I just wanted to back up my point regarding pay rate/performance with a personal anecdote. Not saying this is always the case, but this kind of thing happens regularly.
About 6 years ago I worked on an 18-month project with a large US consulting firm, not named anything like Ac****ure. There were three Indian fellows and myself all starting the same week, all supposedly in the role of Functional Analysts, gathering requirements and writing specifications for 20 or so interfaces. One of them assumed he was my supervisor from day one and attempted to boss me around, even though he was not. I walked into the office one morning to a heated argument over what a functional specification is versus a technical specification. They asked me what I thought. "A functional spec outlines WHAT must be done, whereas a technical spec outlines HOW to do it". I was 'wrong' and the argument ensued. Two weeks later my supervisor (the real one) came to me to talk in private. He said I had completed four specifications whereas the other three guys had completed one between them. He did not think the one was very good and showed it to me. It was virtually unintelligible meandering gibberish (much like my own style on the PDML) and had system diagrams from other documentation pasted in the document, with little to no bearing on the interface that was to be developed, or explanantion as to their relevance. He asked me what I would do, as the project was already behind. My response was to 'Get rid of them and bring in some people that possessed the needed skills'. That did not happen. Instead all three remained for the next two months while the supervisor and the client produced handwritten specs and turned them over for the three guys to key into Word documents. In essence they were scribes. At the end of three months their contracts were expiring and one of the guys claimed to know the programming language and there was an opening. I was again approached regarding course of action. "Do you really believe he has the skills after the last three months?" Later I heard the fellow talking on the phone with a recruiter. The rate he quoted that he was willing to work for was 23% of my rate. This was a guy that was hired into the exact same role I was hired for. Do some get paid market rate? Probably. Do they all? -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
