Staffing

My job is not normal. There is no way around this. In fact it is quite strange. When people ask who you work for that is easy. When they ask what you do that is hard. Generally I just say I help large companies install software. At the Macro level this is true. As a company we help other companies transform their entire business. This may involve or may not involve technology. When a client decides it does center on a technology solution and that solution is SAP then that is when I may get called. The specifics of my day to day activities change from week to week. First I really only got to sit around taking notes and doing simple project manager activities. Later I was allowed to document what we were doing. Then I was allowed to coordinate testing activities. Then I led testing activities. Then I designed simple data migrations. And on my last project I led one of three sites on their data migration activities. Each project needs people to do different things. So I never know what is going to come up.

This makes things very interesting. I have been on literally hundreds of people, for 5 clients, on 6 projects, in at least a dozen different roles in the last 4 years. However the way you are staffed drives me crazy. Unlike many of our competitors that just assign people to projects our company is much less informal. We have a staffing manager who proposes us to a project. Then we have to interview with the manager and possibly again with the client. Then maybe you are on the project or maybe you aren’t. The other way of getting staffed is if a manager requests you. So when you not staffed you job is to get on the phone and start calling any project manager you know and to reach out to those you don’t that have new projects starting. Now while I still get paid fully during this time it is like looking for a new job. It can be very stressful. And you never know what is going on.

So it is by far the least favorite part of my job. The current economic climate has also really exacerbated the situation as well. One of the criteria’s they use for who to keep and who to trim is staffing level. So if you are not billing you are in a bad spot. So stress just doubles, so that has been what I have been dealing with since the end of November. But I am finally staffed again, though it is currently only for 5 weeks. So I suppose the same cycle will start over again in March. But I should have enough billable hours at the end of the year to still get promoted and not trimmed as it were, but who know it is a lot time until summer.