Conflicting interests

Strange thing this... consultants are hired help. That's true. Companies take in outsiders to help them do a job, complete a project or help them (consulting them) with a conundrum.

Consultants however (especially the ones at my employer) are quite young, often hideously ambitious, and extremely quick to move. That means that whomever takes on anyone of us, should not be looking to keep us long-term. And yet that's exactly what clients expect (especially if you're really good).

In the current market a consultant is really a commodity with a high turnover rate. Consulting companies are falling over themselves to gain headcount, but at the same time just as many consultants are dropping out and moving away. If any consultant thinks he's not appreciated, or he's bored, or he's stuck in a rut for too long, he straight-up leaves.

This leaves a client in trouble. A client would desperately like to keep good people, even if they are outsiders. The client could offer them a lot of things, maybe even the same things as they would to their own employees, but realistically speaking that is not their duty. It is the duty of the consulting firm to keep employees happy. The consulting firm however has little control in this. They are too far away, and it's one thing to sell services to a client, it's an entire other thing to tell them how to treat your people. But the firm has to do something, anything, lest their employees leave in droves.

So we have a conflicting interests here: a client whose needs are best met by people serving them long-term; consultants whose needs are met by having exciting jobs; consulting companies who see that making jobs exciting involves moving people around at high speed. And then having to make a client unhappy and frustrated, because you're pulling away people, experience, knowledge.

I'm somehow transported back to the monologue Jack Nicholson gave at the end of A Few Good Men:

Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Whose gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinburg? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago, and you curse the marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to.