Re: Contractors of Questionable Ability and making the leap (long )

Subject: Re: Contractors of Questionable Ability and making the leap (long )
From: "Anderson, Keith" <keith_anderson -at- GOOITECH -dot- COM>
Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 08:52:16 -0600

I have been watching this thread with a lot of interest. When I saw
Sella's posting, I had to contribute. I have recently gotten out of the
contracting/consulting business for a full time position. Here in the
Chicago area, it is true that tech writers are in demand. My new company
had a difficult time hiring because everyone wants to contract.

I have noticed that many contractors and consultants don't know what
they're doing. I mean *really* know. For example, when I was on one
contract, I worked with a consulting firm who had a bunch of programmers
and project managers straight out of college running the project. I
noticed a lot of consulting firms will use new people because they work
for less, but can be billed the same as a 20-year veteran. These people
could barely keep their heads above water and had little patience for
writers and trainers.

I got burned-out on consulting and contracting. I first worked as a full
time employee for a consulting company and found that I was in the
middle of a negatively political situation in my office. Plus I was
working in a highly political position at a customer's location. I
really felt a lot of pressure without many rewards. The name of the game
was billable hours. They paid my bonus strictly on billable hours. The
more hours past 40/week I put in, the more my potential for a big bonus.
If you run a consulting company, you might think that's okay since all
of your income depends on how much you can bill. However, when you
commute over an hour, one way, every day, and you are expected to bill
50 hours a week, burn-out is imminent. I have a wife and child I would
rather spend my evenings with.

Then I sub-contracted to work for a training company who was working
with another consulting firm building a proprietary database app. for a
large corporation. The large corp. dictated what the training and
documentation would be. I was told that I had no input and to just do
what they say since they are the customer. I had to create 100% context
sensitive help for an otherwise undocumented application. I also never
stepped foot in the customer's office to learn about the audience and
the business process because that would be a day of production lost and
we didn't want to bill for non-production. There was no frying pan to
stop my fall into the fire.

I was policed by a micro-manager who would literally track the time I
went to the restroom. I also had the strangest restriction placed on me.
I was developing WinHelp, but I had to write first and later add
hotspots, topic IDs, graphics, etc. They considered those tasks
"programming" and separate from writing. I could have finished in a
third of the time. They claimed to have brought me in because of my
experience, but listened to little of what I suggested.

Personally, I'm glad to be out of the consulting racket. I don't want to
stick it to clients because I want as much as I can get. I think it's
criminal to agree on a delivery date and product and then push out
deadlines or go over budget. Yet that's every day business. All I want
to do is turn out the best product I can as quickly as I can. My
products should be usable, increase productivity, and help save support
and training dollars. That's worth paying for.

I do not think all contractors or consulting companies are like this.
But there are bad ones out there who only want the money. Money is nice,
but (call me crazy) it's not everything to me. I learned my work ethics
from my grandfather, who was a construction contractor for over 40
years. He always delivered on time and never over-billed anybody. If he
messed up, he would fix it. His word was gold and he knew more about his
business than anybody else. And most of all, he loved the work itself.


Keith Anderson
Technical Writer

Gooitech
keith_anderson -at- gooitech -dot- com
(847) 879-4813
http://www.gooitech.com




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