Mongrel creator Zed Shaw has some not exactly kind words :-) I can’t comment on many things, specifically with regards to the ThoughtWorks-related stuff — but he has a nice list recommendations for people hiring consultants. These are Zed’s items (in italics), with innoQ’s policy and my own thoughts added:

1. Make sure you have the right to see every resume and interview each consultant they place. Treat them like new hires and don’t let anyone who’s not worth the rate you’re paying on the team.
   Standard practice for our customer engagements, although over time, clients usually start trusting us to choose appropriate people. Of course this only applies in T&M-type contracts, otherwise we reserve the right to staff as we see fit.
2. Demand a variable rate based on the position of the person and their experience.
   +1. Anything else would be absurd. In fact, we’d like to charge rates with a much wider span, but unfortunately many customers (or rather, their procurement people) can’t possibly fathom how one developer could be worth 2 or 3 times more than another.
3. Demand that no employees can leave the project to work on another project. These placements have to be for the life of the project or until the employee quits.
   -1. I understand where Zed is coming from, and I agree to a large degree — but mandating it in this way seems unreasonable. There should be reasonable fluctuation, but not to the customer’s disadvantage. Some projects simply take longer than people want to spend on them — if they want to leave, their only option should not be to quit the company.
4. Require that you have the right to have someone replaced if they are not immediately capable.
   +1. Any innoQ customer can send away a consultant within the first two weeks if not satisfied, at no cost. No one ever took that option.
5. Seriously consider recruiting one full time employee as a team lead, another as a project manager, and then staff the rest of your team with independent consultants. You’ll find that you get more control and better quality at a lower price.
   +1/-1. I agree that many, if not most times, the project lead should be one of the customer’s permanent employees. But while I have nothing at all against independent consultants in general, I’m convinced some companies — e.g. ours :-) — add significant value over a random freelancer team in terms of ability to take on responsibility, shared knowledge, background resources, established team culture, and core skills.

Another great Fake Steve quote - LOL:

Unlike IBM, which used its monopoly and market power to abuse customers, we at Apple are using our monopoly and market power to make the world a better place. It’s just simpler when everyone can focus their attention on one vendor. As long as that vendor is not doing evil. Like us. And Google. Okay.

So, Sun changes its stock ticker symbol from SUNW to JAVA — what a dumb idea. Interesting comments from Joe Gregorio and James Duncan Davidson, but there’s no doubt the one from Fake Steve Jobs is the best :-)

Wil Shipley:

It’s about time record execs pull their heads out of their asses, and, after the giant ‘schloORK’ sound is done ringing in their ears, they start treating valued customers like they are valued and/or customers, instead of like a seething criminal class. Yes, there will always be people who steal music. So either offer the rest of us a compelling alternative to being one of them, or die the dinosaur’s death that you so richly deserve.

At OOP 2007, Phillip and I did our first public Ruby on Rails tutorial (the ones we did before were in-house). One day is very short for all of the framework, but I still like to believe we did a decent job (if you happen to have attended, and also read this, I’d appreciate a comment).

This marks innoQ’s official entry into the Rails consulting business (in Germany, for the moment), which has three consequences:

• We’re actively looking for projects that are candidates for being built with Rails. This includes projects that require extremely short development time, projects where a company is looking to assess RoR’s enterprise readiness, and projects where there’s a non-technical customer who simply doesn’t care about technology. For particularly interesting projects, we’ll offer extremely competitive deals. Contact us if you’re interested.
• We’ll offer one-day and three-day tutorials, both publicly (in our offices in Ratingen and Darmstadt) and in-house. Again, drop us an email to find out more.
• This does not only mean that we’re going to actively hire Ruby and Rails developers, but also that we offer developers who have a different background, but are interested in RoR, a chance to actually work with it. (And yes, you can get a Mac at innoQ, too.)

The main reason is that Rails just rocks.

Das 29-Punkte-Sparprogramm verbietet nicht nur Inlandsflüge, Weihnachtsfeiern oder die Beschaffung neuer Dienstwagen, sondern untersagt neben Buch- und Zeitschriftenbestellungen auch Bewirtungen bei internen Meetings. Getränke auf Geschäftskosten sind erst bei Konferenzen von mehr als vier Stunden Dauer gestattet. Sogar Kundenveranstaltungen sind - von durch die Geschäftsleitung genehmigten Ausnahmen abgesehen - generell gestoppt. Ferner kappt T-Systems im Mittelstandsgeschäft neben sämtlichen Aufträgen für Leih- und Zeitarbeiter auch alle internen Lehrgänge, Qualifizierungs- und Fortbildungsmaßnahmen. Außerdem sollen die Mitarbeiter Handytelefonate einschränken und die Nutzung von Hotspots vermeiden.

Bei solch klugen Maßnahmen ist der Erfolg ja nahezu vorprogrammiert! Wer weiß, ob die Meldung wirklich so stimmt — in der Vergangenheit geisterte so manches Gerücht über T-Systems durch die Presse, das interne Kontakte mir gegenüber als herbeiphantasierten Unsinn bezeichneten. Wenn’s aber stimmt, hat sich hier irgend jemand den Titel “Schwachkopf des Jahres” redlich verdient …

This is simply amazing — Web 2.0 online calendaring website, application, and IP for sale on eBay. The starting bid is US $49,999. [comment by Jason Hoffmann; via John Gruber]

David Chappell:

While dreams of the long tail might comfort authors whose books haven’t sold as well as they’d expected, I’d encourage those authors to hold off on spending their hoped-for royalties. For most of us, they’re not going to materialize.

Totally brilliant [via John Gruber].

James Robertson:

One thing I noticed during my time as a consultant is the “external halo effect” - it was frequently the case that internal developers at a shop I’d visit would know what was wrong, and how to fix it - but none of the management or architects/IT standards types would listen to them. In I’d come, with far less expertise on the problem at hand, but with the “external vendor expert” stamp. The amazing this was, I’d say the same thing that the internal guys did, and get listened to!

I’ve spoken to plenty of other people who are (or have been) in similar situations, and they report the same thing. So what advice would I give McGovern (et. al.)? Pay a lot more attention to your development staff. Stop listening to industry analysts as a first and only source of wisdom (which is not to say they don’t have any - it’s to say that you may well find the same thing for free in your own shop).

I’ve noticed this very often myself. In one project I consulted with, this was taken to an extreme — the company brought in to do a review (not mine, BTW) basically interviewed all of the developers, got their criticism and recommendations, made a review report out of that, and as a result took over the project …