Fired is not a term that should be used loosely, because it does make a difference when applying for unemployment compensation, dealing with future employers, and working with recruiters at agencies that can place you in the future. Saying that you were fired due to performance based reasons is much different than being terminated due to a project ending.
I can’t speak to your exact experience because I have not worked in the same companies, but having worked in companies that used contractors extensively, they are seen as much more expendable than regular employees. These were usually employees that were either temp to regular, or were brought in for specific projects, and if they were struggling at all, they would be replaced. the company does not have a huge investment in the person generally, so they will cut ties with them, and move on.
As far as job advertising goes, there may also be specific laws that apply to certain industries regarding advertising for open positions, in order to meet licensing requirements. In my current company, we have to advertise certain positions in certain ways in order to maintain our FCC license, even if we know that this may be a pointless exercise.
Lastly, there is a cultural difference in industries, companies, and regions that may lead to workers being considered more easily fired. what it ultimately comes down to is risk. can a suitable replacement worker be hired without putting the job/ business at risk, including monetary cost? In certain states and districts, where the courts or unemployment boards are more worker friendly, companies may be more cautious due to the potential of lawsuit if they are not completely buttoned up in their processes.
I don’t think IT was always like that. Prior to the 90s, I think it was treated as dull and mundane as any other esoteric technical engineering job. When IT exploded in the 90s with the personal PC and the internet, it became this fast paced engine of transformation. Timeframes became shorten and expectations became raised, often to the point of absurdity. In simplest terms, if you were not involved with something that is not going to completely transform the way people and businesses do things (and get rich in the process) you were wasting your time.
IT also tends to be project based, which by definition has a set expiration date. Even if you are managing the ongoing operations of a companies systems, at a certain point, those systems will become obsolete, so you should be taking steps to not become obsolete with them.
Contrast this with other industries like the law or medicine or architecture. While these industries also change, the changes tend to not render everything learned previously as obsolete. So more of a premium is placed on longevity and experience.
Also, if you get fired in law, medicine or architecture, it’s presumed you must have fucked up big time.
“Superstars” by definition are few and far between, as are the projects that require superstars. The consulting firm I used to work for, our bill rates were from around $60 for BAs and junior consultants to around $250 for PMs and Creative Directors. That’s what we charge the clients and even that was a hard sell sometimes (at which point we offshore to our Eastern European offices). And these weren’t bullshit projects (well, some were). Most were highly technical trading systems for investment banks or customer facing ecommerce sites.
I kind of feel like unless you are known in a specific industry, it’s probably pretty tough to work as a $200+ hour consultant. A lot of big companies tend to have very established procurement processes, which makes it hard to get contracts if you aren’t IBM, Deloitte or Accenture. Plus you always have to balance working on your current client with selling yourself for your next one. A
Yeah, most of my guys get around $90 to $120- and its corp to corp, so they are paying all their self employment.
But they still make half again what they would make working for a corporation and most of them won’t consider a contract to hire job - they consult because they like that.
And our model is way different than the Accenture model. Most of our clients are ecommerce or healthcare.
Causality report? You must work either in philosophy or quantum physics.
I managed contractors like 25 years ago, before the Microsoft ruling, and they were basically permanent. They were contractors because that got around headcount restrictions, and we hired them when management told us to get rid of contractors.
With the current rules I thought contractors more or less had to leave before very long. My friend who was a contractor always worked short gigs - which was what he expected.
My uncle worked in the defense industry back in the early 1960s, and there everyone expected to get fired when the contract was over or when the company lost the contract they had ramped up to propose. Back then this was not the case for everyone.
I can see how a lot of people like the autonomy and the ability to focus on your technical work, rather than bullshit management crap and corporate culture team building nonsense.
There is a tendency to think of contractors as very disposable though. My last firm, we used to bring on contractors at the last minute to augment our teams. A terrible practice IMHO as nearly every single one was horrible. Or maybe the role we were asking them to do wasn’t a good fit. Either way, they didn’t get much leeway.
I was a contractor a few years back for a large insurance company. They liked me, but contractors they didn’t like, basically got a call to their agency to not come back the next day.
Yep, they do think of them as disposable. But the consultants tend to think of the jobs as disposable as well. If something better comes along, they given their contractual notice (usually 30 days) and jump ship.
