H(ookers) 1 B

I know it's non-sense, but consulting jobs are no better than prostitution. Contractors are just like hookers.You must upgrade yourself to the latest technology every now and then to be in the business, like hookers who must maintain their bodies to be on demand. And then you have these so called Consulting firms, who try to market you for the clients, claiming that you can walk on the water as it comes to that particular technology. They are just like pimps, who market every hooker as the source of the best experience that one would ever come across.

And then comes the client, who does not want his employees to be bothered about all the effort that needs to be put on upgrading their skills. He does not want them to be troubled for working on critical things. He even feels that it's disgrace to his employees to work on these things. So, he wants an expert to do these disgraceful things, a contractor! He's just like some husbands, who know that their wives will not happy doing some disgraceful things for them and so they go get a hooker.

Their wives are like permenant employees in a firm, who never upgrade themselves, do not involve themselves in critical and sometimes disgraceful things needed to be done for their husband's pleasure and even then, get the official love of their husbands. And guess what, they do not even have a fear of losing their positions. But the contractors will be kicked out of the office after thier job is done.

Furthermore, to bring these two professions even further closer, the contractors even have the hourly billings! This hourly rate also depends upon the contractor's profile, just similar to a hooker's hourly rate depending on her profile. And guess what? A part of this rate goes to the Consulting firms, the brokers. Here the hookers are better than contractors while giving commission to the pimps, in the sense that they get the moeny directly into their hands and they take out the portion that should go to the pimp and hand it over to them.Poor contractors, they don't even have this facility. In their case, the Consultant firms grab the money from the client first and then give any left over money to contractors at the end.All the hard work was done by the contractor and yet his boss gets the money into his hands first.

Pathetic isn't it?

I know it doesn't make sense to compare H1B folks, who are respected by everyone back in India for earning in dollars, with hookers.

But thats the strange reality.

I hope people planning for H1B realize this. You don't have to hate this profession. But just realize what kind of shit you are gonna land into.

Cheers..

Contracting...Contracting...

"Please display your identification card". Thats the board which welcomes anyone entering the plant-cum-innovative center of KEMET Electronics Corporation. Everyday the security personnel stand at that board and greet everyone with a warm smile.Surprisingly today nobody was there. Not worrying too much about the absense of te security folks, I just walked further to see a lady who religously reads a book with a coffee mug in one hand and a book in the other.I did not see her either. Not paying much attention to these abnormalities, I entered the building to solve the maze ahead, the pathway to my cabin. I need to walk a considerable distance inside the office before I reach my cabin and it involves a lot of left, right and U-turns for me to solve the maze. While on this maze, I usually see lot of peoplewalking, some smiling, some discussing the serious issues of today's world such as gas prices, some giving me a scournful look, may be because of all this fuss about outsourcing, some whispering 'oh..these contractors..' to each other and some others sometimes commenting about my stout personality. But today, there were not many people on the pathway. Even the people who are walking, they just seemed they were not interested even in greeting me. Some even looked like they were not interested even in life anymore. I just started wondering what could be the reason behind the gloominess of all the people at KEMET. Suddenly a thought struck my mind. A thought that could threaten any guy like me, underachieved and unsettled. Layoffs... As a good practice, every morning when I start for the office,I check the share price of the client that I am currenty working for. Today I did not do because I justwoke up late because of weekend hangover. I was sure that its stocks have gone much lower, which could lead to jobcuts. Unknowingly I just started to feel as if the burden ofthe whole universe is on my head. 'No.It's not gonna be me',I just said to myself and continued walking.After this self-motivation, I reached my work station, docked my laptop,turned it on and opened Lotus Notes. There was a mail from a guy who happens to be a little more than just a colleague to me. We both pooled a car for quite sometime and thats how we developed a decent level of friendship. By the way, the mail was about his last day in the office. Shocked, I went to him and asked as to why was he sacked. He replied 'They said it doesn't have to do anything with myperformance and the only reason is the poor performance of the company in this quarter. They promised me to call me back when the situation gets better'. After a some pat-on-backs to my colleague, I just returned to my desk and saw an email from the client manager asking me to meet him immediately. I just had set my mind that this is gonna be a bad day. After a half-hour serious meeting with the manager, I just came to know that I just saved my ass off the jobcut just because I know a technology that none of their employees know. But they also informed methat they are planning to train one of their employees on it and then get rid of me. They did not give the last statement but thats what it means.They are not gonna retain me anyways. If not this time, they will definitely sack me the next time. You can't be lucky everytime. But this is the true nature of the contract jobs. They are lucrative but fluctuating in terms of job safety. They can give you everything.A merc, a Condo house in the costliest area of the town, ipods, iphone, backberries, WIIs,PS3s, Mac Books and what not. Oh yeah, peace. They can give you anything except peace. Yet, people like me just dive into the contracting field, for the reasons known to them...