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There are significantly worst things happening in the industry by much much bigger consultancy names. We, an enterprise, hire complete teams from the consultanc

• dilyevsky 4y ago
  Swapping the team that did initial meet&greet for B team to do actual work is classic contractor move especially if client makes the mistake of not including specific names on the written contract or doesn’t care to. I’ve seen it in non-IT industries like construction too.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• nicholasjarnold 4y ago
  Yes, I have direct first-hand experience with the "presenting one thing in initial talks pre-signature, and getting something completely different later" with the "big consulting firms". We spoke with actual senior engineers with highly relevant experience up front, and the dev team they sent to us to actually do work (completely with entire suite of product, ux, qa, etc etc etc...packing as many as possible) were people of a...lesser experience level. I'm being polite here. I have a friend working in the business side of one of the large consulting firms, and the insight I got there is that sales is ahead of engineering staffing by _a lot_. In other words, the supply is being outstripped by the demand. Not wanting to leave money on the table these firms (or at least the very large "name brand" one my friend works for) will sign for projects which they do not have bench staff to fill. They then hit the streets and hire whoever can walk and chew gum at the same time. Now we have to work alongside these people, who themselves are not so much to blame in many cases. They are pawns in the often-fraudulent game called Software Consulting, Inc. It's great fun. I feel for you.
  • htrp 4y ago
    Name and shame the firm at least?
    • badpun 4y ago
      Did anyone ever had a genuinely positive experience with one of the software consulting giants - IBM, Accenture, Tata etc?
      • tazjin 4y ago
        No, of course not, but there's plenty of apologists that will show up and tell you that these companies are actually very important because replicating their enormous "domain knowledge" or whatever is impossible. Nevermind the fact that even if such domain knowledge existed in them, they probably wouldn't have a process for transferring it to the juniors they throw in the fire pit to actually "execute" a project. Best you can get with these companies is avoiding a complete crash landing and "only" striking the tail.
      • sumedh 4y ago
        TCS's revenue has been growing for the last 10-20 years so they must be doing something right.
        • nopenopenopeno 4y ago
          paying low wages and taking more profit
        • badpun 4y ago
          They've found a way to dupe corporations into hiring them and also are riding the ubiquitous "outsourcing for lower cost cutting" trend of late, so no one really questions if it makes sense to hire them. I've seen managers hire them a couple times - usually, it's often when the manager's department is very understaffed, incompetent and frankly a bit clueless (even as to what the strategic direction should be) [1]. Then, in comes the TCS salespeople, who convince the department head to effectively outsource the department to them, and they'll just execute all its functions, and provide strategic direction as well. They promise to implement "top industry standards", and, if you're say a head of department in a bank, it sort of makes sense to believe that these people have been to dozens of banks, and have collected a body of knowledge on what the best practices are. Also, I think it's extremely tempting for the department head, since he'll just have to deal with TCS managers from now on, and not run his department. Not to mention the cost savings. All in all, on paper, their offer is very enticing (also for the manager who makes the decision, as it looks like TCS will make his job much easier), and, given the outsourcing trend in the industry, it's not controversial, so managers very often go for it. Afterwards, the execution is always a disaster and huge disappointment (and manager's career is very likely seriously damaged) - but TCS makes its money in the process. Oh, and on top of that, there's of course also just regular graft, if the manager is willing to take the bribes. Basically, the likes of TCS are a parasite, exploiting systemic weaknesses of corporate management. [1] The other common scenario is when the CEO/CFO demand x% cost cuts from the department and is basically suggesting outsourcing himself.
• FerociousTimes 4y ago
  I think that hiring organizations by now should have been immune to this kind of "switcheroo" or "bait and switch" tactics on the supply side of labor. It always amazes me that some businesses still fall for this kind of deception, it's like the oldest trick in the book.
• grogenaut 4y ago
  I worked at a smaller 130 or so person consultancy. I have a masters in CS, so my resume was always included in the resume pack sent to people. It was listed as "representative". A woman with a PHD (Physics) and a guy with a PHD in Systems Science Math (ORR) were the other usual suspects. This was in around 2005. Benefit for me was that sales was always updating my resume every time they went out to sell so it was in great shape and I did no work on it. But who worked on the contract was just based on who was free at the time based on who was needed on other contracts. It was very likely I was tied up on another contract as a lead most of the time. Acutally one anti-pattern I pushed against was that we took the person on the bench and had them write the proposals... I pointed out this both landed us with bad implementations but also was likely less efficient than having the leads do the writing. Anyway, this is very common, you can't hire people to fill seats until you have a contract in hand or you're taking someone else's risk. It's also likely that less effective employees are more often free to go sit on a new project. At the start of the project those extra folks are super numerary anyway while the leads design with the customer. Same at the end of the project where you're just cleaning up core deliverables.