At least here and now, the supply demand curve is favoring the consultant/developers - at least those with experience. We are seeing negotiable fee schedules - we didn’t see that a year ago.
I guess. But even as a contractor, I imagine it still takes time to find a new gig. Plus there are a lot of garbage contracting jobs out there too. I constantly get spammed for project manager jobs that I wouldn’t consider even when I was unemployed.
To **Shagnasty’**s point, I feel that there are very few professional industries that allow you to jump around like that. Even in other technical disciplines.
And to be honest, I’ve always felt that there was something about IT that does not get the respect of other industries, even other corporate functional areas like accounting or marketing. It’s almost an attitude of “yeah, we’ll pay you a lot of money because we have to. But we really don’t want to keep you around any longer than we need to either.”
If you’ve read the IT trade rags like Computerworld and older ones like Datamation and Infoworld, you’d know you are not alone in this feeling. There were column upon column about how CIOs had to demonstrate that their divisions added value.
It seems that Sony cheaped out on IT and IT Security since that stuff wasn’t important - and see what happened to them.
Not usually. Most of these guys spend maybe two weeks looking for work - which they usually do when they know a gig is ending (the company usually gives 30 days). Unless they want to take time off. In the past month, two of our consultants started new gigs where the client would have liked them faster, but they finished out their old gig.
My current company is constantly guilty of that very thing. I find myself saying to vendors “money is no object, just get it done” way too often even when they give a ridiculously high quote for something they didn’t want to do in the first place. The thing is, money really isn’t an object for many of the big players in that industry. I hear managers referring to half million dollar quotes as “trivial” all the time.
Like you say, that can be good or bad. It is that people never balk on money for things that are actually needed but it also causes an extreme sense of entitlement. I have to do a lot of vendor management and often take their side because some of the smaller ones would get steamrolled if some of the more aggressive managers had unfettered access to them.
You are right about the secrecy and paranoia aspect as well. I have gotten used to it but my facility is locked down as tightly as Fort Knox. Part of my job is doing “escorts” which isn’t nearly as fun as the name suggests. It is just babysitting outside contractors and watching them work to make sure they don’t screw up anything or violate any rules. Sometimes I have to sit there for hours while asking them questions during every step while taking notes. The notes are really just a way for me to kill time and some of them really hate being watched that closely but what are you going to do? My kids nor anyone else that I know personally can ever see where I work.
I’m an engineer. To me, that financial cost is a reflection of other types of cost, which apparently that kind of customers never see.
When we try to explain “it’s not just the programmer hours we’re talking about, we mean there’s going to be consequences which need to be taken into account”, they answer “it doesn’t matter, we’ll fix whatever needs to get fixed, just do it”.
Time. Effort. Work. Headaches. Having to make those other patches because of the patch. Having any new addition to the system need more patches, because of the patches of the patch. Things that would be standard become non-standard because Someone wanted to be able to do three separate tasks from a single screen, so errors that would have taken a few seconds to fix in a standard system become either a days-long nightmare or “sorry, you’ll have to restart the whole process” because those three tasks are now inextricably linked and because of the restrictions the client demanded. I’ve been having a pain in the ass ticket with one such case for three weeks now… the user did not get any training, I am not given any information about the process except what I glean from the user (requests to get information about the processes have been met with “you do not need to know”) and the manuals she got are missing key steps. I know how would that process work in the standard, but this is not standard. It does things that neither I nor any of my coworkers understand, because someone wanted to be able to do three steps in one.
And then they complain that they can’t find talent, and it is all the fault of the colleges who won’t train students on the shiny new technology so the students will be ready to work without wasting money on training.
So we need more H1B visas.
Most companies are not in the IT business. IT is an expensive cost center that supports the core business. From a business standpoint, there is no value added in training your employees in some technology, only to have them take that training somewhere else.
Also, I question the benefit of a week or so “just in time” training in some new technology. Most technologies the company can train you on, you can probably learn as much or more by downloading a trial version and watching some YouTube videos.
Plus, why would a company spend money retraining employees who may or may not get the new technology when they can just call Cognizant or Dangerosa’s firm and get an “expert” who already knows it.
I put “expert” in quotes because I question how much of an expert most of these big-firm consultants are (from first hand experience). But it doesn’t matter. If they don’t work out, you just call your account manager and request a new one. No one gets fired for hiring IBM or Accenture.
