If I was these guys’ customers I’d pit them, but I’m not their customer and I’m still too stunned for a proper pitting.
OK… as has come up repeatedly in recent threads, I currently work as a “SAP consultant” and have done so for a bit over five years. SAP is a huge “business management” computer program - an enormous cousin of MSAccess with lots of built-in functions which have to be activated (or not) to tailor the program to the customer’s needs.
Two jobs ago I was in Costa Rica. The stay was very bad for my health, so I decided that I wouldn’t go back after Easter vacation. Since Easter vacation was 3 weeks, talking about this with my employers when we came here was legal (not very polite, but they weren’t particularly polite either, for example I’d ask HR a question and instead of answering me directly they’d answer through my team leader). Things being like that, I got a job offer for Spain, pretty close to home. It was as a subcontractor to one of the big consulting firms. They claimed the work was 90% done; the guy from whom I was inheriting the position was having a spiritual crisis. I figured the work would be about 30% done, and the guy really was having a crisis of sorts - his gf had kicked him out of the house and, being a rich kid, he’d decided to take his pout around the world for a year. What’s the point of having money if you don’t spend it, what the heck.
I get there, meet the coworkers, meet the client (they didn’t even know this guy as leaving), make a great impression with the client (I’m “local” so when they baited me I knew that the proper response was to bite the bait right off, not slink away whimpering like the “outsiders” had been doing) and set to work.
And found out that the work wasn’t 90% done, or 30% done - it was about -260% done. Yes, with a negative sign. What was done, was done wrong; some of the things that had been done multiplied the work required.
Lots of overtime. This particular consulting firm is french; they make it very clear that any overtime must be reported, compensated asap if possible (free hours), paid if not. But because this project was running as much as 120% overtime, the bosses had made the decision to report and pay for none of it. If the people making decisions had known they heads from their asses, that overtime wouldn’t have been needed. I work in Quality: the bad decisions that lead to my finding such a mess had been taken by people with Finance backgrounds. What would they say if I started trying to tell them how to do Accounting? They’d rip my throat off, and rightfully so! But because finding someone who knows the Quality part is very difficult, they couldn’t “waste time” searching.
Spent two months there, got a better job offer, got the hell out of Tucson. The clients were so happy with me (I’m one of the few honest people who’ve been through that team) that they’re in negotiations with my new employer to handle support once those other guys finish that mess. In this case “support” will mean redoing the whole freaking thing, which is always fun if you’re a masochist.
Two weekends ago, the consultants didn’t go back on Monday. They left Friday, as usual, but didn’t go back. They’re “working remotely”, they say. HO. LY. SHIT! They didn’t say a word, same as they didn’t say a word when someone was going to leave. Im my case, I had lunch with the clients’ bosses on my last day there, but it was because I had gone and told - come Monday, the consultants said “oh, Nava? Nah, she’s been assigned elsewhere” and the clients made appropiate noises. Some of those people who “have been assigned elsewhere” now have emails that look suspiciously like the name of some other big consulting firm but heeeeey… anybody stupid enough to hire “us” is dumb enough to believe that we’re reassigning our best people, right?
Right.
They’ve managed to make those of us who left mid-contract look cleaner than a baby’s butt in an ad for talcum powder. We don’t just pass the cottonball test - the cottonball is cleaner after touching us than it was before. Some of the people at the clients could use a good backhand slap, but heck, 90% of those specific people’s “bad 'tude” comes from the way the consultants (this firm and a previous one) have behaved.
I just wish I could cuss well enough in English to make this a pitting.
