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This is an interesting analysis. My biggest concern about hiring consultants is that they don't have "skin in the game". Meaning, the typical consultant isn't g

by j_baker 13y ago

This is an interesting analysis. My biggest concern about hiring consultants is that they don't have "skin in the game". Meaning, the typical consultant isn't going to be around to live with the consequences of their decisions. Consultants are still very useful for "marginal areas" of your business. Meaning, consultants are useful for jobs that need to be done, but aren't significantly time-consuming to hire a full-time employee.

Iftheshoefits 13y ago
What consequences did you have in mind? The subjective, arbitrary, and capricious cover-my-ass politics that their supervisor, and their supervisors' supervisors will play when something goes awry and they need people to blame? My opinion is that in-house employees should have "skin in the game" proportional to the equity they hold in the company and the authority/responsibility they wield as a result. Most of that time that's a one-digit, round number. And yet employers think employees should act as if it's a magnificent act of selflessness and beneficence to deign to acknowledge the employee's existence and stoop so low as to offer them work.
- j_baker 13y ago
  No. I mean something more along the lines of "Consultant X wrote this unmaintainable piece of crap a while back, and now we need someone to fix it".
  - vdaniuk 13y ago
    Argh, you are both right and I actually must think about subject to reach a conclusion. What a novel experience.
  - Iftheshoefits 13y ago
    Ah. Fair enough, and it's a good point since consultants by the nature of their employment likely don't have to deal with the consequences directly. Word-of-mouth, though, they may have to deal with. But so does everybody.
humanrebar 13y ago
I agree, but to rephrase: You want your company to be the expert in what makes your products and services great. If your differentiators are all created by consultants, once the consultants move on, you lose that expertise. By all means, hire consultants to set up version control servers, build board support packages, improve the UX of your webapp, or even take care of HR paperwork. But the thing that makes you money (the search engine, the historical database, the business logic) needs to yours. Anything less can work, but you'll be dangerously close to creating a commodity product. What's to stop someone else from hiring similar (or the same) consultants to clone your product? Of course, all this assumes the value of your product is your differentiator, not inside knowledge of how to get contracts from a particular bureaucracy.

by j_baker 13y ago

Iftheshoefits 13y ago

What consequences did you have in mind? The subjective, arbitrary, and capricious cover-my-ass politics that their supervisor, and their supervisors' supervisors will play when something goes awry and they need people to blame? My opinion is that in-house employees should have "skin in the game" proportional to the equity they hold in the company and the authority/responsibility they wield as a result. Most of that time that's a one-digit, round number. And yet employers think employees should act as if it's a magnificent act of selflessness and beneficence to deign to acknowledge the employee's existence and stoop so low as to offer them work.

j_baker 13y ago
No. I mean something more along the lines of "Consultant X wrote this unmaintainable piece of crap a while back, and now we need someone to fix it".
- vdaniuk 13y ago
  Argh, you are both right and I actually must think about subject to reach a conclusion. What a novel experience.
- Iftheshoefits 13y ago
  Ah. Fair enough, and it's a good point since consultants by the nature of their employment likely don't have to deal with the consequences directly. Word-of-mouth, though, they may have to deal with. But so does everybody.

humanrebar 13y ago

I agree, but to rephrase: You want your company to be the expert in what makes your products and services great. If your differentiators are all created by consultants, once the consultants move on, you lose that expertise. By all means, hire consultants to set up version control servers, build board support packages, improve the UX of your webapp, or even take care of HR paperwork. But the thing that makes you money (the search engine, the historical database, the business logic) needs to yours. Anything less can work, but you'll be dangerously close to creating a commodity product. What's to stop someone else from hiring similar (or the same) consultants to clone your product? Of course, all this assumes the value of your product is your differentiator, not inside knowledge of how to get contracts from a particular bureaucracy.