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

[Stan.goodvibes]

It's about the value you add. If someone asks you to automate 'x' and offers you a grand, but the job takes you five minutes, would you give a refund? You've still added the value. They paid for the fact that you know how to do it, not the fact that it took 5 minutes.

Thanks Platypus. Just to clarify - the first week or two I was there I was given some Excel workbooks to fix and did it at my customary speed. Eventually after a few times of nagging my rather suprised manager for more work he actually told me to slow down.

Secondly, the work I did was done well and I was a pretty efficient VBA coder, everyone was happy with the results and the timeframe, and in the end they paid the agency off to keep me working direct (for FIVE years). Quite how that is giving the rest of you a bad name I don't know.

I've also had my fair share of tulip contracts since.

My current role - they know I don't have much to do but are prepared to keep me on for those moments when they quickly need something done and to help with the transition to the outsourcer. Like all the other times I've landed a cushy gig it's because I walk in on day one and work my butt off delivering (usually for a few months) until someone gives me an indication it's OK to slow down.


Point being, IT contracting can still be a cruisy wicket.

[JoJoGabor]

The last few years, I have noticed the majority of people in IT are absolutely rubbish. people who claim to be specialists know about 30% of their chosen specialism. The contractors who can earn the big money are those who know several areas in depth and when I say in depth I mean 90% upwards of their technologies. When these people come in it is amazing how much they can look good when surrounded by dross.

On my current project team of 30, about 20 are contractors, and probably only three people are top end, one is a permie and the other two are contractors. No wonder we are facing so much competition from abroad when the majority of native IT people can't even be bothered to learn their job properly.

[psychocandy]

It's about the value you add. If someone asks you to automate 'x' and offers you a grand, but the job takes you five minutes, would you give a refund? You've still added the value. They paid for the fact that you know how to do it, not the fact that it took 5 minutes.

Didnt Brunel do something like this? Charge someone a shedload for hammering in one nail or something. When they moaned that it took him 5 mins he explained they were paying for the expertise and not the time it took.

[Platypus]

How can you be proud of ripping off your client?

It's about the value you add. If someone asks you to automate 'x' and offers you a grand, but the job takes you five minutes, would you give a refund? You've still added the value. They paid for the fact that you know how to do it, not the fact that it took 5 minutes.

[NickNick]

Most of us have seen these companies shipping in graduates (often bright and hardworking) with no/limited experience at £1000k+ per day.

Been there, done that, died inside, indie contractor for some ten years now and never looked back.

[quackhandle]

To the OP, don't worry about, the client will have you back contracting in a year or two when the developers have severly f**ked up all your tables, deleted some, created new ones removed all indexes and wonders why the system runs like a dog.

qh

[psychocandy]

As opposed to me who seems to have about 6 months work to do in the next month :-(

Saying that I had a contract once working in an SAP support team. I knew bugger all about SAP but it involved some Unix and no-one knew anything so they needed someone.

Turned up and they were amazed that someone knew how to look at files, move stuff around, and, WOW, even use vi. I gave a training course to the rest of the team and they seemed to think I was the Unix guru of the century..... Easy money.

Still didnt learn a great deal about SAP but they were happy to have a Unix 'guru' on board and I wasn't about to tell them how basic they're requirements were...

[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

[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?

[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.

[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.

[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

[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.

[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

[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