Reply to: Attitude to being available out of hours

[psychocandy]

Start doing some evening classes - explain to the client that you have to be somewhere at 7pm that day.

A few of us used to go to the theatre each week when we were working in London - PM used to look shocked every week when he'd ask us to stay late and we had tickets for things to go to whenever he asked.

Don';t get me wrong - if theres an upgrade happening I dont mind starting at 4pm or whatever and going until midnight.

What I don't like doing is being there at midnight - its all gone wrong and there are no contingencies for someone else taking over and I've got stay on site to fix for another 8 hours!

[Ignis Fatuus]

Here I've used my evenings to upgrade my skill set to make me more valuable, so I class that as study time regardless if it is self taught or not I would say it's an evening class if asked to work late etc, my attitude to it is I work with them not for them it might be frowned upon but there are too many people out there willing exploit people's good nature.

Abso-effing-lutely.

Work with, not for them.
Have been contracted, not bought.
And yes, there are people who will get angry with you if you don't let them exploit you. You didn't go contracting to let them run your life.

[The Spartan]

Here I've used my evenings to upgrade my skill set to make me more valuable, so I class that as study time regardless if it is self taught or not I would say it's an evening class if asked to work late etc, my attitude to it is I work with them not for them it might be frowned upon but there are too many people out there willing exploit people's good nature.

[TheFaQQer]

Which brings me on to the next thing. Occasionally, I go to their customer site to do upgrades.

Extra hours is no problem - sometimes its out of hours. They're OK with that and I usually tell them Im taking a day off if I worked late the day before.

But, no matter how many times I point it out to them, they never listen when I tell them we need to plan for what to do if things go wrong. i.e. extended hours on site. They never have a backup plan for someone else to take over.

I've been on site for 16 hours in the past until 4am in the morning. Its not professional IMHO to expect someone to do this - mistakes get made when this tired. And its a clear breach of health and safety.....

But I tell them, they ignore me. I'm going to do it one day and walk off site and go home but that'll cause an almighty tulip storm....

Start doing some evening classes - explain to the client that you have to be somewhere at 7pm that day.

A few of us used to go to the theatre each week when we were working in London - PM used to look shocked every week when he'd ask us to stay late and we had tickets for things to go to whenever he asked.

[psychocandy]

Which brings me on to the next thing. Occasionally, I go to their customer site to do upgrades.

Extra hours is no problem - sometimes its out of hours. They're OK with that and I usually tell them Im taking a day off if I worked late the day before.

But, no matter how many times I point it out to them, they never listen when I tell them we need to plan for what to do if things go wrong. i.e. extended hours on site. They never have a backup plan for someone else to take over.

I've been on site for 16 hours in the past until 4am in the morning. Its not professional IMHO to expect someone to do this - mistakes get made when this tired. And its a clear breach of health and safety.....

But I tell them, they ignore me. I'm going to do it one day and walk off site and go home but that'll cause an almighty tulip storm....

[Ignis Fatuus]

Thanks for clearing that one up

Only my opinion. Worth what you paid for it (probably less if you ask NLUK).

[SueEllen]

Surely the trick here is to establish the boundaries of what is acceptable very early on in the contract. It's never happened to me (yet...) but if I started getting out of hours calls from a client, after the second or third call I would be sitting down with them and explaining that out of hours support isn't part of the contract and would need to be factored into the rate blah blah etc.

I would either:
1. Not pick up my mobile phone to them, or
2. Pick it up and tell them I'm in the middle of doing something like looking after children, taking a shower etc and tell them to call back in the working day.

I only ever give clients' my mobile phone number. They never have a reason to have my house phone number.

For those clients who baulk at the idea of paying extra for this, they clearly don't understand (or don't want to) the contractor model and then you have to make a decision to either support their lack of understanding (by doing it for free) or take a stand. Yes you risk not getting a renewal but who wants to work for a client who doesn't even remotely understand or respect the business model of contracting.

It's better not to be renewed.

You always have a risk - however small of an IR35 investigation - and you don't want them finding one contract with a client like that.

I do think there is room for give and take though, and I wouldn't be so quick to put the brakes on it if the client was generally reasonable, for example allowing the time to be taken in lieu.

