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that's a management consultant, and the reason they're hired is to provide cover and credibility for both management and your technology team. i.e., "the expen
by taway20171214 9y ago
that's a management consultant, and the reason they're hired is to provide cover and credibility for both management and your technology team.
i.e., "the expensive consultant said it was okay, so don't fire anyone in management, or our technology team, if it goes sideways."
in other words, they're actually helping you do your job because they can compare your recommendation to other companies and teams in the industry and make sure everyone is doing things sanely. in your case, you were smart, and made the right recommendation, so they agreed with you. good job, you're competent, and aren't putting an established company into a risky situation like you would at a startup, which generally does not hire consultants, because they have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
you probably didn't see it that way, i'm guessing.
- ZenoArrow 9y agoThe issue you're overlooking is that these management consultants are being paid large fees for information that a company can get for free just by listening to their existing employees. However, that's not a slight on the management consultants themselves (nice work if you can get it), but is a slight on companies that don't trust that their employees can give them sound advice. Problems at the ground level are going to become apparent earliest to those working at that level, if you ignore that feedback you're potentially throwing away valuable information.
- Kinrany 9y agoHow do the companies know that they can trust their employees?
- ZenoArrow 9y agoThey must trust them enough to employ them. Even if they don't think any single person they employ has "all the answers", if you listen to feedback from your employees you can get a sense of trends. Furthermore, these observations should be something verifiable. You're asking for concrete feedback on issues, not vague comments about what's wrong.
- pjc50 9y agoHow do they know they can trust the consultant? (More seriously, being unable to trust your employees to give useful feedback is a sign that your culture is a disaster)
- jwhitlark 9y agoThey diff the output of the consultant against that of the employee. Trust, but verify.
- JohnnyHero 9y agoYou are asking this as if the trust question relates to honesty of the employee. Trust in this scenario is NOT a question of "are they going to lie and steal and cheat! The trust in question here is whether or not the employee/s are sophisticated enough in their understanding of the organizations "big picture directives" to contribute the correct feedback to the questions in need of answers. It is the rare employee whose feedback takes into consideration the big picture because they rarely are exposed to all the information that upper management is. Either management (or a consultant if need be) has to pull in the data/answers and then prioritize the problems relative to the bigger picture. This is a perspective that the production line worker rarely considers when answering questions. Even the biggest brains in any organization can be blinded by the problems that immediately affect them as opposed to the issues that are central to the organizations overall health and strategic goals.
- amenod 9y agoAs GP stated, this is not about (not) believing your employees, this is about risk management. In many cases it is justified - do you really want to run your company based on everything your employees come up with? Sometimes you need to check if their instincts are right, especially for decisions that have huge impact on your business. Price for consultants, while it might seem high to you, is actually pretty low compared to business values. Look at it as a kind of insurance.
- putnam 9y agoDoes something like that exist for software consulting?
- dejv 9y agoYes, I am not sure how common are those gigs, but I did quite a few projects in development agency. It was usually in situations when projects went bad, I had to examine code structure and timelines to see why it went this way.
- jaggederest 9y agoI have done similar work. I was hired to come in and assess the software that they were developing - they were working with some contractors, some vendors, and a smattering of other people, and wanted to know if their current method was working, how to address some concerns they had, and whether their current vendor was doing a good job. I discussed it extensively with them, looked over the code and repositories, their current deployment, their backlog, looked at their priorities and basically told them "They seem like they are doing a good job, with the caveat that using contractors and vendors means you will never develop those skills in house, so I would hire at least one competent programmer internally to work with the vendors/contractors you hire, in order to develop that expertise, if you intend to use custom software as a core part of your business on a continuing basis". This was conveyed via a written report with citations and via a meeting with the C-level executives of the company. For this review and strategic suggestions they paid me about $1200 for an afternoon's work. That doesn't count time that went into acquiring the gig, scheduling, following up, or billing, just billable hours.
- other_herbert 9y agoIt's the sanity check that some managers/ higher up people want... Expert = someone who doesn't work here (from a non dev upper management perspective)
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]