing. My last place I was handing over a product that ran on Linux, one of the pupils didn't know what yum was. I could have trained him for six years and it wouldn't have made any difference.

The fact is they will never read your notes, they will forget everything you ever told them with a couple of weeks. You are leaving you have no status in their tiny minds.

I like this approach. Tried couple of times and occasionally received a schedule "We need to know everything..."

[fool]

I guess you must be contracting in Process area, rather than technical. When you accept a contract for e.g. as a Scrum Master, you are expected to help/train the team to follow/adopt Agile practices, however if you are contracting as a Developer / Tester / Designer do you train them? In the second context you are there to do the job, not to provide training. What is stopping the client to employ a trainer?

If you obtain the services of a Builder, would you expect him to teach or train you?

I'm a developer and a sysadmin. I've worked on projects both alone and as part of a team, but either way I'm happy to explain why I do things the way I do and why you shouldn't do it that way. Being able to defend and explain your work is part of being an expert, if you can't explain why you do something, then you should really think about that.

That said, there is different types of training though. Doing a review on a PR is different than a non-technical guy sitting next to me and asking what "ls" is.

I use the water hose method ... Just swamp them with info, keep the level of info at expert level, keep it strong. Also make the pupils write a schedule and tell you what they need training on. Quite amusing. My last place I was handing over a product that ran on Linux, one of the pupils didn't know what yum was. I could have trained him for six years and it wouldn't have made any difference.

The fact is they will never read your notes, they will forget everything you ever told them with a couple of weeks. You are leaving you have no status in their tiny minds.

Yeah, as I said. If they're not bright enough to learn it on their own, they'll not be able to really do much with a handover. However, any work that can't be handed over sufficantly will disparage your reputation, if you care about that, you really don't want you being obtuse to be the reason the hand over failed. Can't do much if they're just useless though.

[itjobs]

Why?

I train permies all the time. The fact is, if they couldn't learn it on their own, they're not going to sufficantly supplant me from the market but I can hand over the bau and leave when the building of things has stopped.

I guess you must be contracting in Process area, rather than technical. When you accept a contract for e.g. as a Scrum Master, you are expected to help/train the team to follow/adopt Agile practices, however if you are contracting as a Developer / Tester / Designer do you train them? In the second context you are there to do the job, not to provide training. What is stopping the client to employ a trainer?

If you obtain the services of a Builder, would you expect him to teach or train you?

[fool]

The issue is expecting us to train that permie.

Why?

I train permies all the time. The fact is, if they couldn't learn it on their own, they're not going to sufficantly supplant me from the market but I can hand over the bau and leave when the building of things has stopped.

[SueEllen]

IBM are binning the permies at some rate.

Despite them still being required.

So, lots of contract opportunities

Makes perfect sense on a spreadsheet somewhere in Armonk.


(ex: IBM permie)

Permies have training, pension and other benefit costs.

[cojak]

IT consulting firms

The niche consultancies tend to use the same contractors repeatedly to cope with 'overflow'. Of course they would prefer to use their own consultants, but they'll never refuse work if those consultants are all assigned.

[NotAllThere]

You worked at any of those?

I had to staff a project team once using consultancy resources, with right of veto, so we got to choose who we took. In the end about 10% of them were actual employees of the consultancy. The rest were contractors. Some of them being paid more than we were paying the consultancy, which was nice. (They offset the loss against the silly rates they were charging for dumbo no-nothing "business" consultants).

[adubya]

IBM are binning the permies at some rate.

Despite them still being required.

So, lots of contract opportunities

Makes perfect sense on a spreadsheet somewhere in Armonk.


(ex: IBM permie)

[SueEllen]

I personally don't see the problem with this. You presumably got paid well for the work, so who cares if they 'used' you. Contractors are just hired help for every company and they have every right to get rid of us if a perm can carry out the same job.

The issue is expecting us to train that permie.

[blackeye]

Most of the consultancies (almost all of them) operate in a very specific pattern. Hire a contractor like you or me, shadow them with a "resource" (usually at free of charge for the client), after a period of 6 months+ provide an overview to client of how things can be improved (obviously learned from you), ask you to assist a bunch of clueless newbies and then get rid of you.

This almost happened to me in my previous contract through Infosys for UBS. When smelled it, I started getting undue pressure from UBS permie who was overseeing the "improvement". I rejected it point blank saying that "training is not in my contract" and got rid of them in less than 4 weeks. Their ego wanted me to leave early which was a great thing to me.

Now a days, I do not accept contracts when I have to go through any of these consultancies (Infosys, Cognizant, Wipro, Capgemini, Accenture). It should be only Me -> Agency (minus exclusion list) -> Client (although Me -> Client would be awesome).

I personally don't see the problem with this. You presumably got paid well for the work, so who cares if they 'used' you. Contractors are just hired help for every company and they have every right to get rid of us if a perm can carry out the same job.

[itjobs]

Most of the consultancies (almost all of them) operate in a very specific pattern. Hire a contractor like you or me, shadow them with a "resource" (usually at free of charge for the client), after a period of 6 months+ provide an overview to client of how things can be improved (obviously learned from you), ask you to assist a bunch of clueless newbies and then get rid of you.

This almost happened to me in my previous contract through Infosys for UBS. When smelled it, I started getting undue pressure from UBS permie who was overseeing the "improvement". I rejected it point blank saying that "training is not in my contract" and got rid of them in less than 4 weeks. Their ego wanted me to leave early which was a great thing to me.

Now a days, I do not accept contracts when I have to go through any of these consultancies (Infosys, Cognizant, Wipro, Capgemini, Accenture). It should be only Me -> Agency (minus exclusion list) -> Client (although Me -> Client would be awesome).