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**ALERT** I’ve had to…modify this post so it won’t offend someone who doesn’t realize that the storage community is very small and that word will get out regardless…

I’m unemployed.

Unexpectedly too.  Unexpected because right up until the day they told me to go home because I wasn’t getting paid, everyone assured me that the contract renewal was in the bag.

I’m such a sucker.  Believing people like that.  Never again.  I’ll also never believe anyone who tells me “don’t worry about it, I’ve got you covered if there’s a gap.”

It’s ok, next gig is on the horizon already…  And it looks like it will be something that while geographically unpleasant, will be a great job I can learn a LOT from, and truly excel at, which for me is key, because I’ve spent the past two years trying to shoe-horn new ideas into the heads of people who think a new idea is like anthrax, to be avoided at all costs.

(And with that I’d like to say hello to the nice folks at the NSA.  Please forgive me, it was an analogy, if a badly placed one.)

Consulting sucks sometimes.  The worst part of course is not knowing where you’ll be working from year to year, or the fact that you have to keep your eyes open, in permanent recruiter mode.

Of course the money is great, and if you tend to go stagnant on doing the same thing over, and over, and over again…It’s nice to be able to change.

It’s a pity that with being yanked out of an environment with no notice comes no turnover on the projects, and that there are a few implementations that I was in the middle of that might blow up if not tended to properly and in the right time-frame, which sadly isn’t far off.

(Ok, first anthrax and then the phrase ‘blow-up’ – the boys in black are DEFINITELY knocking on my door tonight.)

So the real question is…who is going to get saddled with picking up where I left off, *AND* are they going to ask me to help…

Can’t wait until that happens to give me the opportunity to lecture someone on the value of giving notice.

The government’s “Continuing Resolution” will be expiring a week from today.  As a government contractor, this directly affects me.

They have two choices.  They can pass ANOTHER C.R. or they can actually pass a budget.

I don’t post political statements here too often.  However I don’t know about you, but from where I stand this travesty that the House has floated is a disaster.  1.2 million jobs lost by the estimates I’m hearing, and to top it all of, it doesn’t do SQUAT to balance the budget because the places that need to be cut / reformed, IE Defense, etc. are off the table.  So this will be for nothing.

If the posturing peacocks on capitol hill don’t get their collective crap together and one side (or the other) forces the government to shut down. I may have some time on their hands.

Part of me is hoping that cooler heads prevail.

Part of me is looking forward to a little time off.   I’m told it is actually a CRIMINAL offense for me to work if the government shuts down.

Bring it.

Ok, I’ve been asked, and as of next week I will have worked as a consultant in all three different types of arrangements.  I thought it might be a good idea to explain the pros and cons of different consulting positions.

To sum it up, there are three different types of consultants.   The W2 (Or Salaried), The 1099 Direct, or the 1099 Corp-to-Corp.

 In this post, I’ll discuss the first type.

The W2 or “Salaried” Consultant

The W2 consultant (or “Slave”) is one who works for a firm and who gets the full benefits package.  While this can be a good thing, the drawbacks can and usually are many.

Pros

Salary – Having a salary is great during low periods or lulls in work.  Maybe you can get the company to spring for a refresher course or two to keep you marketable, etc. during this time, but it’s nice to know that no matter what your paycheck is coming in. 

Benefits – healthcare being what it is, a family can always depend on the Consulting firm to provide health benefits.  They may be more expensive than a “joe-job” but it’s good to have around.

Cons

Salary – Yes, this is a pro as well as a con.  Salaried employee gets paid a fixed amount per week / two weeks / pay period.  This means that any overtime he works is on him.  Since the firm is usually billing hourly for the consultant’s services, there is a lot of motivation to push consultants into overtime.  Of course, the consultant can say no, but that doesn’t keep you employed for long. 

Non-Compete – The most painful part of any Employer/Employee agreement is the “Non Compete Agreement”  Now in most states it’s largely unenforcable.  An employer can’t keep an employee from working in their field of expertise.  However, most consulting firms will require that you sign one and it will be horribly restrictive. 

I’ve been in the situation with a my first consulting firm, CTS, Inc. (who I have no problem naming as they don’t exist under this name any longer) where I had to move across the country in part because the non-compete I signed specifically said that the agreement was (to paraphrase) “restricted to the metropolitian area where services have been performed”  Well I was a consultant in California, and during that time had worked in Los Angeles, San Diego, Burbank, Phoenix, AZ, and Denver, CO.  I moved to Washington DC.

I still got sued by CTS for breaching the non-compete agreement, and it cost me over $8,000 in legal fees (as I had to defend myself in a Georgia Court) before they blushed and effectively said “Oops, sorry, my bad.” and withdrew their complaint.  They knew they had no case but wanted to make leaving painful, probably as an example to others who might leave.

The same thing has happened with the most recent one I worked for, though in this case, since I went to work for my previous employer (not as a consultant.)

