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Ask Slashdot: How Do You To Tell Your Client That His "Expert" Is an Idiot?
Esther Schindler writes "It's a danger for any consultant, and for most inter-departmental internal project staff: To get the work done, you need to work with someone else who supplies expertise you lack. But when the 'expert' turns out to be the wrong person how do you tell the client (or boss) that you just can't work with that individual?"
Tell the truth?
Many years back a CEO of a subdivision of a company wanted to know why his email service was disrupted. I told them that it was because their idiot webmaster took control of their DNS and did not copy the MX record. The webmaster defended himself claiming that a document was not in place explaining how to handle the client's DNS. This went back and forth a bit between the three of us, and ended with me calling the two of them incompetent and irresponsible. I never spoke to the webmaster or the client CEO for better or worse.
A few years later, the CEO of the parent company called wanting to know why his network was suffering intermittent downtime and demanded it be fixed immediately. I explained that his outage was caused by antiquated equipment that could not do debugging, and there was a proposal already on his desk for replacement gear. He was in a huff, but he knew I didn't mince words or advice, and that quote was signed in minutes.
While you can't always directly point to a net gain after a net loss, your experience and attitude will help define how other perceive you. You can go in quite politely, or you can be very blunt. I have been both depending on the situation.
Either way, if you can't call out losers, you'll wind up being one.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
Most experts are idiots at what they claim, but an expert at earning trust regardless of their knowledge. So be careful of these people, as they are quite aware of their lack of expertise and their fragility. Gain trust of the client first before taking on people your client trusts.
Oddly enough, I never had to work with anyone who was completely incompetent. Some didn't know squat about the technical side of things, but their business knowledge was impeccable, and that was what they brought to the table.
Maybe the problem isn't whether they're an expert in the field, but whether you know how to communicate with someone outside your field.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I don't know, but I'm sure if I read the free eBook that the article is advertising I'd become a management expert literally overnight. !!! DOWNLOAD NOW !!!
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
it's been done before
The only bridges worth burning are the ones you wouldn't cross anyhow. Never burn a bridge you have crossed, even if it was a mistake. You have time invested.
Burn bridges before you cross them, not after.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
How is this an Ask Slashdot when the article answers the question. Are we supposed to argue that the author(expert) of the article is an incompetent?
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
Just read, Dealing with Dummies for Dummies...
Terrible advice. There is always money in confusion as long as you write the contract properly, which should always be the case.
Because contract have never been torn up in court.
I used to know a consultant like this. Would write incredibly one sided contracts, still 100% legal but very one sided, which only idiots would sign. It worked for a while but when one project fell through this idiot client hired a non-idiot lawyer and he lost more than he earned in his career. House, investments, car, even furniture. The guy went from driving a Porsche 911 (not cheap in Oz) to a old Huyandai Getz in a matter of days and hand to declare bankruptcy just to keep the Getz.
Writing unfair contracts is an easy way to get sued. Even fair contracts can land you in a lot of shit.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
If you bill for time and materials, the headaches turn in to more cash.
Not really, you spend all your time working on a project that's doomed to failure because the client wont listen. When it does fall through you cop the blame and the idiot client tells everyone at the golf club how useless you are. This is what I mean by "in the long term", what you're proposing is short term gain with no consideration of long term effects.
If you don't understand how important reputation is as a consultant, you've never been a consultant.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I'm using the slas^H^H^H^H a website's beta and its designers have the same issue.
Near as I can tell, they don't plan on listening....
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
If you find yourself always having terrible roommates, guess what? You're the terrible roommate.
Structure contracts, fees, tangible goals so if the "expert" slows you down, you get paid more.
The idea of avoiding idiots is lunacy, you make due with the cards dealt. If they have an "idiot" as an "expert", this speaks a lot about them and they probably need your help quite a bit.
If they didn't need your help, they wouldn't have hired you!
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
...and doesn't know the first thing about the job the people under him do.
