My life as an engineer

Mar 29, 2013 01:03

In the very odd work of engineering contracting, I work for one company (A) who in turn rents me out to a different, competing company (B). At Company B I work on a team of half a dozen people, some of whom work for B and some from other companies like mine (C, D ( Read more... )

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Comments 10

arionrhod March 29 2013, 08:05:16 UTC
Not to mention that a LOT of those of us who have been forced to go to X had to take a pay cut because company E didn't budget for the fact that the experienced people are experienced for a REASON, and that we aren't about to work for junior pay. :P

This sucks.

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blueeowyn March 31 2013, 12:27:51 UTC
But if you are part of Company B, doesn't Company B decide your salary not E? E rents you from B but B would still control payroll & benefits, wouldn't it? Sorry that E is so stupid but unfortunately there are companies that seem to thrive on low-bidding then getting the workers to pay.

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bkleber April 1 2013, 05:44:23 UTC
Company B determines my salary, but if A pays them less per hour for my services than what B pays me per hour, then it's a situation that's going to make at least one person unhappy. Since A & B worked all this out beforehand, it's not an issue. But E's lowball bid is what creates the problem.

As I say below, it's not entirely E's fault: they had incomplete information when they submitted their proposal. But pretty much everyone -- including the folks on contract X -- wishes that E had gotten their act together as soon as they realized they were in over their head.

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selki March 29 2013, 11:52:34 UTC
Whoah, I thought my sub-contracting was complicated.

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selki March 30 2013, 03:59:58 UTC
Oops, I confused myself. I'm just a contractor, not a sub-contractor.

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silmaril March 29 2013, 17:52:53 UTC
And suddenly you realize that you've spread your wings, little engineer.

I've been watching it happen to me for the past three years as if it's been happening to something else. The funny thing is that it's still "engineering stuff" from one point of view---just your tools and systems have changed.

Good luck.

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yow. stormking March 29 2013, 18:11:37 UTC
The joys of being a hired gun.

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blueeowyn March 31 2013, 12:26:31 UTC
GGRRRRR at Company E for underbidding when it couldn't do it then trying to make people pay for it by pay cuts (based on one of the comments). Neat (in a way) that you learn some new skills to put on the resume but annoying that they aren't the ones you would choose.

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bkleber April 1 2013, 05:41:21 UTC
So, while company E has a large number of people pissed at it because of the lowball bid, I learned recently that there's a reason: They thought they were bidding on simple windows desktop support help-desk. Why? Because the contract RFP didn't detail any of the hard stuff we do.

It's not TOTALLY their fault. But still, nobody's happy with how it's going.

It's not precisely new skills that I'm learning -- it's just that I'm getting a fast-and-furious refresher in all the new stuff I learned a couple years ago that I haven't thought about in a while because I've been concentrating on a subset of said new stuff. I've been wanting to regain proficiency at the rest of it for a while. I'd just rather have had a bit more time.

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