The non-compete is used to bully employees from making positive career moves (which are definately not going to happen as long as a consultant is billable, see my point below.)

Career Path – A Salaried consultant who is consistently billable has no career path.  I say it again – NO CAREER PATH.  There is no motivation to keep the consultant moving forward, because moving a billable resource into a management position makes them increasingly less billable.  Therefore, it’s the people who don’t/can’t cut it as consultants who end up managing the ones who can.  As long as you’re bringing in the cash, you’re career is dead in the water, and of course, as to the above point, it’s not like you can quit and go to another consulting firm for the promotion can you.

Anyway – In my next installment I’ll profile the 1099-Direct, and why this can be one of the best ways to consult.

I still can’t get over the way people perceive storage administrators as having nothing to do all day.

Between managing the NAS, trying to keep some sembelance of order to the chaos that users like to impose on their environment, managing the backup infrastructure (multiple configuration changes for every server that’s added or removed from the environment) manging the Tier-2 storage (Clariion – in my case that’s the easiest part, the Clariion is nothing more than 2TB of NAS storage (self managing) and 18 terabytes of Veritas Dumparea), the Tier-1 storage (Symmetrix) for the rest of it.

Just for the record, managing a Celerra NAS with 250-350 users is a full time job.  Managing a Veritas Netbackup environment is a full time job, managing a storage array is a full time job.  (Managing two is two full-time jobs)

To all the management-types out there reading this.  Don’t underestimate how much your “storage guy” does during the day, and when they come to you saying they need some help, get them some help.

Or they’ll leave.  Pure and simple.  And storage people *ALWAYS* have a place to go.

Can you believe it?  they actually asked me why I didn’t do more documentation during my year there.

Let’s see.  During the course of the past year, we designed, installed, implementated, moved, migrated, redesigned, reimplemented an entire corporate infrastructure.

My part in this was fairly simple.

Primary role:

Storage Design (Clariion/Symmetrix), Implementation, Management
Backup Design (Veritas NBU 6.0), Installation, Management
SAN Design (Cisco), Implementation, Management
NAS-Design (Celerra), Implementation, Management
Plus I was doing a good portion of the server builds, OS installs, partitioning, application installations, etc.  I also became the defacto Linux administrator (because the only other person capable of doing it didn’t have time either), managed the external DNS servers, did some exchange design and build, migration, printers/scanners, SMTP Mailscanners,  well the list goes on and on.

And of course fire-fighting was a big part, this was in fact a Windoze shop so we spent a lot of time figuring out what Microsoft was trying to accomplish and what we really wanted it to accomplish.

So I guess I should have tacked another hour or two onto my 16 hour days to make sure everything was documented.

Nigel is right in his comment that storage people are a different breed.  Whether your HP, Hitachi, EMC, NetApp or whatnot.  Every “storage-centric” person I’ve ever met has been unique in their ability to look at every moving part in an environment and conceptualize “the fundimental interconnectedness of all things.”  (With apologies to the late Douglas Adams)

In short – storage people get it. 

There is one of my co-workers at work who also gets it.  I see the faint glimmer of a storage admin in him, and have spent the time we’ve worked together trying to cultivate it while the powers-that-be tried desparately to keep the status-quo.  (Maybe they know that once he can put “EMC” or “SAN” on his resume the $$ shoots up – who knows?)

Anyway, I’ve got to get back to my documentation. 

This article in e-week.com says it all. 

Storage has always been good to me.  In 2001 I got laid off while working for MTI (right before they imploded and were “reborn” as an EMC reseller – with a huge influx of capital from EMC) but was back in business almost immediately.  (Read the article in ComputerWorld)

Storage has always given me the flexibility to a> pick my jobs, and b> stay employed despite the market.

While EMC can be a bit of a “fair-weather friend” when it comes to employment, there has always been, and will always be a strong demand for people who understand storage and SAN concepts.  Someone who knows the internals of EMC, HDS, or any of the big players in the Tier-1 storage world will always have a place to go, and will always have a big advantage in the negotiations.

Once your name is out there, it’s usually not hard to keep it out there.  Not quite a year later, I’m still getting calls from ex-employers and old co-workers asking if I’d like to go back to it.

Most of the engineers I’ve known who have been laid off by EMC get hired by the service partners who have built up a whole industry around supplying EMC with the labor and expertise they need.  Most of them are, like me, ex-EMC’ers, some are just naturally bright and quick to pick up.  The partners pay well because of their lower overhead, and raise the bar for EMC when the almost systematic reaction to the lay-offs occurs.  The “re-hire” usually proves too expensive for EMC and they end up with either a more expensive or lower-quality brand of employee, sometimes forcing even more business to the partner, etc.

Anyway, like I said, it’s a good time to be us.  Just make sure you keep up the knowledge.  Read all you can, try new things, etc.  The hardest part about going back to EMC after being away from their hardware for a year was playing “catch-up” on the technology improvements.