consultants are idiots

svandamme · svandamme's Garage

Rant mode enable=true

So i work in a small services company, and i'm the only one doing support, i also do remote management of servers..The other 2 are half programmer, half something else, basically i do 95% of all cases, and they pick up the phone when i happen to be already on the line with somebody.

We have 4 consultants, of which 2 (the dutch guys) are idiots.

They go onsite, make an inventory of the problem they collect log files, go home and send em to support. with a note "because you are better at reading log files"

So i get
- 800 MB of logs
- a vague problem description : "something with encryption keys when moving a user between servers".
- and a deadline "i told em they would have the report on tuesday"

And keep in mind, that they are titled "senior consultant", have been working with the products for at least 3 years before i ever have. And get bonus based on billable work, which i don't.
At the very least i want to see them try to look at the logs for a problem, then they would know that you can't just take 800 meg logs, without a user name, without a time of the problem, and magically find the problem.
It's the proverbial needle in a haystack, sure, it's possible to find it, but you'll waste enormous amounts of time doing so.

I'm fed up with that crap, and just sent their manager a piece of my mind. For better or for worse, because their manager as far as i have seen, ist just like em.
Dodging and delegating his own work.
I'm just glad he isn't my manager, or i would have left months ago.

Another beautiful story, is the consultants wanted a vmware server enviroment for testing and one for trainings. . They produced a proposal, we got to see it beforehand...it was 20 pages long, full of nonsensical white paper stuff he copy pasted off some webpages...

Within 5 seconds of seing it, we at the office stated " it's over complicated and they can't get it to work". Well guess what, 7-8 K hardware was ordered, they got the thing in a hosted collocation... Forgot that they would need some kind of ip connectivity in that hosted setup... they hadn't thought of that...So they get 20 full on IP adresses, and run the Vmwares straight up and unfirewalled... They spent a good 3-4 weeks setting up the vmware guests... And now all the machines got buggered by spam and botnet's... So the hosting company cut the lines again...

unfrigginbelievable.

Superman · 07-21-2009, 11:04 AM

I used to wonder how in the world a consultant could be worth, say......$200 per hour. That is, until I noticed that sometimes, the expensive consultant is the only person who brings common sense to the meeting. In that case, $200 per hour is a bargain.

masraum · 07-21-2009, 11:05 AM

Sounds like you got some real weiners to work with there.

I think all it takes to be a consultant is confidence (often 'over-').

That doesn't mean that they are all bad, but it does mean that there are a bunch of idiots out there that think they know a bunch and aren't afraid to ask ridiculous sums of cash for their "services". Sadly, they get paid.

Good luck with that. Who's paying the bill for them? Your boss, maybe you should have sent him the email. Get rid of them and get some good people in there.

equality72521 · 07-21-2009, 11:25 AM

What would you say ya do here?

svandamme · svandamme's Garage

What do you mean? it's 21h26 hours, i'm sitting at home

equality72521 · 07-21-2009, 11:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by svandamme

What do you mean? it's 21h26 hours, i'm sitting at home

Sorry, it's a quote from the movie Office Space.

equality72521 · 07-21-2009, 11:46 AM

http://www.reelmovienews.com/quotes/movies/office-space/

svandamme · svandamme's Garage

ah, ok, it was a bit vague to spot out of context...

The next line works perfectly for me, with some modifications...

"I deal with the goddamn problems so the consultants don't have to!!
I have technical skills!! I am good at dealing with problems!!!
Can't you understand that?!? WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE"

Shuie · 07-21-2009, 12:00 PM

Can you open a case with the software vendor and send them the logs? It probably depends on the product, but I'm an ERP jockey, and I would expect even a Junior technical consultant to be able to read log files and/or handle cases with the vendor. What is the product?

svandamme · svandamme's Garage

it's Blackberry Enterprise, and yes i can open a case, no i won't waste a support ticket with RIM on the grounds of having a consultant who didn't even try. And for the record, i can look at the logs without an escalation to RIM, and so should a consultant.
Especially a senior consultant who had plenty of RIM training, (i haven't done a single training, because i RTFM) should be able to at least try and read the bloody logs. It's definitely not rocket science.

