OT - Field - Contract or Perm?

It's interesting. Everywhere I work as an independent consultant the axe on
the permies seems to loom large. My wife is keen for me to go permanent. My
answer is 'where?'. You need to put time in to get the pension and the breaks
and a decent golden handshake when they want you to go and as I say,
everywhere I go it's the perinnial sword of damacles. Every company seems to
be looking to lose people, and this is a real morale drain of perm IT folks
every review. Honestly this has nothing to do with being an 'ace' at what you
do.Companies still dispose of such folk. During my time as a contractor I
have worked with many very capable people in the permanent train. They have
local knowledge of how the infrastructure hangs together, it's background, and
it's direction. I guess the MBA pie chart just says..perm = x, outsource = y.
Get rid of perm. Any problems on infrastructure we can cook the books to make
it look like the right decision to let Dave go who could compile perl. I'm
independent and staying independent but I do feel sorry for timeserved folks
who put out. It seems to me that more and more IT people will have to be
prepared to be independent, and that reliance on a *good* CIO is key for those
who want to stick around over the next 5 years in Fortune 100's. A lot of
CIO's sell out it seems. Easier for the CIO to come up with the stats to axe
and keep your job and bonus than fight to show IT investment in people not as
a cost but an actual saving. This requires effort in the face of TCO.

Thoughts?

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Received on Wed Jul 15 2009 - 21:19:47 ART