Unfortunately cuts don’t usually target the dead weight. I’ve worked in IT consulting for a while now, and cuts to consultants is always the first step. Just across the board, companies slash their consulting budgets blindly. Most of the time, we are leaving behind company critical systems to be supported by the “dead weight” people that couldn’t tell their ass from a hole in the ground.

I’m currently on an integrated team, meaning half our developers are consultants and half are regular employees. The consultants consistently put out significantly higher quality work in a fraction of the time. But as of Jan 1, we cut almost all of them. And as of June, we’re cutting the rest. What’s going to be left behind is half the number of people that will put out less than a quarter of the results than before.

But the reality is that consultants are easy to cut. You don’t have to call them layoffs or pay them severance.