  • NikolaNovak 4y ago
    Right. I've been on both sides of this (person proposed for contract I did not end up on, as well as working with teams different than proposed). For the client, one way to ensure you get what you want, if it's important, is 'named resources' section of the contract. Use it wisely and with awareness. Other way is to be predictable and forthcoming during sales/negotiation/signing process. This is not meant to victim blame in the least, but there's lack of appreciation sometimes that people don't sit and twiddle their thumbs while internal processes grind the approval process to a halt: Frequently, who comes to oral presentation as part of sales cycle is who was available at the time, and who comes to perform the work is who is available at this other time, which may have been a predictable 2 weeks later, or (all too often) a completely unpredictable random 6 months and three weeks later. People you saw in February may not be waiting for you to finally sign and start come September. Oh, and all the other bait & switch practices as well, sometimes intentional -< In practical terms, it largely depends how actually "representative" people during orals were of the actual quality of workforce to deliver the project. Sometimes it's a close match, sometimes not. Ideally it's a fixed-price contract and it doesn't matter - it's vendor's responsibility to deliver, whether with many junior members supervised by senior members or however else, and hopefully contract and SLA and CAT/UAT are well designed.
• PragmaticPulp 4y ago
  Managing consultancies is a full-time job in itself. If you don't have someone in your company scrutinizing everything and spot-checking work that comes across, they will notice and they will take advantage of it. Starting with strong developers to impress a client and then swapping them out with newbies is standard practice. When we engage with agencies, we make it clear that the people working on our project are expected to be present for the one weekly meeting and that they will be the ones doing the work. We also reserve the right to "fire" specific agency team members and request a replacement if they're not working out. This is crucial as the agencies will often send teams of three: 1 strong developer, 1 strong communicator, and 1 straggler who needs a lot of supervision from the first two. You pay for all of the developers, so you might as well insist that you're getting what you pay for.
  • opportune 4y ago
    The only time I’ve seen working with bodyshops work out was when we had a senior spend most of his time checking their work and managing the project they were staffed on. He also happened to be from the same country/willing to talk with them outside of normal PST working hours. They still didn’t produce great work but they did produce work that was usable and did what we wanted to do. Most of my team actually had started out in consultancies earlier in their career so they knew exactly how things worked. A few times we had to “send someone back” when we got someone who was claimed to be an expert on X but was barely able to do basic tasks on the computer. I’ve seen some consultancies with a much higher hit rate compared to WITCH and co though, on par with regular hiring. I am not privy to the financial details but I suspect they are a lot more expensive.
    • xapata 4y ago
      Wipro Infosys Tata C ... ? H ... ?
      • subsubzero 4y ago
        cognizant hcl
  • 4y ago
• ChrisCinelli 4y ago
  Yes, more than 10 years ago when I was hired as engineer 2 in a startup, I had to work with a remote team working as contractors. The manager was in Alaska but the team was in India. The CEO used them to create the first prototype of the product and raise money. We worked with them for 3 months. I tried to train them but there was a big ethical problem. It was clear they were not honest. We supposedly had 3 engineers. One was good, the other 2 were not good at all. It was clear that they were not working full time on our project and the good engineer was working even less with us (pretty much when the CTO was having discussion with the guy in Alaska). There were times when he asked: "Did you do task X?" Answer: "Yes!" CTO: "Can you show me the code?" contractor: "I did not do it." There was also a language gap and the good guy ended up leaving to work with Microsoft. We let them go and we started put that codebase in maintenance mode. At that time we also got a new talented designer and we started building the new features in a different codebase.
  • FerociousTimes 4y ago
    Whose fault is in all of this? Again not to look like flogging a dead horse here, but it's the hiring manager's and the organization's not the contractors' for this turn of events. They should have done their own due diligence and cross-checked the references and the whole nine yards.
