Comment by Tade0
4 years ago
I was an intern in Accenture in 2010.
My general impression was that my role was actually "budget filler".
Saved up for a laptop and a driving course, so can't complain.
4 years ago
I was an intern in Accenture in 2010.
My general impression was that my role was actually "budget filler".
Saved up for a laptop and a driving course, so can't complain.
Billable Hours! This is why contracts should be outcome based and not based on hours. I don't care if the solution takes you ten days, or 10 minutes, it's the outcome that matters.
Yeah--improper incentives cause all kinds of problems.
Once there was an enormous tanker truck fire under an overpass in the Bay Area on a major freeway. A section of the overpass collapsed.
The state asked for bids, but the contract had an interesting feature: substantial sums would be paid for each calendar day the work was completed ahead of schedule.
One contractor underbid everyone by a substantial margin, and got to work 24-7.
Wikipedia:
A contractor with a proven track record of rebuilding damaged freeways (most notably the Santa Monica Freeway after the 1994 Northridge earthquake) well ahead of schedule, C. C. Myers, Inc., submitted a winning bid of $876,075 to repair the damage to the I-580 connector. The bid was estimated to cover only one-third of the cost of the work, but the firm counted on making up the shortfall with an incentive of $200,000 per day if the work was completed before June 27, 2007.
On the evening of Thursday, May 24, the I-580 connector re-opened, just before the busy Memorial Day weekend. The deadline to finish the project was beaten by over a month, with the contractor earning the $5 million bonus for early completion. The entire reconstruction project was completed only 26 days after the original accident.
The state offered money for early completion, and got an early completion. I don't necessary see anything wrong with that as long as quality standards were met, and the final cost wasn't outrageous.
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Careful with that thought.
This is a case where this was "gamed" by Accenture and Hertz was just clueless, but it can happen the other way around. (Unreasonable) outcome based, and the contracting firm gets stuck with an impossible, money-losing project. Or some unexpected thing happens and same result.
There's a reason why billable hours is a thing.
There is a reason you have billable hours. It is so that you can sell the customer technical advisory services over an extended time period without making any promises. Typically, this is backed by a "use it lose it" clause. Outcomes are better for consultants and customers.
This is mainly for interns and T&M, interns juice project profits but regular employees don't really, project managers are incentivized to keep project costs down so they tend to under staff projects rather than staff fillers.