News: 1614079926

"as ever, the deal comes with no admitting of wrongdoing"

Of course not. How on Earth could anyone ever think Standard Industry Practice could be wrong?

It is as you say Standard Industry Practice . I remember Anderson doing just this 25 years ago. They got in the door with a handful of good people, specified up a project and pulled in dozens of clueless newbie colleagues charged at the same eye watering rate. The good team would then move on to fleece the next client leaving the dregs or Androids as we called them behind.

And our Indian cousins are now faithfully carrying forward that tradition.

Years ago the IR as they then were, predecessors of HMRC, obviously decided that they weren't going to let that game be played on them and inserted a "key man" clause in a standard contract for provision of services (note the plural - a contract of service, singular, is an employment contract, for services in the plural is a commercial B2B contract). This allowed them to specify that the supplier could not substitute part of the team without agreement from themselves as client. A sample contract was posted on their site. Under IR35, of course, such a clause is deemed to make the contract one of service. Somewhere along the line that standard contract get quietly removed from the site.

"It is, of course, completely unheard of for an IT consultancy company to bump up its prices and bill for work that junior staff have done at senior staff rates."

Hahahahahahahahahahhahahahaha

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Oh dearie me.

Hahahahahahahahahahhahahahaha

When I were a lad, government demanded a discounted rate for each grade of consultant, and the company had to show its charge out rates for each level of consultant and each type of customer* to prove they were getting a discount.

*(Finance 'industry', corporate, commercial, charity and government as I recall.)

The individual independent consultant can't get away falsifying their expertise as they stand or fall on the basis of their personal reputation from past work. The larger the "consultancy" the more immune they seem to be from the consequences of poor performance and dodgy practices. So it's great that this one has been taken to task. But incidentally, this poses the question - why is HMRC so keen on wiping out the individual independent consultants? Could the large consultancies have applied some pressure here?

Could the large consultancies have applied some pressure here?

Well, large consultancies certainly have the ability to dispense large amounts of cash, an ability generally not found in one-person operations.

"Hmmm...what's this bulky envelope doing in my pocket?"

Agreed that It's more difficult for independent consultants, but not impossible. You only need to know slightly more than the person you are working for, to give the impression of extensive knowledge and experience.

For some consultants, I have wondered how they manage to keep getting contracts, but then again hiring is typically done by managers who often don't have a clue.

"why is HMRC so keen on wiping out the individual independent consultants?"

Because their tax system is modelled on their world, a world of what the Japanese call the salaryman. It's a system devised by salaried employees for salaried employees. The notion that anyone would work - and prefer to work - on their own as a business, accepting the risks of trading as a business other than buying and selling things is beyond their comprehension. They can probably grasp that the solo plumber or sparky etc. who comes to fix things for them at home is doing that, otherwise they'd have to accept all the complications of being employers themselves but that's an exception.

But.... isn't that basically any outsourcing contract signed ever?

I have had the dubious misfortune of seeing this from the inside. Assimilated into an outsourcing outfit, watched the true techies get side-lined and let go (too expensive), and watched trainees come in and.... well, we all know the rest of the story.

The saddest thing is to hear a customer come up with: "We're moving to another, cheaper provider. We know its going to be shit, but right now its shit AND expensive".

I was talking to a friend in purchasing a couple of years back, they know these companies are crap, but, they're cheap. You give them a process and an SLA and if they don't meet SLA, then you claw back the funds from the next invoice. Do that a couple of times and they pay attention.

Is stuff going to break that is their fault? Absolutely, but that's when they bring in a high end contractor at 10x the price of the outsourcer to fix the issue and they don't have to pay the contractor the rest of the time. They take some of the money they've saved from outsourcing to pay for those contractors as and when the outsourcers screw up.

If you want to make yourself un-popular, ask for written reasons why outsourcing will be a cost-saving since the new provider will be expecting to make a profit from what they are charging. Been an observer of this a few times now (a couple where I was far too close to the centre) and it has never yet resulted in an improved support model, not even while the Primary team are in place until they can recruit enough school-leavers to fill the seats

When I worked for a government contractor (US civil agency), on a couple of occasions we had to write up the people we proposed to put on the contract. I followed the job descriptions, and wrote up people who were pretty good at clearing paper jams as if they were the greatest thing since Donald Knuth. (Well, OK, implied that they possessed technical skills they had never manifested.) In at least one case, the contracting office knew exactly who we were offering and made no objection.

As everyone else has said.

"But I thought all companies do that"!