When I say "body shop" I mean a company that hires you, then rents you out to someone else, as distinguished from a "head hunter" which finds you for a company, but the company hires you directly and gives the headhunter a fee.
>There are other companies that focus on quality and delivering actual and not just perceived value. Those are not mere "body shops."
If so, they are providing actual value that I can not see. I have never seen such an agency consistently deliver good people.
Or maybe I haven't seen the right agency? as far as I can tell, only the very best of them pay contractors on time.
The very best body shop I've ever worked for or seen was one guy who never actually met me in person. But he paid me on time, and the guys he sent to the client were consistently technically better (and socially worse; or, at least, more weird. Remember, this guy hired me.) than other body shops.
I think the main problem with quality is that all other things being equal, people prefer safe jobs with benefits. Even the really top end body shops that give benefits usually don't pay you for bench time, so a full time job is safer, and generally more desirable, so the people who end up working for the body shop (or contracting house or whatever you want to call it) are people who, for whatever reason, can't hold down a full-time job. the inexperienced or otherwise less desirable.
Yes, there is a premium paid for contractors by the client, but that is nearly always entirely taken as overhead or profit. So long as the contracting house doesn't pay significantly more than full-time work, this disparity will remain.
>There are other companies that focus on quality and delivering actual and not just perceived value. Those are not mere "body shops."
If so, they are providing actual value that I can not see. I have never seen such an agency consistently deliver good people.
Or maybe I haven't seen the right agency? as far as I can tell, only the very best of them pay contractors on time.
The very best body shop I've ever worked for or seen was one guy who never actually met me in person. But he paid me on time, and the guys he sent to the client were consistently technically better (and socially worse; or, at least, more weird. Remember, this guy hired me.) than other body shops.
I think the main problem with quality is that all other things being equal, people prefer safe jobs with benefits. Even the really top end body shops that give benefits usually don't pay you for bench time, so a full time job is safer, and generally more desirable, so the people who end up working for the body shop (or contracting house or whatever you want to call it) are people who, for whatever reason, can't hold down a full-time job. the inexperienced or otherwise less desirable.
Yes, there is a premium paid for contractors by the client, but that is nearly always entirely taken as overhead or profit. So long as the contracting house doesn't pay significantly more than full-time work, this disparity will remain.