    • noodlesUK 4y ago
      I’m a contractor and I don’t get this attitude. It’s my responsibility as a contractor to do the things I agree to do and if I can’t do them due to whatever reason, be upfront about that as soon as possible. In fact as a contractor that’s pretty much my only responsibility. I’ve definitely worked with people who weren’t good managers and had projects not work out but what parent is describing is just flat out fraud.
  • ilaksh 4y ago
    What was the pay? Oftentimes outsourcing means trying to get software for 1/10th of the real cost. Then when another company amazingly delivers any software at all, they are blamed for the quality problems that are really the result of the completely unrealistic budget. And sorry to say but racism often plays a part in these stories.
• czbond 4y ago
  A counter view - how long are your purchase decision cycles? I ask because that matters. The internals of a large consulting firms are: - Resumes are often used "as an example". Consulting teams who present are usually in between staffed roles, and are not the exact you'd see face to face. They do this because ... others are working on existing engagements and taking that client's calls. - Big companies decide very, very slowly. And they might not even sign on a deal. So consulting firms have to continually juggle team members + skills + their own staff's needs to fill slots. The members you spoke with may have been available when you talked to them 2 months ago - but were staffed on a different project while this one closed. etc.
• scruple 4y ago
  This happened to a former employer back in 2008. They sold us on their A-team and we got the guys they hid in the backroom closet. We cancelled the contract after their second code dump. They threatened to sue and my former CEO openly challenged them to. In the end they backed off.
  • ghaff 4y ago
    Unfortunately this happens in all sorts of consultancies and agency work. The partner makes the sale and (hopefully) at least reasonably supervises the associates or others doing most of the actual work.
• deleted 4y ago
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• giaour 4y ago
  This has always been my experience hiring consultant teams. (Unless you're hiring a team from a consultancy that only has enough staff to field a single team, that is.) I'm not sure if this is specific to government procurement, but when hiring teams for federal contracts, some personnel on the team described in the proposal would be "key" and others would not. Key personnel could only be replaced by mutual agreement, and non-key personnel could be replaced at will by the bidder.
• redleggedfrog 4y ago
  Based on my experience with such firms this is the prevalent modus operandi. Hence I don't trust them. In our company we cannot commit code without review, and this turns up these "replacement" developers pretty quick. But it's pretty disheartening. You don't even make it 5 lines and there is .ToString() on a string, and it just gets worse from there. I used to take some effort in trying to be nice about it figuring the person probably who wrote the code doesn't know they're a replacement and is just doing the best they can, but I eventually stopped caring. Now I just butcher them, point my boss at it, and see how long it takes before they get fired.
• perfecthjrjth 4y ago
  All consultancies (IBM global services, TCS, Wipro, Infosys, Tech Mahindra, Deloitte, Pwc, Accenture, etc) just want billable hours. Only way to make a fat profit: by underpaying. Who will take "less" pay? Of course, less qualified people. Since every consulting company is doing this, there is no incentive for big companies to switch from Infosys to TCS or from TCS to IBM. Hiring managers do get kickbacks from consulting companies. These kickbacks are sophisticated, and there is no way to prosecute them, esp if immigrants are the hiring managers.
• bacan 4y ago
  It is a very common practice for these companies to rotate competent people between multiple projects. Friend used to work as a senior exec for CG in India
• edw519 4y ago
  Former consultancy managing partner here. (My conscience would only allow me to be in that industry for 3 years.) Consultancies exist for one reason only: to maximize the delta between what we charge customers and what we pay employees/contractors. Charging $400/hr for someone we're paying $80/hr is non unusual. In fact, it's probably the norm. What could possibly go wrong?
  • itsoktocry 4y ago
    >Charging $400/hr for someone we're paying $80/hr is non unusual It's a funny business, as these posts reveal. But there's nothing magical about the profit margins in consulting. There are some efficiency gains with streamlining HR and expertise and knowledge sharing. Throw in some profit, and that's what they are able to charge clients. If it was excessively expensive, companies would do the work themselves. Many do, to lesser or greater degrees of success.
• yosito 4y ago
  > Code quality that comes, is not on par with the skillset we evaluated during the interviews Could it be that your interview process is not evaluating the correct skill set? As an engineer with 15 years of experience, very few of the many interview processes I've completed were actually an acurate reflection of my abilities.
• code_runner 4y ago
  I work for a consultancy that does some things I dislike to impress execs but nothing this shady. Close though! I’ve managed to separate myself from those parts and should be totally out the door soon!
• deleted 4y ago
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