Alternative sources of Perl programmers

Richard Foley richard.foley at rfi.net
Tue May 14 07:06:40 BST 2013


Hi Uri,

Yeah, I guess my brush was a bit broad there, I herewith send out my apologies
to all the good agents, and the bad ones can suck :)

So, what happened was that the agency contacted me and said they had this
on-site role in CH, and I said I'd be able to work 50/50 on/off-site, and they
said that I should talk to the client about that. The client and I had a
telephone interview where they were happy for me to start on-site and gradually
move off-site. Then the agent called me and said "that's not going to happen".

And I never heard from them again... The agents motivation, I imagine, was to
keep people under their umbrella of control as far as possible. 

In general terms I'm happy to work though an agent so long as my cut is
reasonable as I don't want the hassle of dealing chasing up new roles.
Sometimes dealing directly works very well indeed, and sometimes working
through an agent works very well indeed, too. I have good and bad stories for
both scenarios. What we all want, (whoever is involved), is to be content with
the arrangement.

-- 
Ciao

Richard Foley

http://www.rfi.net/books.html

On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 12:45:09AM -0400, Uri Guttman wrote:
> On 05/14/2013 12:09 AM, Richard Foley wrote:
> >I had a contract role in Switzerland where the client was happy for me to come
> >on board in a (largely) remote capacity. That meant some on-site work to
> >familiarize me with the team and the project and then shift off-site for the
> >majority of the work. This suited both parties.
> >
> >The agency stepped in, (they'd been "unavailable" during the telephone
> >interview), and said there was no way I was going to work remotely for this
> >client, and scotched the deal. Both the client and the contractor were screwed,
> >and this had nothing to do with the practicalities of remote working, or
> >problem solving of any kind. This was simply a power broking intervention.
> >
> >
> 
> how did the agent scotch it? what motivation did they have (other
> than no ethics and lots of stupidity)?
> 
> it may sound sappy but i am very happy when i place a perl hacker
> and all three parties (candidate, client and me) win. it does happen
> quite a bit IMO. my first placement was a grad student in germany
> and he moved to nyc for this job and he still has it 8 years later.
> that makes me happy.  :)
> 
> and i can't scotch things as i like c_ognac better!
> 
> uri
> 
> _


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