[lbo-talk] Theory and practice

[Gar Lipow]

A lot of this discussion misses a very simple point - the problem with
contacting rather than doing stuff in-house. Contracting makes sense for
very short term projects. But if you have something that need to be done
over the course of a year or longer (in this case eighteen months) bring it
in  - house. There are plenty of good developers out there who will be
thrilled to get a long term temporary job - especially if comes with
benefits.  The advantage of in-house over out-sourcingz;  A firm that
accepts a contract will, at best, have goal of fulfulling the contract.
People who work for you will not, at least your management is competent,
play word games with instructions. They will try to figure out what you
really are aiming for and do their best to give it to you. I know that on
occasion  contractors will the do the same if they have a really close
working relationship, and feel that screwing you will cost repeat business.
But most of the time you get better work out of direct hires than through a
contract firm. One of th complaints was how detailed the contracts were.
But if developers don't work directly for you - if you are paying for
results rather than time - then you have describe the results that you want
not only clearly but in a way that protects against being mininterpreted
deliberately by somebody acting in bad faith.  Both the worker and the
employer are better off with old fashioned direct exploitation that with
indrect exploitation, where the workers are exploited by a third party and
the employer hires that third party.  Even worse with multiple third
parties.  It is enough of a pain installing sometime like a an accounting
package where you hire a networking company to bring you network up to the
software vendor's specs and then the software company comes and installs
the already written (non-custom) accounting package. Watch the finger
pointing between the two vendors even when it is that simple. Multiple
vendors with a major custom project is asking for trouble.  Yeah projects
can fail with direct hires too, but the odds of avoiding failure are a lot
better.  And at least communication problems are communication problems,
without the added fun of bad faith.

On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 3:59 PM, Michael Smith <mjs at smithbowen.net> wrote:


> On Thu, 21 Nov 2013 18:12:21 -0500
> shag carpet bomb <shag at cleandraws.com> wrote:
>
> > Also? The project used agile, not waterfall. The culture of DC
> > contracting companies and in the healthcare space in particular, is
> > agile.
>
> I am so glad to hear that. Agile is the stupidest, nastiest
> cult since the Hare Krishnas.
>
> I work in an 'agile' shop these days, and it's Hatlo's Inferno:
> a Taylorized nightmare where the developer gets punished for
> not being a mind-reader. I could go on and on, but I'll spare
> you.
>
> It produces crummy code, too. All written to fool the unit tests.
>
>
>
> --
> mjs at smithbowen.net
> http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org
>
> The reciprocal civility of authors is one
> of the most risible scenes in the farce
> of life. -- Sam J
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>

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