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

A few years ago I wrote a guide entry about management consultants (A43600538) - that strange race of pinstripe-suited, Gucci watch-wearing androids, who seem to descend en masse when a business is going through difficult times. The company is inevitably 'downsized' (ie half the staff get sacked), but not before these guys engage with the board of directors and spin them all their mumbo-jumbo management theory. They collect their fees, then drive off into the sunset in their Ferraris.

I didn't realise how much these guys earn until today, when this job advert popped up in my mailbox:

http://www.jobserve.com/Senior-IT-Management-Consultant-Senior-Programme-Manager-London-Contract-WEC4EDCBF518512BD.jsjob

The link won't be available for long, so I'll just summarise it:

"Large Investment Bank requires a high level IT Management Consultant to define high level strategy for global change initiatives for front to Back Office systems across multi product coverage (FX, Derivatives, Money Markets, Fixed Income etc.) and detailed report definition. Candidates will be responsible for advising senior management, providing senior line management responsibility when required, guiding, change and strategic direction on a global basis with a particular focus on Front Office technology. Coming from a strong top 5 consultancy background with detailed exposure to investment banking and used to dealing at a senior level, candidates will have a broad knowledge of IT processes and the ability to face off to the global senior Front Office business personnel. Location: London, Duration: 6 months+, Rate c£1.5k per Day"

That's £1,500 per day! No doubt the little c in front of that figure means they're quite entitled to negotiate something higher (£2,000 maybe, for the right candidate?) What if they got their contract extended to 12 months, let's say 240 days: that could be approaching half a million quid!

"I didn't realise how much these guys earn until today, when this job advert popped up in my mailbox:"

unfortunate use of the word 'earn'.

Loss adjusters, surveyors, lawyers, estate agents, all on the gravy train.

What I did wrong was not find money appealing, I once tried a job selling saving plans and was told to go to a 90 year old pensioner,who wanted to plough all his savings into 25 years saving plans, where you can't touch your money for 25 years and a hiccup in payments would cause yo to lose the lot.

I refused to sell it to him even though I would have got thousands, he complained and they sent round their top salesman who sold sold sold, and bragged about it in the pub on Sunday.

nice

I'm supposed to be at a meeting at the moment, where it is rumoured that we're being downsized. But I was unable to go because I was needed for some essential work. No doubt what I'm missing is the message that I am unessential and surplus to requirements.

Good grief, PAL - that's appalling. It sounds like an episode of Watchdog.

Sorry to hear about that, Gnomon - I hope you have better luck than I've had.

Oh, I heard the news from the meeting - they're trying to cut payroll costs by 20%, by reducing staff and getting existing staff to take a paycut. But it's not as bad as I thought. They want me to take on the work of restructuring the team and effectively being the team head - so I'm not being let go. of

Restructuring:

When I was a schoolboy I found my eyesight was getting worse and so I dropped out of 'A' levels.(I wanted to go into the RAF)

Soon after I had an easy job as a lab technician, but the company was restructuring

The boss, 'slimy person' came into our office and said: 'we are only letting one person go, the least qualified; and you know who that is don't you,' looking in my general direction.

So I did a lot of correspondence courses and a university entrance examination and became the most qualified person.

Still got the sack though.

That's a relief, Gnomon. Glad to hear some good news in these bad times.

Icy, that's a horrible ad, but somehow not surprising.

Back a few years, when my longest-running job got outsourced along with the whole department (I hope Limerick appreciated the work), they not only brought in experts for this, but gave us all, as a 'benefit', a month's worth of job search training.

Unlike my sceptical colleagues, I made full use of the 'benefit', not because the office head at the agency knew better than I how to write a resume - I had to remove his 'improvements' - but in order to use their computers to take 'webinars'. Since I wanted to go into distance learning...

The thing is, these people were scavengers - not horribly well-paid ones, more like small-time followers of the kill. They weren't much use, but they were scooping up a bit of change from every major downsizing - conscience money from multinationals.

They call them 'outplacement consultants' here, Dmitri. I've used them the last couple of times I failed to dodge the axe. Worse than useless, you're right

I don't know about your lot, but ours dress for success and have offices with nice coffee machines.

I'm quite sure Limerick appreciated any work that came their way, as there is not much on offer.

One of my recent employers outsourced to Cork, than a couple of years later decided it was far too expensive and outsourced again to Manila.

This trend has been going on for longer than people realise.

Back in the late 1970s, I had a job during the university break in Munich. I interfered with television parts for Siemens, in a multicultural setting. Translating for the Irish was fun...the job was called 'montage', which we decided meant 'putting things on top of other things'.

The company was in the process of outsourcing the work to Indonesia - as soon as they hired a shaman to exorcise the factory over there, which was believed to be haunted, causing worker discontent...

All the Yugoslavs who worked in Munich were becoming too expensive, apparently...

It's all crap really, if you got money you will be alright.

Apparently, an Indian IT firm has just bought office space in the new Titanic Quarter. They want cheap, English-speaking workers so they can establish a European foothold, and thought Belfast was the right location Outsourcing in reverse...

I occasionally get e-mails from Indian IT firms asking for us to use them as outsourcers. Since that would be my job they're taking away (I'm one of two code-writers at a six-person website company), I simply delete the e-mails.

TRiG.

, TRiG. Good for you.

The job that brought me to North Carolina was outsourced - from Norway. (Leading to the local claim that the bosses went 'bork, bork, bork' when they got excited. )

Titanic bet it sinks

I heard numerous callers to a radio show last night say: 'we don't need any education.'

One said: 'why teach anybody simultaneous equations,' or for that matter Euclid's Algorithm and we can have what I saw in the early 80's, a program thousands of lines long to work out the Highest Common Factor, or why should engineers know interpolation, all useless according to the callers.

The Indians want IT workers, where are they getting them from. The government doesn't think education beyond age 14 I take that back, my red credentials showing my prejudices, it isn't possible that children will be streamed into paid for education leading to top jobs and technical know your your place jobs, is it.

Well, they have a lot of support from those that sound as though they wouldn't benefit from a top education.

If education is over-rated; how come some pay 30,000 a year for each child to get it?

They don't pay for the education. They pay to get the name of the school on their CV. It's impossible to get a job in, say, the City without contacts.

I've heard this over and over. There was the president of a community college in North Carolina who said, 'Why should bricklayers know about Shakespeare?'

Because it's their *right*, dang it?