Reasonable clients do things from the beginning that let you know they are reasonable, and they would never suggest you do an on-call/important roll out without ensuring you are adequately compensated first.

[The Spartan]

If you ask for time off in lieu, that's a permiedom thing. If you as Director of YourCo give your employee (you) time off in lieu for the work that he (you) provided to YourCo, and YourCo's client remains OK about how YourCo fulfils its contract, that's a business thing.

Thanks for clearing that one up

[Ignis Fatuus]

Yeh. But they still do. Unfortunately a lot of clients want you to be exactly like a permie.

....

For those clients who baulk at the idea of paying extra for this, they clearly don't understand (or don't want to) the contractor model and then you have to make a decision to either support their lack of understanding (by doing it for free) or take a stand. Yes you risk not getting a renewal but ...

you're not a permie. Some clients will fail to understand that and make it impossible to continue happily in the contract. Tough. Walk away.
If you can't walk away from (sh)it, what is contracting for?

I do think there is room for give and take though, and I wouldn't be so quick to put the brakes on it if the client was generally reasonable, for example allowing the time to be taken in lieu.

Forgive if I'm wrong and I'm sure someone will correct me if I am but that last part sounds like a permiedoom thing

If you ask for time off in lieu, that's a permiedom thing. If you as Director of YourCo give your employee (you) time off in lieu for the work that he (you) provided to YourCo, and YourCo's client remains OK about how YourCo fulfils its contract, that's a business thing.

[The Spartan]

I wouldn't be so quick to put the brakes on it if the client was generally reasonable, for example allowing the time to be taken in lieu.

Forgive if I'm wrong and I'm sure someone will correct me if I am but that last part sounds like a permiedoom thing

[The Spartan]

The alternative is the loss of the contract as the client may claim one is not a team player

I'm a contractor not a team player

[Willapp]

Surely the trick here is to establish the boundaries of what is acceptable very early on in the contract. It's never happened to me (yet...) but if I started getting out of hours calls from a client, after the second or third call I would be sitting down with them and explaining that out of hours support isn't part of the contract and would need to be factored into the rate blah blah etc.

For those clients who baulk at the idea of paying extra for this, they clearly don't understand (or don't want to) the contractor model and then you have to make a decision to either support their lack of understanding (by doing it for free) or take a stand. Yes you risk not getting a renewal but who wants to work for a client who doesn't even remotely understand or respect the business model of contracting.

I do think there is room for give and take though, and I wouldn't be so quick to put the brakes on it if the client was generally reasonable, for example allowing the time to be taken in lieu.

[BolshieBastard]

If the client presumes that some free work will be available, perhaps he should put that in the contract!

Or the client knows he has to pay for it, just like the rest of the services.

[psychocandy]

Premium rate 09xx services can range from £0.10/min up to £1.50/min. Get one of those numbers and select the £1.50/min. I do not know how much a telco keeps, but you make money while the client is on the phone. This is about £90/hour for the client, so keep pretending you just woke up and have no idea who is calling during the first minutes, than ask tons of questions and clarifications, so about 15 minutes in the call you may start talking about the topic that they called with. Be a nitpicker and go into every bit of detail that you might think of and hopefully a question like "can you send me a usual report tomorrow", will turn into a £45 deal. Darn, why don't they offer higher minute rates.

I never tried it, so do not blame me...

Istvan - sounds like you have experience of 'making your client last a bit longer' LOL. You should take this up professionally maybe. :-)

[psychocandy]

I'm sorry, but I didn't go contracting in order to have someone feel able to demand something that's not mentioned in the contract, and then blame me and my character for not providing it.

Yeh. But they still do. Unfortunately a lot of clients want you to be exactly like a permie....

I even had one client many years ago asked me if I could do on call like the rest of the team. I said OK fair enough lets speak to agency and sort out contract which they were fine with.

They offered me same on call rate as permies (£25 a night or something crap). Best thing was if I got called I got paid my hourly rate but only when I was in the office. If I got called and sort on the phone - zero. If I drove in an hour, spend 30 mins sorting, then drove home another hour I'd get 1/2 hourly rate. (two and half hours of my time, £15 worth of petrol, £5 or whatever it was bridge toll, £20approx+VAT charged LOL).

Umm let me think - no thanks. Didnt go down well for some reason....Not quite sure what they expected me to say.