Contracting vs. Permanent Orginally posted on the BCS Website on 16 Feb 2009
As the recession bites and many IT professionals suddenly find themselves at home living on a regular diet of daytime TV and microwave pizzas, the age old argument of Contracting vs. Permanent comes back to the fore. If you have always been a permanent member of staff, then you probably look at contractors with a certain amount of disdain.
For you, contractors are the ones in flashy suits, who waltz in at 10am, make loud noises about their ‘superior knowledge, and even worse, boast about their large house, or fancy sports car, or daily rate, or even all three. They go home the moment the clock strikes 5pm (or 4:30pm if they can get away with it), and worst of all, they never buy the drinks when it’s their round down the pub.
If you have always been a contractor, then you probably look at permanent members of staff as people who know nothing about their job they are supposed to be doing, who complain constantly about being underpaid and overworked, and wouldn't even be able to keep their jobs if it wasn't for the regular succession of contractors propping up their teams day in and day out.
Am I right about these stereotypes? Of course not, but unfortunately there are both types of workers still in existence, and as part of the growth that our industry needs to do, we need to accept that both contracting and permanent staff play a very important and distinctly different role in the IT landscape.
Permanent staff are the foundation pillars of your IT organisation, by investing in them in the long term, you build up a vast embedded knowledge base of your organisations IT infrastructure, something which no contractor, no matter how skilled, can match. Granted, most permanent roles are set at the coal face and are a long way from the glitzy world of new projects, but this doesn't make them any less important to your organisation. In times of uncertainty, it is certainly tempting to offload many permanent roles with the view of being able to backfill with contractors if the need arises. This is a short term view, and should be avoided where possible, as it may take years to build up that embedded knowledge again.
By contrast, contractors fill that niche that cannot be easily accommodated by the pool of staff you already have, and should always be considered as transitory resources only. When your book of project work expands, it should be remembered that at some point it will also shrink again. A contractor is the ideal resource to allocate to upcoming projects. They should be the IT equivalent of Instant Coffee: Quickly Obtained, Hot (on their subject matter), Ready to Use, and disposed of easily.
Unlike permanent staff, most contractors are only knowledgeable around a few disciplines. However they are expected to be subject matter experts on these disciplines, and be able to hit the ground running on day one of a new contract. A contractor is only as good as his or her last contract and they have to up-sell themselves for each new assignment every six months or so. The by-product of this constant self promotion can be an over arrogant attitude, which mostly exists as a form of protection; to be a good contractor in today's cut throat market, you have to develop a thick skin, else you won’t survive.
From an employer's point of view, you need to find the right peg for the right hole. The cocky contractor may be the right person for you. Think about how you want to use this resource. For most projects you need a strong IT design that will stand up to being dissected by your existing departments and this is where the contractor’s strong personality will work for you. From the employee's point of view, understand that contractors are there to do one job and one job only. They may know their subject very well, but they do not inherently know how that subject fits into the organisation; that’s where your skills come in.
If you ARE sat at home, looking at the job market thinking whether to switch sides, it is correct to say that the grass is not greener on the other side of the fence. It may be different grass, but it is definitely not better. Each type of employment has its pro's and con's, and you should weigh carefully whether switching is right for you, if you make the wrong choice, your once enjoyable career, can suddenly make you very miserable.
No Comments, Click Here to Add Yours
|
|
|