1 reproduce the error
2 open the log
3 go to the time of the test
4 look what happens
5 Google it (or go to whatever knowledgebase or forum you think works)

It doesn't matter what product it is, you can always find something if you at least give it a try.
I can accept not getting it on the first try, but i do not accept dumping it in my lap, without even trying.
And it's because they never bothered trying it, that they dump it on me without even additional information about the problem, the time, and the user that has the problem.

It's a total waste of time to try and dig up one obscure error, in a log file where there's 24 hours of debug level logging, for about 800 users...

HardDrive · 07-21-2009, 12:39 PM

Horray! Welcome to the new information economy. There are no actual employees, just consultants. Sure, their accountable to no one, and they do about 1/4 the work of an actual employee, but at least you don't have to pay for their healthcare!

sammyg2 · 07-21-2009, 02:00 PM

A consultant is a guy who knows 100 ways to make love but doesn't know any women.

Gogar · 07-21-2009, 02:20 PM

Huh. The way you describe them "ducking, dodging, and delegating" I thought for sure they would be Americans.

Tidybuoy · 07-21-2009, 02:28 PM

Aerkuld · Aerkuld's Garage

I've had experience with engineering consultants which confirms your observation. At my former company they hired a company of crazy Russian consultants to take a look at one of our projects and come up with 'fresh' ideas for product cost saving. They got paid a ridiculous amount of money and over a six month period came up with probably 25 ideas.

Straight off the bat 25% of those ideas were so absurd that they'd take years to develop and even then wouldn't be acceptable to the customer. This was despite the consultants being told that this is a conservative industry which was highly resistant to obvious and dramatic change.

Of the remaining ideas I am not exaggerating when I say that every single one of them had already been thought of by our own engineering group very early on in the project. Every one of these had already been prototyped and dismissed either for cost, complexity, or some obvious technical problem that was encountered during the investigation.

They were then asked to develop four of five of the ideas they had that management felt most likely to succeed. Their development found exactly the same problems our own engineering group had found and one by one the ideas fell by the wayside.

The end result was that our management spent several hundred thousand dollars to conclude bugger all except that our own engineering group knew what they were doing.

Brilliant!

VaSteve · 07-21-2009, 05:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aerkuld

The end result was that our management spent several hundred thousand dollars to conclude bugger all except that our own engineering group knew what they were doing.

Brilliant!

That shows that your management doesn't know what they are doing.

Aerkuld · Aerkuld's Garage

Quote:

Originally Posted by VaSteve

That shows that your management doesn't know what they are doing.

That was pretty much the conclusion I came to. The problem was compounded by the fact that they thought they did. Fortunately I've since moved on from that company.

berettafan · 07-21-2009, 06:18 PM

consultants are people who figured out that they kept getting fired for ineptness and couldn't hold a job for more than a few months at a time. so they decided to try to claim that getting fired every few months is part of the plan! this is called 'consulting'.

what a consultant is telling you when he bills you 4x's the rate of your own staff is that he figures it'll take you 1/4 the time it usually takes to spot an idiot and boot his ass.

89911 · 07-21-2009, 06:32 PM

Shuie · 07-21-2009, 06:43 PM

I guess I've been lucky. I left industry to do consulting work years ago and have never looked back. The consulting groups I've worked with have solved problems, transfered knowledge, and then eliminated our positions as soon as possible. We mentored managers that didn't know what they required or needed and taught them how to manage projects effectively. I've always thought that was why we were billable, but I guess it's good to know that we were just a symptom of a bigger problem

Now, where is that quote from island, or maybe it was Milu..

Disclaimer: the above was 2¢ worth.
More information is available as my professional opinion, which is provided for an exorbitant fee.