My Life as a Contractor

An Essay
by

Grey Staples

Spring, 1991

From my vantage point as a computer contractor I have been able to observe a number of modern Data Processing organizations. What I have seen so far worries me about the future of the industry. The way companies treat their contractors and employees, indicates a serious problem in their attitude and expectations. If we don't change these, the computer industry will not be able to respond to the future.

I've worked in the Data Processing profession for over thirty years. I met my first computer in 1962; a vacuum tube, paper tape machine with 4096 words of memory on a rotating drum. It was obsolete when I used it. Since then, I have made friends with dozens of mainframe and personal computers. I was an independent entrepreneur, owning my own business, now I provide programming services through a broker.

THE START OF THE DECLINE

First there was a change to the tax laws, affectionately referred to as "Section 1706." This bit of legislation effectively put me out of business. I founded my first consulting corporation in the early 1980s and spent the next years offering my services to a variety of personal computer and mainframe clients. These were all performed on a two-party contractual basis. I paid my taxes and didn't worry about them paying theirs.

After "1706" was enacted, independent consultants became an endangered species. The threat that the client might be billed for back taxes if the consultant failed to pay theirs, caused all of the possible clients to retreat to the safest position available. They now only deal with brokers of professional services, shifting any tax problems over to the vendor.

This tax change has diminished the numbers of independent consultants. The local consultants professional group (ICCA) has seen a steep decline in the number of true "independents." Many members have expressed a private desire to get a "real" job and leave the "rat race." Now, when a member announces that they are no longer independent and have finally achieved full time employment, there is a congratulatory feeling. In previous years the individual would be seen as a "traitor" to the cause of independence.

WHY IS THIS HAPPENING

There seems to be a trend in the industry for corporations to get rid of their employees, and then to just rent the needed number of bodies from someone else. The employer and employee relationship changes drastically when it becomes that of client and vendor. All personnel difficulties are shifted to the vendor of the professional services. No need to go through the legal problems of trying to fire an employee, just tell the vendor to remove a contractor and supply a replacement as soon as possible.

The relationship between a client and a contractor is fundamentally different from that of an employer and employee. Contractors are rented by the hour and can be eliminated in a minute. Employees are hired for an unspecified length of time, with an assumed retirement as the goal. The process of removing an employee may take forever once all applicable corporate rules, and labor and civil rights laws are addressed, and possibly litigated.

The industry trend towards "out-sourcing," etc. means that employers no longer have to deal with employees. They only have bodies supplied by some outside provider. If they don't like the person, their clothes or perhaps their attitude, the contractor can be eliminated with a phone call. Poof, they're gone. It now behooves the vendor to come up with another body, which can plug into the project with little disturbance. Otherwise the vendor of the bodies could find itself shut out from further business. The stark reality of draconian economics prevails.

The more management is insulated from having to deal with their "people," the more they can reduce the profession of computer programming to an assembly line staffed with interchangeable bodies, each providing their appointed number of hours on a project. The need persists for the computer professionals to understand the business of the client, the time is usually lacking for that to be accomplished. The company looses that resource. As soon as a contractor learns the environment, the contract is over and they take that experience out the door.

LIFESTYLE

"Gypsy" is probably the best term to be used. Contractors get the short projects, those lasting from six months to a year. We arrive, full of competence, eager for the assignment, brimming with experience gathered from previous jobs. After the initial flush, we find out just how primitive the new shop actually is. The contractor is usually down at the "brass tacks" level of programming. Nothing fancy, just get the job done, on schedule.

The culture of the contractors is interesting to observe. The projects are short and the conditions many times are from uncomfortable to unbearable. I frequently am teamed with people whom I knew from previous projects. "I remember you! We were at Company-X down in the 'contractor's ghetto' last year. I inherited your terminal after you left." Or the reaction might be: "After you left, they blamed all the problems on you, even things you never touched." It's the contractor as scapegoat.

If you take attendance at a shop the day before a holiday, or at 5 PM on a Friday, the only people there are the contractors. It really is a question of loyalty. Contractors are loyal to the clock. Their services are dispensed by the hour. Heaven help them if they bill for an hour not spent on a project. This mechanical approach to clock watching demands that they put in a full eight hour day. Productivity or creativity are really not a part of the equation. Since we bill by the hour, we are present by the hour.

