
NYC 'Consultants' getting $722M from doomed project - markbnine
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2010/03/26/2010-03-26_city_pours_722m_down_consulting_contracts_black_hole.html
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tptacek
_The 40 highest-paid people on the project bill taxpayers at least $500,000 a
year. These enormous salaries are coming out of a $139 million extension to
the CityTime contract that began July 1 and runs to Sept. 30._

...

 _Take, for example, Brian Fallon, a CityTime "project manager." The Science
Applications International Corp., which employs Fallon and supplies the
consultants, charged $653,554 for his services in 2009._

Whoah. There is a big difference between a consulting company's bill rate and
a consultant's take-home pay. I take home nothing resembling my bill rate.

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Alex63
Agreed. I would be _very_ happy if my "salary" and my billing rate were the
same. Still, based on a 2000 hour year, $500K is a billing rate of $250/hr.
That's not unusual for high-end IT consultants, but at that rate the client
should be getting what they pay for, or terminating the agreement. The problem
with this kind of story is that it's hard to know whether the issues are with
the implementer or the client -- are the delays/overruns due to changing
requirements, or poor delivery?

~~~
tptacek
There's zero question that NYC is getting a firm rogering from SAIC.

But I would be absolutely amazed if the SAIC consultants staffing this project
were beneficiaries of anything but a stable, 85th percentile salary.

It seems borderline dangerous to call out the schmucks actually doing the work
for what SAIC is charging for them. That's going to be on their "Google
resume" forever. The newspaper better be right.

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michaelfairley
Previously: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1221068>

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kiba
No incentive to performs equal run-away budgets!

I wonder how many corporations can run up bills like that.

I am glad that I am not a taxpayer in New York City or an investor in one of
those corporation. Or maybe I should be worried about government officials?

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JohnnyBrown
"biometric scanners and automatic timeclocks on all personal computers" is
what they are building. I work in a strip club that has this.

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bartl
It doesn't add up. 230 consultants, average pay $400,000 each.. that makes
"only" $90 million.

~~~
tptacek
In one year.

