h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Consultants - A42830877
Author: Icy North - U225620

The fee's in the post...

Icy

Kewl!

I've just got to find the cheque book

Splendid

*presents Icy with a bill for GB's fee*

What, for one word and a smiley?

Those who can, do; those who can't, teach. Those who can't teach become consultants

...and my 8 years'-worth of experience!

*looks at watch*

Almost into the next quarter-hour...

Clearly I took the wrong career choice when I came a technical consultant I shoudl have gone the management consultancy root :: Glad to see you draw a nice differnce between those* evil* overpaid* consultants, and us regular underpaid (and often unemployed) technical consultatn types... Though ahving said which we had a consultant of the technical variety on a project we were working on... who charged astronomical amounts and gave us some matterial so badly written I had to help re-write it.... and then of course they don't pay me anything like as much as they paid him, for my rewriting and researching his wrongly done work
Right. your all fired.

Thanks 2legs. You shine out like a paragon (do paragons shine?) of how a consultant should behave.

Icy

Once upon a time there was a shepherd looking after his sheep on the side of a deserted road. Suddenly a brand new Porsche screeches to a halt. The driver, a man dressed in an Armani suit, Cerutti shoes, Ray-Ban sunglasses, TAG-Heuer wrist-watch, and a Pierre Cardin tie, gets out and asks the Shepherd: "If I can tell you how many sheep you have, will you give me one of them?"

The shepherd looks at the young man, and then looks at the large flock of grazing sheep and replies: "Okay." The young man parks the car, connects his laptop to the mobile-fax, enters a NASA Webster, scans the Ground using his GPS, opens a database and 60 Excel tables filled with logarithms and pivot tables, then prints out a 150 page report on his high-tech mini-printer.

He turns to the shepherd and says, "You have exactly 1,586 sheep here."

The shepherd cheers,"that's correct, you can have your sheep."

The young man makes his pick and puts it in the back of his Porsche.
The shepherd looks at him and asks: "If I guess your profession, will you return my animal to me?"

The young man answers, "Yes, why not".

The shepherd says, "You are an IT consultant ".

How did you know?" asks the young man.

"Very simple," answers the shepherd. "First, you came here without being called. Second, you charged me a fee to tell me something I already knew, and third, you don't understand anything about my business...

Now can I have my sheepdog back?"

Darn it H5 _ I was going to tell that one !

You missed an opportunity for a gratuitous link:

A40098008 for 'powerpoint presentation'

Shame on you

Oh, and excellent entry

Thanks all

I wasn't sure whether to use that link, Pailaway - it's a bit tangential. I'll add it, though

This is certainly very informative but I couldn't help thinking it was a jab in the side to some at the same time.

This piece reads well but a couple little words 'natty' and 'cabals' had me reaching for the dictionary.

It still doesn't explain how they get away with those exorbitant fees.

.. my business card says "senior consultant"

exorbitant fees? me? welllll... on the average, say 21 days, 8 hours per day .. the overall total result isn't that exorbitant

... well ... I wonder if I really have to defend consultancy in general it looks like Dogbert, Dilbert's dog and consultant, has made a lasting impression here.
how do they get away with exorbitant fees? well, the true answer is: "they don't". in all cases, with all companies, no exceptions to the rule, your consultant is expected to offer "value for money" and if he doesn't then he's rapidly out of work.

why are consultants hired by a company? well for a variety of reasons:
- there is no, or insufficient, specific knowledge or experience in the company; (missionary)
- there is nobody in the company who dares to take responsibility for any (risky) action (mine field)
- factions within the company stopped talking to one another, but they'll both talk to an outsider (peace keeper)

Summarised, your consultant is worth quite a bit:
the missionary consultant may educate staff in the company, but certainly makes hiring new (expensive because specialist) staff unnecessary
your mine field consultant does the risky bits of your job and lets you sleep at night
and your peace keeping consultant allows you to ignore the hostile group in your company and happily move on

true .. consultants have a cost but they're hardly ever hired full time and for long periods Compare the cost of your consultant to hiring (same level, same experience) staff for full time (for 260 days per year)

oh and if anyone can tell me where I can get those exorbitant fees: yes please

I am only reminded of a translation project for a multinational corporation. They'd spent thousands on consultants and thousands more on translation fees and distribution for guidelines about how many pencils you could use per quarter and things like that - seriously!

Best, though, was the new rule about not bringing in houseplants, because caring for them wastes valuable employee time. If you had existing houseplants, they could stay, but only if you cared for them in your lunch break and brought bottled water from home for them

I wouldn't be surprised if this company went under anyway.

mm.. I always wanted a project like that

such measures usually have a shock effect on the company. they may lead to some rebellion, but also to an awareness that time is indeed money, and that paid staff shouldn't spend hours talking to their office plants (or ghost writing blogs for them).
this shock effect and its results are usually more important than economising on the three minutes used up watering plants

the basic ideas for such rules and measures usually comes from the company management though consultants don't y care about plants or pencils