The Big Six

I have previously worked as a Consultant and in both cases they have been for software houses. I always felt that if you were going to pimp out yourself then you might aswell have the inside track and worked for the company that wrote the software. Despite the supposed prestige associated with them I was never ever tempted to work for any of the then so called 'Big Six' (now known as the Final Four) consulting firms as I don't believe that our personalities would have been compatable.

Why? If you had witnessed some of the things I've seen the Big Six get away with you'd understand. Some classics include:

- A 'Big Six' female PM lodging a sexual misconduct complaint against a male client PM who sought to challenge the success of a major project. I can't say whether the complaint had any grounds but it was clear that it would never have seen the light of day had the client PM kept his mouth shut.
- A Big Six firm getting a project I was working on shutdown because we were close to delivering more in 3 months than they had in two years and promising to finish out Project within a month. This one ended up in litigation I'm pleased to say.
- Rigging RFI scoring to pick the most expensive packages to implement rather than those that best fit the client requirements.
- Attending onsite training courses with the client staff and then advising the client on configuration against the advice of the consultant trainers.
- An Big Six 'oracle development practice' that was running around Sydney in the 90's developing applications. Only was that they'd never discovered what an Index was!
- Big Six consultants sitting onsite doing a online SQL training course whilst billing a grand a day.

I'm sure there are lot smore examples out there and I'm not saying that the consultancies I worked for were whiter than white but there's a long way between them and what I've seen of the Big Six.