Is contracting disappearing for higher roles?

[WageSlave]

Speaking as someone that contracts as a project/programme manager these days, there are lots of opportunities around, particularly within the public sector.

When done properly, project management is a specialist skill. Note that I said when done properly! Apart from Investment Banking and being a QC, I can't think of many jobs paying more than £100k p/a. Those sorts of sums are usually the realm of CEOs and senior directors, not programme/project managers (contract or not).

Very often clients in the public sector want to take on a contract manager in order to tick a box. This satisfies HM Treasury/NAO (etc.) that a specialist has been procured to handle the project. When everything goes wrong (and it will), the senior civil servant/council director can claim, "We brought in an outside specialist, it's all his fault!".

[Francko]

It just depends on the company, Franco. BT was full of contract PMs until a few weeks ago.

But still it looks like a trend to me, assigning the highest profile roles to permie people only.

[Lucifer Box]

I agree with b). However, I remember between 5 and 10 years ago where I didn't have enough experience to go contracting that I was working with many architects or progr/proj manager who were contractors. Now, it never happens anymore.

It just depends on the company, Franco. BT was full of contract PMs until a few weeks ago.

[Francko]

Sounds about right. Thougt it was normal.

Contractors are:
a) Hired for their specialist skills.
b) Trucked in regardless of quality/skill when the contract goes into panic mode in the forelorn hope that it is not way too late to rectify the situation.

I agree with b). However, I remember between 5 and 10 years ago where I didn't have enough experience to go contracting that I was working with many architects or progr/proj manager who were contractors. Now, it never happens anymore.

[xoggoth]

Sounds about right. Thougt it was normal.

Contractors are:
a) Hired for their specialist skills.
b) Trucked in regardless of quality/skill when the contract goes into panic mode in the forelorn hope that it is not way too late to rectify the situation.

[Francko]

Is it only my impression or the majority of higher level IT jobs (such as architects or proj/programme manager) are assigned almost exclusively to permanent employees?

Having a quick look at jobserve (my mistake, I was idle for the last year), I came to notice that the contracts are predominantly, and would say 95%, reserved for specialist in an IT area (examples, Oracle, SAP, WebSphere, Unix, etc).

What's the point of becoming an architect/programme manager if your salary is going to be the same as an IT specialist and you trade-off non-existing security in return? Sure, you get a decent perm salary of 70-80k, in some cases close to 100k, but unless you become a senior backstabber manager it's hard to go over that.

From one discussion today with a senior manager, they think that for higher roles they want "committed" people. My idea is who can be really committed to a company if not for the money? Isn't that only a way that low skilled people are promoted to higher profiles because they don't have the proper skills to go contracting?