Re: The so called 'Consultants' from India

From: Anton Geshelin <antong_at_mail.accent.net>
Date: 1996/04/20
Message-ID: <3179CDEB.166A_at_mail.accent.net>#1/1


Frank Hendrix wrote:
>
> Hey people look what I just found !
>
> Read and enjoy
>
> --
> Frank Hendrix
> LOBBYdata the UK Parliamentary database
>
> "
> I like to share with you my experience with some overseas computer
> consultants just to see if any other project managers out there has
> had a similar experience.
>
> I am a project manager at a fortune 100 bank based in Boston. I have
> the sole ownership of about 30 different client/server systems
> globally, most of these are built around Powerbuilder and Sybase. As
> you can imagine with a setup this big, we always have a number of
> outside consultants working on various projects.
>
> I recently decided to hire 20 consultants from a firm from India, this
>
> firm the name of which I would not say publicly is supposed to be THE
> consulting firm of India, and has a number of U.S and European
> companies as their clients.
>
> The 20 consultants arrived about 6 months ago, at first, they had to
> go thru all the problems of leaving their country and families for the
> first time, which is understandable. But as time went on, myself and
> few others in the team started noticing that many of these
> 'consultants' are pretty much devoid of any knowledge of computers at
> all. Although, a lot of the resumes did indicate they have MSc MCA(god
>
> knows what the hell that is!) and other degrees and 'upto seven years
> experience building Powerbuilder applications',some of these people in
>
> reality did not know how change the virtual memory on their windows
> machine!, amazing you think, it gets worse, once a girl asked me how
> to format a disk on her PC. I mean these people were downright frauds,
> about 99% of what they claimed in their resumes were lies!, they were
> basically bent upon 'learning on the job' the products that they were
> supposed to have had experience in.
>
> And, on top of all this, they want to keep going back to India every
> now and then, and with the most stupidest of excuses, get this, one
> consultant had to go and attend a celebration in india of her sister's
>
> coming of age!, can you beleive that?.
>
> Well, needless to say, eventually all the consultants were slowly
> replaced with local ones, they are more expensive, but atleast they
> knew what they are doing.
>
> Sandy Sears.
>
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I had some good and bad experiences. In this case CAVEAT EMPTOR applies!!!
You always need to check what you are getting. I have seen forged degrees from US institutions. Forgeries in India are a much simpler and cheaper matter.

The question, I have for you, is, why did you not fire them immediately when you realized what happened? That is what a responsible project manager should do. Received on Sat Apr 20 1996 - 00:00:00 CEST

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