Consultants who have to work on junk equipment

Maybe this is why I get funny looks at sites where I do project management. I
fight from the get-go to get decent facilities for my coders. On the last
assignment, I refused to bring on more coders until the company set up decent
cube space with a solid network connection for them. The company fussed and
fumed, but relented. 

One of the things that was pointed out to me was that the high salaries they
were paying for the contract coders was making the regular staff jealous, so
they felt justified in giving the new people poorer conditions to work in. 

My reply was that I was there to bring the project in on-time, under-budget,
and with a very high level of quality. The quality of the workplace would
reflect the quality of our production. If they want junk work, write it into
the contract, and we'll deliver it in the junk environment. 

Funny thing is, the manager that I fought this battle with - he's one of my
best references.

Hank Heath
Project Manager
Con Quest Data Corporation
home office: 801-733-9716
cell phone: 801-814-5387
7054 S. Ponderosa Dr.
Salt Lake City
UT 84121-3734
e-mail: HLHeath@IBM.net

In a message dated 11/15/98 4:03:41 PM Eastern Standard Time, jteff19@idt.net
writes:

<< This I find is definitely true. I am working on a 66 Mhz PC at my current
client
 with a 500M disk that is always about 98% full. I occasionally have to let
one of
 the operators use it because they do some EDI processing on it. I have no
 access to the Internet or to outside e-mail. I cannot even use my laptop here
 because they use Token Ring for their network. Even if I had a Token Ring
 card, their MAUs are full. They will be going to Ethernet soon, so I will be
 able to use my laptop. At my last two clients, I used a 5250 green screen
 device at one and an old PC running Windows 3x at the other.  >>
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