Being an I.T. consultant in today’s world is getting harder and harder. The two biggest threats to the well being of a consultant are, for lack of a better term, ‘shady’ recruiting firms and ‘paranoid’ full-time employees.

Shady Recruiters

I.T. consultants and I.T. recruiters have always had an uneasy co-existence. Rarely in my own experience  (or that of most of my consulting colleagues’), have there been instances of recruiting firms that acted in a professional manner.  The primary responsibility that these recruiters have – as
‘middlemen’ – is to pay the consultant for their services. Most recruiters shy away from this sole responsibility. With a worsening economy, this phenomenon is amplified. Recruiters are becoming notoriously reluctant to pay on time (or pay at all).  The degree to which most recruiting companies have sunk prompted me to create a site dedicated to reviewing recruiters inhabiting the I.T. landscape. Why companies (including large Fortune 500 companies) continue to use such recruiters is the subject of a future post.

Paranoid full-time employees

This is not a generalization – and a lot of full-timers I work closely with are extremely helpful. They view a consultant interaction as a 2-way street, where they can get the most out of a consultant if they provide her with the most amount of information. Unfortunately, not all full-timers view consultants in the same way. Some of them view consultants as a threat.  With down-sizing being the mantra of the 2000s, a lot of employees are (justifiably) a little paranoid about their jobs. This sometimes translates to an ‘unwelcome’ reception for any outsider (including consultants brought on-board by the management). While this may not be outwardly displayed, it manifests itself in some subtler ways:

  1. Reluctance to share/transfer domain knowledge

    You know that the full-timer is not happy at your presence when she refuses to answer basic questions about the way their system works. They often hide behind a variety of excuses – ‘I’m too busy..’ being the most popular one. A recent tech-lead on our team  made a daily practice of not sharing her domain knowledge and then, of castigating the unfortunate developer who was assigned to that particular story. It was a little bit like a police officer pulling you over, offering you alcohol and then arresting you for drinking in your vehicle.

  2. Lack of acceptance of the consultant’s skill set (assumed technical inferiority)                              

    Again, this isn’t a generalization – but  more often that not, today’s I.T. consultant has worked on as many (or more) projects as the full-timer employee. The I.T. consultant often knows what works and what doesn’t  as well as, if not better, than the full-timer. 

Instead of seeing the consultant as someone bringing valuable skills to the table, some full-timers see the consultant as a threat – and relegate them to ‘blind followers’ of orders. By doing so, they lose out on valuable insights and contributions from the consultant.

Summary

With middlemen who are unable to fulfill their legal contract to pay consultants in a timely manner and full-time employees who treat consultants like the plague, the I.T. consulting environment is becoming a bit of an unhealthy quagmire. Of course, at the cost of repetition, this is not a generalization. There will always be recruiters that are exceptions to the rule – as well as full-timers who value consultants – but the trend seems to be in the direction that I have described.

Do you think it is getting tougher being a consultant in today’s environment? Your thoughts? Experiences?

Anuj holds professional certifications in Google Cloud, AWS as well as certifications in Docker and App Performance Tools such as New Relic. He specializes in Cloud Security, Data Encryption and Container Technologies.

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Anuj Varma – who has written posts on Anuj Varma, Hands-On Technology Architect, Clean Air Activist.

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