CHECK THE BOOKS

One of the first things I do after taking up residence at a new client's site, is to inspect the library of computer manuals. Without exception all mainframe shops have some form of a library. The best shops have just the manuals I may need, with all the updates carefully inserted. Reference manuals for the software I will be using are marked and available. The most important books which document all the error messages from the computer should be accessible, though perhaps a bit dog-eared from frequent use. If I need it, I immediately know where to find it.

On the other hand, the worst shops have a miserable library. Manuals are there for outdated versions of the software, perhaps ten years old. Those for the current software have long since disappeared. The binder may be there, but it's empty. There is nothing more annoying than finding the one library copy of the error codes manuals, and discovering the pages describing your most pressing problem have been carefully removed from the library copy.

Updates to the manuals accumulate in an ever increasing unorganized stack because the librarian was the first person to be eliminated in a layoff, or "right sizing." As a result of that cost savings, the library is close to being useless. All the employees and contractors have to find other methods of solving their problems.

A casual walk among the office cubicles will reveal the employees attitude towards their library of manuals. If they have their own personal copy of a commercially available reference book, then they have learned not to trust the library. For a few dozen dollars the employees can accumulate a private library of their own.

Some times management apologizes for the terrible library, but does nothing to correct the problem.

THE WORKSTATION AS HOME

Or, they treat us like Pond Scum!

Contractors generally get the worst facilities. Why spend money on making them comfortable? I have been variously seated at a personal computer on a table in a conference room, a terminal on a small table in a hallway, and, my favorite, one end of a six foot folding table. The fellow at the other end had the same amount of surface space as I did, one square yard. Most of that was consumed by the terminal and keyboard linking us to some computer in the Mid West. Your personal "stuff" was consigned to a cardboard box under your work space. As a crowning note to this shabby environment, the contractors at an adjoining table kept up a daily eight hour conversation about every program, every test run, every error. Their noise radiated into the employee cubicles. I consumed a number of batteries using my tape player.

YOU HAVE COBOL, DON'T YOU?

Every contractor is expected to be proficient in whatever software is to be used and must be productive from day one. That is just a basic assumption in the industry. No company will pay to have a contractor trained, only to see them walk off with the knowledge at the end of a project. But, then the same applies to employees. Every employer wants someone else to have paid for the training. The shopping list of "must have experience in..." appearing in employment ads indicates the inventory of current software being used, and the need for prior training. The Catch-22 principle appears: you need experience to get a job, and you need a job to get experience.

This attitude of companies about training reflects a view of computer programming as a commodity. Programmers are interchangeable, must be educated by someone else, and are to be bought at the lowest possible price. But, that is nature of the general business climate.

THE YEAR 2000 TO THE RESCUE (written in 1991)

A time bomb is ticking, and contractors will be the ones to benefit. There are thousands, if not millions of stable, comfortable programs running now which will not produce correct results ( i.e. die miserably) when dates fall beyond the year 2000. ALL date difference routines, which compute the number of days between two given dates, will have to accommodate one date in the 1900s and the other date in the 2000s. A negative number will be produced by uncorrected programs. Imagine being dunned for a late payment for "minus 36,525 days."

It may be a bit early in the decade to start thinking about the problem, but it will definitely happen. There will be no "turning back the calendar" on this one. Date driven programs will have to accommodate the new century.

This will be an annuity for contractors with experience in old, obsolete languages and systems. Those long running applications which are the "bread and butter" of current systems are probably written in languages from a previous decade. Usually the only person with familiarity with the software is a contractor previously hired for some routine maintenance. Nobody else in the company would touch that old thing. That crush of demand for programmers will appear later this decade.

CONCLUSION

As the programming market moves away from employees and towards contractors, we see a diminished regard for the professional skills of the programmer. If you have used some software previously, you are assumed to be competent. If you haven't used it in a few years you are dead. The software hasn't changed, but...

Treating programmers as commodities only reduces the enthusiasm we used to feel for our art and craft. But, then, I'm in it for the money, all else is a luxury.

Updated: 02-19-99 (9-5-2001 webstat)