Re: Ending the Madness

[Andrew Plato <aplato -at- EASYSTREET -dot- COM>]

A) If you were placed by an agency and you are a W2 contractor,  you have NO
contractual obligation to client.  You can leave right now.  In this
circumstance, the agency, not you, holds the contractual responsibility.

B) If you were placed by an agency and have a 1099 type of relationship, you
probably do not have any contractual responsibility and you can walk.

C) If you signed a contract with the client or agency without knowing EXACTLY
what you were expected to do, you are as much to blame as anyone.  This is a
lesson for you.  NEVER sign a contract without a complete, written statement of
what is expected of you.  This way, if the client changes their mind, you point
to your contract and say "that is not what I signed on to do, we better
negotiate a new contract."

D) If you did not sign any contracts and the agency has mislead you, then
welcome to the wonderful world of contracting agencies.  Remember, agencies have
one paramount mission: to fill positions.  Contracting agencies only make money
when contractors are billing hours.  They could care less about you and your
skills.  You are a piece of meat to them.  They want to extract as much margin
from you as possible.  If you think your agency cares about you and your skills,
you should see what kind of a margin they are making off of you.

E) If you do not know how to do something, then you might want to consider using
this opportunity to expand your skill-set and learn something new.  Whining
about how the agency screwed you will only make you look bad and make the client
regret hiring you.  Narrow-selling* yourself is a sure-fire way to get crappy
assignments and low pay.

F) Lastly, get a new agency.  Once shame on them, twice shame on you.

.......................................................
Andrew Plato
President / Principal Consultant
Anitian Consulting, Inc.
www.anitian.com

"Narrow-selling" means to demand a very specific type of job or a very specific
type of industry.  For example, I interviewed a man a while back who demanded a
contract as a senior developer working on video games.  I told him there were no
contracts available right now for that type of position.  I also informed him
that those types of jobs are very, very rare.  He scoffed at me and said, "well,
I know there are some and that is what I want to do."  Guess what, he is still
working as a video game tester for $8.00 an hour.  He narrow-sold himself and
now nobody wants him.