Lynn Pettis (12/12/2013)
Eric M Russell (12/12/2013)
...Why pay a contractor $100,000+ a year to shuffle your backup tapes and network logins, when they could hire a full time staff member for half that cost?
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And the government wouldn't be able to hire me as a direct FTE for less than $100,000. They need people with the experience and knowledge like I have to more that shuffle backup tapes and network logins. If the only way to work for the government doing what I do and get paid for my knowledge and experience is as a contractor, then that's what I will do.
They need someone like you or me for our architectural expertise and development skills, they don't need us to handle their backup tapes, email, and SharePoint documents. It's the routine operational aspect of database administration that I believe shouldn't be out-sourced. For example, we can design a data warehouse and ETL process for a government agency and even spend several months developing it, yet still never handle the actual production data itself. There are people within the organization that can fill that role, and if not, they can easily hire someone full time to do it.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho