Some facts every IT
Contractor should be aware of
As an Analyst/Programmer for
over 15 years, I recently took on a Contract to do some urgent work for Knowledge
Pool, a wholly owned training offshoot of ICL which is itself owned by Fujitsu.
Unfortunately, my Agent was
also a wholly owned ICL company calling itself ICL IT Contractor Services.
I was taken on to do this
job on the proviso that I would be prepared to work very long hours to pull
Knowledge Pool out of the hole they were in.
After starting, I discovered
that Knowledge Pool don’t believe in time-sheets and none of the other
Contractors used them. Also, soon after, the IT Manager was demoted without a
replacement so there was no-one to sign or control anything.
I contacted my ‘Agent’ and
was advised to carry on working including the many hours of overtime involved.
After nine weeks, and not a
few complaints, to both Knowledge Pool and the ‘Agent’, I had designed and
built a fully generic Training Administration System which would cater not only
for the Microsoft Accreditation programme they were undertaking, but also any
other programme they were to undertake.
Still not having been paid
any money, I was then asked to leave.
I was later paid for 236.8
of the 579 hours worked but, as I had no time sheets, they refused to pay any
more.
Knowledge Pool’s purpose in
life is to train IT departments, of ICL and other companies, how to do their
work more effectively. Their own was a total Enigma.... no manager, no admin
procedures, no timesheets, no design specifications, no code reviews, the staff
drinking most lunch-times….etc
The MD Stuart Kearns would
make promises and mostly either ignore them or change his mind a day later.
You have been warned
……. Don’t take them at their word.
To date I have done over 342
hours of hard graft -- for nothing
Stuart Bradbury
stuart@stuartbradbury.com