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Subject:RE: FWD: What to do about a recommendation? From:"Robotti, Anne \(Carlin\)" <ARobotti -at- CarlinGroup -dot- com> To:<techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Tue, 24 Oct 2006 09:12:12 -0400
> THis is a classic case of you should have been upfront with this
> person all along. Since you never told him/her there were any
> problems, this poor sap was led to believe that you were
> really happy
> with their work.
(Disclaimer about how many good contractors there are, whatever.)
Quite frankly, I think that there are two classes of bad contractors.
There's a group who think they're doing a great job, and would be
crushed if they were told otherwise. I personally feel bad for them and
give as much constructive criticism as possible, but YMMV.
Then there's another group, MUCH more prevalent in every job I've ever
worked, that are contractors so they can slide through under the radar.
They *know* they're bad. They don't care. They're not interested in
being good because being good takes too much time and work and feedback
meetings and they just want to collect a fat check for as long as they
can and move on.
I mean, come on. Show of hands, who out there needs a performance review
or feedback from their manager to know that they're not meeting
expectations? "Gee, the software went out last week and I still haven't
finished the manual. I wonder if that's a problem?" A good reaming at a
document review is usually all it takes to get me right on board!
I bet Anonymous doesn't mean they *never* said anything to the guy about
expectations, or deadlines, or scope of work, or negative reviews of
docs. They just never sat him down for the Big Talk.
No with no explanation is my vote, because everybody including the
contractor knows what the explanation is. (Or you could be a weenie and
go with the lukewarm recommendation. Use the word "punctual" - it's code
for "nothing good to say here, keep looking.")
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