I work in the D.C. metro area.
Federal contracting is all the rage. Every contract needs warm bodies sitting in seats. While those bodies are in place, the government pays the contractor. Those bodies will often be picked up by a new contractor if the contract changes hands.
Impermanence is built into this model. Perfect fits are rare and more rarely long-term. If the contract is lost and no billet available on another of your company's contract, no matter how strong an engineer you are, your value to the company vanishes. I know many engineers who hate this feeling. Every contract turnover elicits heart palpitations.
If the new contractor absolutely needs to keep the work going, only the worst workers are likely to be dropped. I've been through one changeover only. Most of my group was picked up with limited impact on pay and benefits. It's a good feeling being in the "kept" group.
A contractor that underbid is under pressure to reduce costs. With fixed-price contracts, their revenue doesn't change, so reducing cost is the way to ensure profit. Get rid of the experienced but expensive engineers and see if you can still do the work. It's comical how often this seems to happen with disastrous results. But this is built into the model so unless the company loses the next contract due to their own cost-minded disruption of work, this is the way it is. It's a terrible feeling being highly effective one day and let go the next, because you happened to be worth your work outside in the general market, but not to the company that saved money by underbidding your position.
You will have no idea which contractor won the bid for your existing contract.
Contracts limit responsibilities by design. If the amount of money is to be fixed, then doing more work nets you nothing, and it may even diminish your profit margin. In the same spot the best engineer or the worst yields the same reimbursement to the company.
Best to stay in your lane. The scope of work, being often clear and defined, informally adding and shifting responsibilities is not easy. This yields a situation where role-changing growth in the contracted employee results in frustration instead of promotion.
If you want the promotion, change contracts and contractors. The contracts may be long and the engineers do come and go.
Worse yet, with an increasing shortage of government clearances, benefits offered by the next job to those who are cleared are often significant, reforming the decision as an effective cost for the employee to stay with their current contractor. This model fits job-hopping engineers and even breeds them. Since any fit is often by definition impermanent and tenuous, there is less critical evaluation of applicants as long as we believe they will generate revenue for some time before leaving.
I've seen in a lot of interviews a large contracting company talking about how wonderful it is to work for the company, its culture, it's fun environment. This is advertised to everyone, but applies only to the corporate employees. If you're contracted out your real "company" is the people you work with on a daily basis, and they may all come from your company, be a mix of government and contractor, or a mix of multiple contractors. It does you no good, this family culture, if you don't spend any meaningful time with those people, and it only serves to further distance you from them. Best to spend less time talking about your company and more time talking about the people you're likely to spend your time with. Present to rosy a picture of the people you won't be spending time with compared to the misery of the people you will work with, and you're likely to foster discomfort from the beginning.
One contractor I worked with was refreshingly up front about how difficult some people would be on a contract and the uphill climb I would make. The work sounded very ambitious. Based on what he said I didn't take the job to his regret. But he made the right call being up front and I made the right call not joining. You need the right match.
Federal contracting is all the rage. Every contract needs warm bodies sitting in seats. While those bodies are in place, the government pays the contractor. Those bodies will often be picked up by a new contractor if the contract changes hands.
Impermanence is built into this model. Perfect fits are rare and more rarely long-term. If the contract is lost and no billet available on another of your company's contract, no matter how strong an engineer you are, your value to the company vanishes. I know many engineers who hate this feeling. Every contract turnover elicits heart palpitations.
If the new contractor absolutely needs to keep the work going, only the worst workers are likely to be dropped. I've been through one changeover only. Most of my group was picked up with limited impact on pay and benefits. It's a good feeling being in the "kept" group.
A contractor that underbid is under pressure to reduce costs. With fixed-price contracts, their revenue doesn't change, so reducing cost is the way to ensure profit. Get rid of the experienced but expensive engineers and see if you can still do the work. It's comical how often this seems to happen with disastrous results. But this is built into the model so unless the company loses the next contract due to their own cost-minded disruption of work, this is the way it is. It's a terrible feeling being highly effective one day and let go the next, because you happened to be worth your work outside in the general market, but not to the company that saved money by underbidding your position.
You will have no idea which contractor won the bid for your existing contract.
Contracts limit responsibilities by design. If the amount of money is to be fixed, then doing more work nets you nothing, and it may even diminish your profit margin. In the same spot the best engineer or the worst yields the same reimbursement to the company.
Best to stay in your lane. The scope of work, being often clear and defined, informally adding and shifting responsibilities is not easy. This yields a situation where role-changing growth in the contracted employee results in frustration instead of promotion.
If you want the promotion, change contracts and contractors. The contracts may be long and the engineers do come and go.
Worse yet, with an increasing shortage of government clearances, benefits offered by the next job to those who are cleared are often significant, reforming the decision as an effective cost for the employee to stay with their current contractor. This model fits job-hopping engineers and even breeds them. Since any fit is often by definition impermanent and tenuous, there is less critical evaluation of applicants as long as we believe they will generate revenue for some time before leaving.
I've seen in a lot of interviews a large contracting company talking about how wonderful it is to work for the company, its culture, it's fun environment. This is advertised to everyone, but applies only to the corporate employees. If you're contracted out your real "company" is the people you work with on a daily basis, and they may all come from your company, be a mix of government and contractor, or a mix of multiple contractors. It does you no good, this family culture, if you don't spend any meaningful time with those people, and it only serves to further distance you from them. Best to spend less time talking about your company and more time talking about the people you're likely to spend your time with. Present to rosy a picture of the people you won't be spending time with compared to the misery of the people you will work with, and you're likely to foster discomfort from the beginning.
One contractor I worked with was refreshingly up front about how difficult some people would be on a contract and the uphill climb I would make. The work sounded very ambitious. Based on what he said I didn't take the job to his regret. But he made the right call being up front and I made the right call not joining. You need the right match.
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