Reply to: Corruption at work

[Platypus]

Anyone seen "House of Lies", especially the first series? Hilarious levels of cynicism and corruption.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lies

Thanks! Will take a look at this!

[IR35 Avoider]

Anyone seen "House of Lies", especially the first series? Hilarious levels of cynicism and corruption.

House of Lies is an American comedy television series created by Matthew Carnahan.[1] The show, which premiered on Showtime on January 8, 2012, is based on the book, House of Lies: How Management Consultants Steal Your Watch and Then Tell You the Time, written by Martin Kihn, a former consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton. It follows a group of management consultants who stop at nothing to get business deals done.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lies

[original PM]

Well when you consider that the big consultancies are companies and therefore want to make a profit.

They make that money out of the companies they consult for therefore it is completely in their best interests to drag the project out as long as possible- even to the point of making it fail as long as they cannot be blamed for it.

So like the situation we are in now when you start to try to pin them down to deliverables you end getting more and more different 'project artefacts' with convoluted clauses in simply designed to ensure their asses are covered.

So you spend thousands playing games which really do not help towards the goal.

So why get them in in the first place? Well it is not possible the execs could actually go with the recommendations of the staff is it - as that would imply the staff are of similar value...

Ho hum

[PurpleGorilla]

People might think the job of the big consultancies is to get the job done, but their real role is to get as many of their consultants on the project as possible.

[Cirrus]

A mate of my mate Cookie put forward this idea of providing testers to a big Mobile Phone company he was working for. He wanted my company to act as the front. I had zero confidence he could ever get this past the heirachy - Finance, PSL etc. As he was thinking in some tens of high margin people, I couldn't take the risk of it all blowing up.

Guess what?

He made over a million.

[Dallas]

Indeed, my last place, 25 of them, no one knew what they did, took the (rubbish) management three months to realise and get them out.

The place before it was the management (permie) who set up the consultancy and delivered a few apps that require permanent on site support - genius

[cojak]

People might think the job of the big consultancies is to get the job done, but their real role is to get as many of their consultants on the project as possible.

A few projects ago, one of the big system integrators kindly gave us a couple of graduates to use. Cost the project £500 a day each to do little more than filing and learn as much as they could "on the job".

And to get more more work packages from the client. I've seen some big consultancies use that as their ONLY role, once they are 'in', they don't have to worry about the deliverables of the original work package, as it's so bloody difficult to boot them out.

[meridian]

People might think the job of the big consultancies is to get the job done, but their real role is to get as many of their consultants on the project as possible.

A few projects ago, one of the big system integrators kindly gave us a couple of graduates to use. Cost the project £500 a day each to do little more than filing and learn as much as they could "on the job".

[NotAllThere]

Program manager of a client used to work for a BigConsultancy. His former team formed LittleConsultancy, who he then hired as the consultancy partner for the project. His wife held a significant shareholding in LittleConsultancy. Any permie who looked like to be a danger to LittleConsultancy soon left/was forced to leave.

[mudskipper]

That's where you're going wrong then

[greenlake]

[BrilloPad]

Does any of that stop you invoicing?

[EternalOptimist]

I was brought in at a large bank in the UK to take over development of an app. It was promoted, and paid for by the 'special projects' team and overrode the objections of the IT dept.
The structure was like an inverted pyramid, with loads of senior managers, project managers, team leaders, testers ..and one lonely little developer at the bottom, doing all the work.
She was a plucky little soul and did a good job , considering she was fresh out of uni.
All these people, about 20 of them, were from one of the big five and the bank man know them very well.
anyways, I went to see the IT manager at the end of day 1 and told him I wasn't coming back. The IT department went into overdrive to get me to stay, they obviously hated what was going on as much as I did.

two evenings later, after hours, two looming figures stood behind me at my desk and told me to 'f off'
or I would never work in IT again.

So I rewrote the app and did 12 more projects before moving on

[clearedforlanding]

Happens all the time on defence projects, folk hired on the military old boys network despite being totally inappropriate skills wise.

Only place worse is the Indian outsourcers where promotion and hiring is all to do with caste, race and religion.

Yes.

It is always best to keep your head down. You are unlikely to be able to change anything.

[CoolCat]

Happens all the time on defence projects, folk hired on the military old boys network despite being totally inappropriate skills wise.

Only place worse is the Indian outsourcers where promotion and hiring is all to do with caste, race and religion.