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This is still alive and well in eastern Europe - I worked for such companies. They would go a step further and lie that: -They can quickly expand that team of

by Tade0 5y ago

This is still alive and well in eastern Europe - I worked for such companies. They would go a step further and lie that: -They can quickly expand that team of three mid-level developers to eleven, adding mostly seniors. -A team of junior to mid developers is comprised of seniors. -The team is working at FTE on this project and has no other responsibilities. Currently stakeholders often have to resort to requesting the CVs of all the people involved, but that doesn't shield them from that last trick. Of course the client is billed $100+/h, while developers can count on around 25-30% of that. A lot of people got rich like that around here.

cutemonster 5y ago
> requesting the CVs of all the people involved Can't the agency provide made up nice looking CV:s? > client is billed $100+/h That's interesting, then seems it's not much different from hiring a local person (in western Europe). > A team of junior to mid developers is comprised of seniors I suppose the clients usually won't notice? They're often non technical (or at least the managers there?) and don't know what to expect? (If the clients had enough technical in house people, they could do their own recruiting instead, didn't need agencies? Or how does it work)
- rkangel 5y ago
  There's a line between 'misleading' and 'actual fraud' that these service providers like to stay on the right side of (but very close to). Producing made up CVs is the sort of thing that would make it a very short court case if they got caught.
  - Tade0 5y ago
    Actual conversation I had a few years ago: -Client requires <skill>. Can you add it to your CV? -I don't know, can I?
- Tade0 5y ago
  > Can't the agency provide made up nice looking CV:s? Yes! But this is countered by a 30min call with the candidate. Regarding billing: this is how much SV companies are charged. At the same time they're the ones who fall victim to such practices the most often. For everyone else the average rate is around $45-55/h and you get what you pay for.
theshrike79 5y ago
Yup, this was a well-known (in the IT circles) working model for a prominent Finnish IT firm. They brought out all of the most highly educated people front and center when bidding a project. People with masters and doctorates in the field. Dozens of them. Of course they won every project bid. Then the experienced people leave to front the next big project and the actual work is being done by people fresh out of school combined with outsourced teams. The result was utter shit every single time, but their sales people had the magic touch and managed to get the clients to sign the weirdest contracts. All missing features and bugs were usually fixed at a hourly rate in a leisurely pace. Pure profit every second. I worked for a small firm that managed to snag a few of those projects, mostly because of our legend of a salesman. The customers were astonished more than once when we delivered features in weeks, not in months or years. We consulted them during development instead of at end of a quarterly cycle. One time our caffeine-for-blood 10x coder actually coded a full proof-of-concept implementation during the sales meeting discussing the project =)

by Tade0 5y ago

cutemonster 5y ago

> requesting the CVs of all the people involved Can't the agency provide made up nice looking CV:s? > client is billed $100+/h That's interesting, then seems it's not much different from hiring a local person (in western Europe). > A team of junior to mid developers is comprised of seniors I suppose the clients usually won't notice? They're often non technical (or at least the managers there?) and don't know what to expect? (If the clients had enough technical in house people, they could do their own recruiting instead, didn't need agencies? Or how does it work)

rkangel 5y ago
There's a line between 'misleading' and 'actual fraud' that these service providers like to stay on the right side of (but very close to). Producing made up CVs is the sort of thing that would make it a very short court case if they got caught.
- Tade0 5y ago
  Actual conversation I had a few years ago: -Client requires <skill>. Can you add it to your CV? -I don't know, can I?
Tade0 5y ago
> Can't the agency provide made up nice looking CV:s? Yes! But this is countered by a 30min call with the candidate. Regarding billing: this is how much SV companies are charged. At the same time they're the ones who fall victim to such practices the most often. For everyone else the average rate is around $45-55/h and you get what you pay for.

theshrike79 5y ago

Yup, this was a well-known (in the IT circles) working model for a prominent Finnish IT firm. They brought out all of the most highly educated people front and center when bidding a project. People with masters and doctorates in the field. Dozens of them. Of course they won every project bid. Then the experienced people leave to front the next big project and the actual work is being done by people fresh out of school combined with outsourced teams. The result was utter shit every single time, but their sales people had the magic touch and managed to get the clients to sign the weirdest contracts. All missing features and bugs were usually fixed at a hourly rate in a leisurely pace. Pure profit every second. I worked for a small firm that managed to snag a few of those projects, mostly because of our legend of a salesman. The customers were astonished more than once when we delivered features in weeks, not in months or years. We consulted them during development instead of at end of a quarterly cycle. One time our caffeine-for-blood 10x coder actually coded a full proof-of-concept implementation during the sales meeting discussing the project =)