Over the last week I’ve been getting things ready to hand over to the staff that will remain after I have moved on. I’ve been trying to tie up a lot of loose ends that I should have completed some time ago.
Not that these things are difficult, I just hate doing them. This job has been great and as I said in an earlier post I’ll really miss the people, but time is marching on and it’s only three weeks to the end of the contract. So I’ll just have to suck it up and get on with it, I’ll be working a bit tomorrow and all day Sunday – this will be the last ever weekend that I work in this contract, well that is the way it seems just now.
What will I do when I finish on the 31st of August, well I’ll just look for a new contract. I’d quite like it to be in the local (Northeast England) area, as I’ve made a number of friends but there is no guarantee that it will be. So as far as moving to new job goes, I’ll just have to take what I can find initially – then I may have to adopt the grab what you can strategy.
As to the situation where I’m currently working I will say is that the people who are driving the cost cutting exercise seem to have a slightly skewed view of things, not too off the wall – but a fair bit from reality nonetheless. I hear the cry “sour grapes”, but it is not what I think or how I feel. The people who have been brought in to reduce the IT costs will find a successful outcome, in as much as the standing costs will be reduced. What they seem to be oblivious to, is that the whole IT world is changing and that these changes cost money and in a business where someone else dictates the changes – you may have to pay an excessive amount for the changes that you have to have.
Why am I telling you that changes cost money, well I probably shouldn’t – but the truth of the matter is that they do. I’m sure that the Lawyers, accountants etc will try and squash the costs down, the problem here will be that the companies legal staff will have done this once, the IBM lawyers have done this many times and will run rings around the companies business lawyers. So although the agreed service levels will be met, probably the fist thing that will be said after the agreement is implemented is – that’s not what we expected.
So to close I’d say that the company will see a reduction in basic costs, however when there are any changes to be made the costs will be very steep. After all, the company that is doing all the work isn’t doing it for altruistic reasons – they will do this to make money.