I referred to 3 of 5 people from my company getting let go
by our government customer the “Red Wedding” earlier today on Twitter. That was
a bit dramatic, but when that shit happens it always catches you a little off
guard. It’s so fucked, the gov’t can’t get their shit together and fund
essential functions in a sane and predictable manner from year to year and the
result is people lose their jobs. The incompetent boobs that don’t follow basic
fiscal and management rules don’t lose THEIR jobs, but rather the people that
keep the boobs on the right side of their customers and the law in spite of
themselves are the ones who pay the price.
But that’s always what it is when you’re a government
contractor, you’re there to help this agency get some shit done and no matter
what you have to produce. There may be a vengeful little bureaucrat throwing
obstacles in your way to protect their turf, you may be locked in a government
contractor death match with another company, but mostly you’re fighting inertia.
The constant refrain of, “Well, we can’t do that because it’s never been done
before!” Despite all of that, we produce and when things get tight we are
disposed of with the same amount of thought you give to a wad of used tissue.
I don’t know maybe it’s time for me to give in, join the
dark side, and become a Fed. My biggest hesitation with that is what agency
could I possibly commit to long term? Despite my complaints about the lack of
stability as a government contractor, part of what has made me effective over
the years is the fact that I’ve worked with a bunch of different agencies in a
variety of capacities and I’ve successfully synthesized those experiences into
an analytical mass that’s able to understand and communicate complex issues. I
wouldn’t even know what to do with myself working with the same people, in the
same building, on the same shit for 5, 10, 15 years running. Hell, the longest
I’ve ever worked in one place was 6 years and even then I was hired 4 times by
3 different companies to do the same job.
How does that happen, getting hired 4 times by 3 different
companies for the same job you ask? Well I was originally hired by Death Star,
Inc and things were cool for about 18 months when the contract fuckery started.
This was quite a number of years ago
when the government was still handing out T&M contracts like tic-tacs and
they wanted to move Death Star, Inc to a FFP contract. Unlike most contracting
officers, this one knew what they were doing and put the squeeze on through
some sort of contractual machinations.
We all knew the writing was on the wall and one of the
things I learned early on in government contracting is that when the ship is
going down, be the first rat off the ship. Don’t wait around hoping shit is
going to work out, it’s not. Don’t believe for one second that the company is
going to hook you up, they’re not. But the beautiful part of working for a
massive company is that it’s relatively easy to jump around from job to job
internally. So that’s what I did, I found a job that I was qualified for,
applied, and got the job in a matter of weeks just as the shit was hitting the
fan. Of course Death Star, Inc fucked me on the money because the slot I moved
to was supposed to pay more than I was making at the time, but whatever. I left a couple of weeks ahead of the contract being terminated and everyone I was working with at the time had to drive out to corporate everyday for a couple weeks while they were "on the bench." While I'm in exile on this other contract things eventually get worked out on my original contract and they go back to work, a few months later I get a call from my old boss inviting me back home so I go back. Hired 2 times for the same job.
In the fullness of time, the company we're sub-contracting to starts whispering sweet nothings in my bosses' ear about how if he jumps ship and brings this contract and this crew with him they will hook him up. Now this is shady as all fuck to be sure, but we all know what time it is; if Death Star, Inc. could replace any of us for someone they could pay half as much we'd be out the door in seconds flat. So after some palace intrigue, this other company wins the contract and we all jump ship for a nice 20% raise. Hired 3 times for the same job.
Needless to say Death Star, Inc is salty as all fuck about the whole situation (the fact that it was a small Black owned company that did them like this was the horse dick in the kisser) but after a few days of impotent threats they let it go. In fact they let it go so much they forgot to collect our laptops from us and never asked for them back.
[Smash cut to two years later] The small company I'm working for loses the contract, I suspect that they were low-bridged in some way by Death Star, Inc but whatever. Now I'm working on Section 508 stuff, which is a regulatory requirement and since I'm the resident SME the new company HAD to get me on board. So I jacked those fools up for another 20% raise after some contentious negotiations (which won me no friends) and I was hired for the 4th time to do essentially the exact same job. Except for my brief time in exile, I sat at the same desk and had the same phone number for the whole time.
A year later when the gov't eliminated my position on the contract I initially found out because my work wife at the time was putting together some meeting minutes and saw a reference to it. I asked our gov't customer about it and there was a whole bunch of "humina, humina, humina" before they finally responded with the usual bullshit about you weren't supposed to find out like this, but it was a week before the end of the fiscal year and that was that.
Remember how I mentioned that my aggressive negotiations won me no friends at my (then) new company? They showed me how much they didn't like the fact that I wasn't afraid to negotiate by not even offering me a week on the bench. In gov't contracting when you're "on the bench" you go out to corporate and try to find something to do while you look for another internal job, depending on how long you've been with a company and what your power base is within it, you could be on the bench for a week or a month or sometimes two months if there's something coming down the pipeline.
So I said all that to say this, I'm not sure I want to be a Fed, but I need to figure something out in the next three months.
[fin]
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