Sorry, you think too much for us....
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Saturday, 19 May 07 - 04:49 PM (GMT +10:00) By Peter Quodling in Employment & Careers |
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This is a story that must be told. It is a reflection on the sad state of our government and the recruitment industry. Names have been hidden, in the main, to protect the guilty and some innocent bystanders... I just hope that I have enough letters to hide all of the players.
I am an IT Consultant, that has been doing so for around 20 years.I live in a place (a city, a state, that I love). I have worked around the world in design, sales, engineering, maintenance marketing etc. I keep abreast of the "state of the art" to the extent that I can talk in detail about things that are "yet to come" and most people in the industry haven't even heard of yet.
Around April 2002, I get a call from recruiter A, asking if I would be interested in a role as a Systems Architect for Government Department Z to design a key application for them that would involve integration between a number of government departments.
I said, yes, and gave them a number of comments in my Cover Letter for my application, about how I would go about it - One of their key concerns was whether they were going to use J2EE or .NET (.NET had been out about 6 weeks at that stage, but knowing a lot about it, I said it was the preferable path, but explained in detail the rationale behind that assessment.)
Nothing happened, the usual expected lack of response to applications. didn't think any more about it. Until October 2002... I get a call from Recruiter B, asking if I am interested in a role at Government Department Y, working on an application that sounds remarkably similar to the previous one (different department, different recruiter) (Oh, and in the interim, I am talking with a Recruiter C, who is trying to hire for Government department X, who are commissioned to do a "Whole of Goverment" interfacing project, but, of course, it appears they haven't told any other government department about this. Just before this, I might add I built and prototyped a .NET Application in about a week for a company. (.NET is not rocket science, most of it's concepts predate Microsoft's efforts by at least a Decade, and I was giving training courses in the pre-cursors to J2EE nearly 10 years ago.)
I ask to have a look at the Position Description. It is listed as a fixed price, fixed term contract, spread over 4 months. I read the PD, and notice that it is, in effect, the solution that I had proposed to another department via another recruiter several months before.
But imbedded in the PD, is a timeline of events, and what the PD is asking for is a) gathering input from no less than five involved goverment departments, coming up with a design (and alternatives), documenting them in detail, including multiple competitive equipment quotes, rollout plans, test plans, business cases etc etc. All of which is to be signed off by the five Government Departments(Z,Y, and three new ones, T,U and V) And while the job spec says 4 months, all of the documentation is to be delivered within 5 Weeks (the rest of the time for the powers that be to review and come back with questions).
I point this out to recruiter B, and they agree that this is a ridiculous expectation, and I choose not to take on such a risky engagement.
A few weeks later Recruiter D, asks me if I would be interested in a role for Goverment Department Y, I related the story to date, and he said he would try to find out more. I didn't think much more of it, until a few weeks after department Y's through recruiter B, had closed. Lo, and behold it was Department Z advertising directly for people to start on a Project that sounded remarkably like the Department Y project. The ads ran for sometime, which is always a good indication that they were not getting any response. Department Z was trying to hire people at standard government full time rates, for what was obviously a fast development project, more suited to experienced contractors.
Then Department Z advertised for a senior executive position in the area that involved this application. I thought, if I can't drive this from the ground up, I'll do so from the top down, so I applied for it. A Month later, two emails, and some phone calls, and I still hadn't heard anything about success or failure on that position.
In the mean time, another group of recruiters (lets call them E, F, and G) are very vocal in the press about the the lack of local expertise in .NET. They bemoan the fact that it is impossible to get people with "at least twelve months solid commercial experience in .NET". I reply via the editor, pointing out that this would be a challenge given that .NET had only been release 10 months before. Deathly silence in response. I guess the irony of their concern was lost on them.
Then out of the blue (some months on), I get a request from Recruiter F, for a role at Government Department T. The description is suitably vague (why is there this strange requirement to bare your soul, your history and your ambitions, in applying for work, when often the organization hiring can't or won't even tell you who they are or what they are doing.) I know the Project Director for this role, from work we did together at Department S, and had heard previously that he is involved in the TUVZY project.
Then lo, and behold, not long after, I am trolling the net for work, and find that Department Z is now advertising through recruiter H, for people to work on, you guessed it, the same project. But this time, they are asking THREE Years experience in .NET(The then 10 month old technology), and about half a dozen other requirements, most of which track back to my original comments to them, about how I would approach their problem. Yes, exactly the same phrases that I had used in my cover letter.
Will I apply for these roles? I must ask myself, why? It has been 10 months, 6 Government departments and 8 recruiters and the associated costs in fees, effort and delays for what appears to be a simple project. It would appear that there is still no "high level design", project plan or budget assigned to this initiative.
Is this unique? Hell No, I was engaged a while back on a Goverment Department Project, that I suggested would take 6-8 months (in fact much of it didn't need to be done in the first place). After 12 months, and no progress, we parted ways. Speaking with co-workers, they are now at over five year on that project, and it still hasn't completed.
I moved into a slightly different line of work, for a couple of years, and then got back into it all. The original project had snowballed, it now fully encompassed several departments, had hundreds of people working on it. But still lacked singular direction.
I should have triggered the alarm bells when the new lead government department advertised for expertise to document the API needed between two programs working between it and another department. I estimated this as 6-8 weeks work for me. No, I was told. We are hiring 3 people and we will have them for a year... Hmm, one of us must have it wrong...
Then I applied for a role as "Enterprise Architect" for one of the key departments. In an interview, ask them if they are using a known global industry standard as their core data model. It was like rabbits in the headlights. Never heard of it. Heck, google the name of their project, and the first thing that comes up is a pointer to this international standards effort... Then I asked what methodology and tools they used for Architecting... You know technical stuff, like UML, MDA. I reeled off three of four that I have used (different ones for different environments). More of the Rabbit looks.
Then lo, and behold, this week, a headhunter wants to know if I am available for a contract, as a solutions architect at the last place mentioned... I look at the Position Description. Guess what... They mention one of the Architecture Tool products (that they weren't even aware of, 6 months ago) as a requirement...
This state purports to be technically astute? One has to wonder. I just think that i need to copyright my interviews and applications.
.... Addition ....
Just rang a new Headhunter in the market place to inquire about a new role advertised. Turns out it's with the core agency of all of the above, seems that after months or is it years of "losing the plot" they have had a management restructure and are now looking for a "Business Architect", not an "Enterprise Architect" or a "Solutions Architect". Heaven forbid, someone that actually listens to the needs, and understands the processes, and then develops a goto "vision", rather than just producing charts and diagrams and so on...
Here goes another one for the "I told you so list" - I am a glutton for punishment, I'll apply again.
sigh...
... More items are available in my News Archive
