🚀 go-pugleaf

Folks:

	It is my intention that this missive will serve two purposes:

	1).	I want to vent my spleen on how the consultant brokerage
		business has changed in the last several years to the detriment 
		of the consultant.

	2).	I am interested in other people's opinions on this issue.

	In the "good old days," the life of an independently contracting
consultant was rather straightforward: 

	-	You put your resume together, 
	-	submitted it to several consultant brokerages, 
	-	interviewed with them (and possibly filled out their database
		questionaire), 
	-	were programmed into their database, and, 
	-	when requirements came in that matched your skill set were
		contacted for approval of your resume being submitted to the
		potential client and sent on an interview.

	For these services and the contracting, time-sheet submission, and
factoring of monies owed (the brokerage paying you regardless of when they
collected money from the client), they, I feel, justifably charged aprox. 15%
of the consultants hourly fee (on top of the IC's fee) to the client as an 
administrative spread / profit.

			- - - - FLAME ON - - - -

	In today's world, however, things are a little more complicated. 

	First, because of the IRS's 20 question smell test for Independent
Contractors vs. W2-able employees, a number of brokers have joined the
NACCB (National Association of Computer Consultant Brokers) and using that
organizations template contract (which I think won't stand in a court)
will only allow IC's to sign a contract that states that the IC only gets
paid when the brokerage gets paid by the client (the "assumption of
financial risk" question of the IRS 20). This creates a situation where
the IC has to work up to 2 weeks before submission of the first invoice,
wait for the brokerages client billing cycle to pass, wait for the
client's bill paying cycle to elapse, and then finally, wait for the
brokerages check-cutting cycle to kick in. The net elapsed time on this
could very well be 10 weeks before the IC sees the first check (I have
seen it this bad!). Now, if one even takes a conservative rate to the IC
of $50.00 / hr. on a 40 hr. work week (how many of us actually get to work
this little?), this leaves the IC holding the bag on about $12,000.00 (6
wk. cycle) to $20,000.00 (10 wk. cycle). A truly uncomfortable situation
when one thinks about "roof over head / food on table." I know it could be
argued that we made the decision to enter this line of work, ___BUT!!!___
at some point reality has to set in. I personally try to keep an emergency
fund of about 6 months living expenses in liquid capital around, but
holding the bag on > $20,000.00 in outstanding AR makes me very
uncomfortable (and that's at $50.00 / hr., I work for much more than
that). So the brokerages are still charging the %15 and in fact are the
beneficieries of a non-interest paying loan from the IC to the brokerage
(they still get to carry our AR / AP on their books as an expense for tax
purposes); neat work if you can get it. 

	Second, and even more galling to me, is the proliferation of job
postings on the internet vis-a-vis the brokerages doing something valuable
for their fees. A situation seems to exist at the moment, whereby, an IC
looking for work has to spend upwards of 2+ hours per day scanning the
relevant news groups, contact the brokers making the postings, educate
them on what the requirements they have posted really mean (can we say
"career transition from insurance salesman"), and then do all of the leg
work of convincing the client to hire us. And still the brokerages collect
their %15. Maybe the fee should be discounted for the amount of work that
the IC now has to do??? 

	In most cases, my resume has been submitted to the posting
brokers, scanned into their databases, and then not searched before I find
the position on the internet. Of the 20 or so brokers who have my resume,
only one has independently contacted me consistently after a database
search prior to doing a news posting. 

	Am I just over-agitated??? It seems to me that this new paradigm
has imposed a greater workload on the IC, short-changed the potential
client of valuable candidates (if the databases are not searched and
candidates of merit do not follow the news postings), and led to a
cash-cow sort of situation for the brokers. 

	I do also want to make the point that there are several brokers
with whom I have worked that are honerable and wonderfull to work with.
They will in fact make the extra effort on behalf of the IC. But, overall,
this new paradigm does not do justice to the fine guild of computer IC's

	Any brokers out there care to take a shot at justifing the
continuing %15 fee??? 

	Any IC's have comments on the above diatribe???

			- - - - FLAME OFF - - - -

	Regards,

	b c++'ing u,

	%-) sjs

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Stefan Jon Silverman - President                     SJS Associates, N.A., Inc.
                                                            572 Chestnut Street
Distributed Systems Architecture & Implementation      San Francisco, Ca. 94133
                                                            Phone: 415 989 2741
E-mail: sjs@sjsinc.com                                      Cell:  415 519 3494
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                  Weebles wobble, but they don't fall down!!!
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