The Information Technology (IT) Body Shop Scam
http://morewally.com/cs/blogs/wallym/archive/2006/06/29/106.aspx
In the IT world, there are these businesses that are called body shops. They are a mechanism for companies to use people without having to about several factors:
- Managing Individual contracts.
- Insurance.
Today, Infoworld had one of the few editorials that I mostly agree with. The fact that I find Infoworld terribly wrong on many things is a different discussion. The editorial cast a fairly bad light on these body shops.
Some of the quotes are rather interesting:
- An ugly truth about the IT job market is that opportunists too often dominate it. Honest employers and job candidates suffer because they’re forced to compete with cutthroats. Black hat employers see workers through the lens of the recession -- as property to be loaded, spent, and replaced like rounds in a Gatling gun.
- An employer who uses boiler-room agencies to look for help misses out on prime prospects, and can end up with the agency’s dregs: joyless workers who came your way only after being run once too often through the agency’s soak cycle. But then, if you use contract-to-hire, you get what you deserve.
I recieved a call from a body shop guy just a few weeks ago. The only reason he got my info is because of a violation of a contract we have with another company, but thats a different story. He gave out the old and tired shtick of how great I was (Obviously, he hadn't bothered to Google for me because he didn't know that I had written one book, let alone three. He didn't know what a podcast or a blog where, geez what a loser.). Since he had not done his homework, I also had to explain to him rates and what intellectual property is. You can imagine how that discussion went.
Don't trust them and I don't like them. They're in and out for the quick buck. Me, I believe in the long term. My suggestion is not to get wrapped up with them folks.