As I said yesterday, we’ve started a major project recently. It involves moving our whole estate to an other European country, to assist with this there will be a requirement for additional hands to manage the day to day running of the enterprise while it is moved. The chances are that the people that they bring in will be OK, but there is just the possibility that they will not be. Now this doesn’t happen often, however when it does it makes for some long term misery. There are some problems with one of the people in the team, these are pretty fundamental as far as a team goes. As an example he was taken on as a technical lead, who if he had his way would lead us right into the toilet. It’s not that he lacks skill, he doesn’t. But he does have a cavalier attitude towards his work. To be fair he has other problems to contend with at home, which I can sympathise with as I work away from home for lengthy periods. But he seems to be unable to separate his work from his private life which is a pre-requisite for an IT contractor.
I said in an other post in this blog that there was a saying that you’d been Pepe’d, well there is a distinct possibility that this will now read that you’ve been Phil’d (and not in a nice way). I have provided the company with the details of a contractor who seems to fit the bill, the powers that be seem to be quite happy with him any way. But still there is a desire to go out into the unknown and go through the process akin to buying a lottery ticket, now I’m not saying that I can provide all the requirements of this organisation – after all they are a large multinational company. But I do know what’s out there and who is really good at doing what they say that they will do, in the world of IT having someone that you can trust to do the job is invaluable.
Had the powers that be approached me I could have provided them with a list of several contractors that would have had the ideal skill set and attitude for this job, but the process involved in hiring a contractor just doesn’t seem to allow for this. The contract market is pretty incestuous, many contractors stay in touch with each other and know what’s going on out there. The people in organisations that do the hiring and firing never seem to be prepared to ask the contractors if they know of any one who fits the bill. Not to put too fine apoint on it I have worked with many contractors who have the skills that we need, they may not all be available but then that’s how contracting works. Each contractor has a skill set that has to be continually maintained and upgraded at the contractors expense, as a result they dont tend to waste time and effort learning things that they don’t need.
Still the problems that were caused by Pepe and Phil can be easily over come, just put an other couple of people on the job to sort it out!
As an aside the project work is now getting to be more critical, the users have no idea of what’s involved so aren’t very enthused by the poject.