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> Perhaps, but it would seem to me that in the analogy below, the consumer
> would become more of a desirable target to other lenders. It's the
> difference between telling your lender "I'd like to pay you less money," and
> telling a new lender "I'd like to pay you money."
"I'd like to pay you less money" is exactly what you're saying to a lender
when you inform them that you have offers of better rates from other
lenders and are giving them an opportunity to not lose you as a customer.
In the past, many lenders would agree to simply lower your rate, but in
more recent years they've gone over to making refi offers to existing
customers when the rates drop instead of waiting for the customer to
shop for rates and possibly go elsewhere without even calling to discuss
their current loan.
> But getting back to tech writing...the critical factors are time and
> experience, which is what Ned stated in his post. In his example we're
> looking at a contractor who may have been on the job for between six and 24
> months. That's a huge amount of time, and the client will have indeed sunk
> a great deal of money into the contractor teaching him or her 'the
> business'. After 12 months I think any contractor should renegotiate their
> contract. This is, after all, when permanent employees receive their merit
> increases.
Contractors are not employees, though I know many companies can't
seem to tell the difference. I hire contractors when the workload balloons
to more than regular staff can handle, and hire two kinds of contractors:
low-rate people who can immediately pick up grunt work and free staff
up to do complex work that requires more knowledge, and high-rate
people who have prior experience in highly specialized areas we need
and can hit the ground running on work requring more knowledge. Any
person in either category who is going to need more than a couple of
weeks of "teaching" to come up to speed isn't going to still be around
in six weeks, much less six months.
> I believe Lauren's example was a three-month contract. If not, we can use
> that as the example. As I said previously, unless the contractor was an
> absolute superstar during those three months, I can't see renegotiating at
> that time if all the contractor did was make good on the deliverables.
Not necessarily. It's certainly true in the case of the low-rate grunt
work temp, but in the case of the high-rate specialist who came aboard
for a short three month contract and now is needed for more time or
a new contract, it's quite possible that I may have to be prepared to
pay a higher rate for the same level of service if there is higher demand
elsewhere for the talent.
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