Actually this is NOT a reason to trash your boss. I've had a number of managers who didn't have a clue how to do my job who where extremely effective and great to work for. We had a mutual understanding and respect for each one's roll. With one, he didn't have a clue how to design a network and stand up the equipment because it was MY job to do that for him. He just pointed me to the project and we would discuss the details he needed to know (cost, schedule etc) and I did what was required. He knew I was going to tell him what I really thought about the cost and schedule and trusted me to do the work within the cost and schedule I gave him. I knew he would insulate me from the management garbage and wasn't going to throw me to the wolves if there was some unexpected slip or overrun. We did status reports on large projects and he would stop by regularly to talk about things, but he NEVER wanted to tell me how to do this or that, and if we where behind schedule or over cost I WAS TELLING HIM about it. We trusted each other to do their jobs and it worked great.
So, I actually think that the most effective bosses don't have to know all the ins and outs of what his employees do. But what they DO need is the ability to surround themselves with people who DO KNOW what needs to be done and empowering them to do their jobs. Bosses that know all the details are sometimes way to eager to try and micromanage their underlings and it takes a rare talent to let your employees do the work for you. I'll ALWAYS take a manager with the talent to delegate over one with perfect domain knowledge.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Actual judges will side against you if you are the one writting the contract. So if you think you can commit fraud by writing a sh*tty contract then you are due for a rude awakening.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Your other option was to play nice like the dummies are advocating, and have a failed project as a black stain on your resume.
You did the right thing. So did they. Good people are incompatible with idiots.
Futurist Traditionalism
My best advice for anyone in this situation is to document everything .
I spent a few years working customer service handling orders for manufacturing company. One particularly customers was a consistent problem. This company believed one of their personnel shat gold bricks, but I realized right off that they were incompetent and used lies & intimidation to cover this up.
This person would routinely fax their orders at the end of the day (right before they would leave) without confirming that they actually sent me the files necessary to start their order, and that their orders were almost always "rush" orders with very very short turn around times. Another thing this person would do, would be to call me up, tell me they had an order and ask me what the latest day they would need to receive the order by a specific date and time. I would tell them, then they would wait well past this final submittable date, submit their order and then claim that I had promised to turn around the product by that time. Over the years, the turn around time necessary to complete their orders shrunk to impossible expectations and their customer began getting upset as my customer started blaming me personally for the delays.
The irritating part, is that whenever I some how failed to live up to this person's errors (i.e., I was unable to cover for them), they would call up my boss and complain about me. My boss only believed half their bullshit, but it was still enough to impact my career.
Unfortunately for them, one of their customers wasn't an idiot, and had remembered me when he came along to our plant for a facility inspection prior to us beginning production of their product. This customer set up a meeting between our companies and asked me point blank when I received the purchase order, when I received the files and when I delivered the product. Thankfully, I had records of the time and date of every purchase order that company had ever sent, along with records of the time and date of receipt of every file to begin production, as well as the delivery date of the product to their warehouse.
It turned out that the end customer was sending the purchase orders to our problem person up to three weeks before the problem person would send me the PO and files. The problem person would sit on the file for weeks before submitting it to their production and farming out our part to us. The problem person ended up losing their company around $2million in sales yearly when they lost their client.
We ended up being directly contracted by the end customer to continue manufacturing our part of their product.
You get them both in a meeting, and when the "expert" presents an idea, you point your index finger at your temple and rotate it in a circle around your ear.
Rolling your eyes and bursting out laughing is also good.
When the expert starts his powerpoint presentation, sigh loudly, raise one butt cheek and give an audible fart. Look around the room and say "Is he serious?" in a stage whisper.
There, I think that's a good start.
You are welcome on my lawn.
A PhD basically indicates that they know a whole lot about some certain thing at a certain time. If your business is that thing and their knowledge is recent then great. The reality is that things move so damn quick in the CS world that anyone who is good is always keeping up to date and doubtfully has any paper to show that.
That's not the key of a PhD. Of course while getting the grade you learned a lot about a very specific field, the most important part you prove (and have learned) by gaining a PhD is that you can work independently, and that you can set up and execute a research project successfully. The latter is what you should hire a PhD for. The first helps you decide which individual to choose (i.e. the one whose background matches what you intend them to do).