Guerrilla Contracting
Clint Lewis, CI Editor
As an independent contractor I'm usually glad to be asked to stay on a project
beyond the original contract end date. I'm currently on a large contract where
a few of us have been asked to stay while many others have not. Several of
those let go had quite a bit of talent. Why did they keep me around? Hint: it
wasn't because of my programming skills.
It's easy to be overwhelmed your first day on a large contract. There are many
people, a lot of politics, and nobody knows you from Adam. Once things settle
down after a few days, you begin to understand what your "job" is.
On first consideration it seems obvious you are on the project to help with the
workload -- usually that means coding, testing, or similar activities. You can
happily go about doing your work with that understanding, but will probably
wonder why they keep some of your fellow contractors around after you've been
shown the door when your term expires.
Certainly, some are asked to stay based on their programming prowess alone. But
in my opinion programmers are a commodity item these days -- even really good
ones. I can easily reach out and have 20 top programmers ready to roll anytime
you want a team put together, especially if you want a virtual team. My
website, ColoradoIndependents.com
lists dozens of 10 to 20 year veterans with skills in virtually all programming
disciplines.
The secret to making it to the second round is understanding that what
companies need, but usually won't acknowledge, is leadership. You may ask how
as a newcomer, and with so many already in charge, you can join those who are
leading. The answer is to quietly begin to employ underground activities that
are not sanctioned but welcomed anyway once it's seen those activities are good
for the project.
While every situation requires a different approach, let's briefly investigate
what I did on this contract that put me with the "stayers". Rather
than just write VB code, the task I was assigned, I incrementally set up a
small interactive intranet that tied the activities of contractors and regular
employees together. This may not seem like a big deal, but considering the
inertia of the company, the lack of a company web server, and the toes I
avoided stepping on -- it was. This simple little intranet brought some
structure to some areas that had no structure. The intranet I built in a few
hours accelerated the project and because of that, I made the cut.
How did I create an intranet with no web server? While trying to solve the
server problem I stumbled across MS Access 2000's "Pages" capability.
This allows a direct form-based interaction with the Access database from
inside Internet Explorer. I used simple html pages to link the various Access
database driven pages together. I put the whole structure into a public network
directory.
To enlist support for using the underground intranet, I sent emails to everyone
in the company announcing new functionality every time I added a new form. This
takes a bit of courage, and I did ruffle a few feathers at first, but I got
noticed. I suppose you could overshoot your mark and actually leave the
contract *earlier* than everyone else. I've never seen that happen and as the
saying goes: no risk, no reward.