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I'd just tell them I have other projects (and use the fact you're not their employee to not disclose further) and skip the meetings (i've hated those meetings, i previously worked for a consulting company and everything is useless meetings with the stakeholders. you really want to waste a developer's hourly salary putting me into those? I suggest you put them in a position where they realize not to waste your time). if the client complains to the consulting company you're not exclusive then consulting company can ask for higher pay for you to be exclusive, so they win and you'd win
consulting companies are notoriously corrupt and ask you to do illegal, deceptive things all the time. think of that if you ever have to use one. it's a business model built on selling advice, after all. if people offer you advice unsolicited how good would a company doing it for money be, do you think?! -
probably the two companies are competitors to each other and they don't want you to reveal that you're playing both sides
this is actually pretty smart of them
so on their end if you want to play their strategy, you're to play off these two clients off each other. so for one build something with a certain lack of features, for the other build the features the first lacks but also take out another set of features. then they will scope out each other's product and come back to you with change requests, more work, more money. and when they come back to you? go above and beyond, and make the website better than they asked for, so you can again goad the other client into asking for features you built for their competitor. rinse and repeat
just don't mention why youre busy with someone else. don't ever hint it's in the same industry. you could say its in-house software, or like personal matters. whatever. don't ever let them know you're playing both sides. that's the strategy. just saying -
Ive been in your shoes. List both reasons. They will try to bribe you with an increase in salary, its not worth it. Been there, got the raise, and I almost lost my fiancee, due to the work ethics, 4 clients in parallel, same code base implementation, just different requirements and bugs. You will end up loving one client more than the other or some bias which will get you in trouble with the HR, all because you mental state isnt ready. Before I quit, I made sure to pass pending interviews like im gonna die tomorrow. and the result now, I have a good job, I actually enjoy programming, Im using latest tech stack, Im now handling some AI stuff and dipping my feet into iOS, something I never dreamed of as an Android Dev. 2 words, Move On
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@jestdotty I understand that the problem is that both clients expect to have him full time so that's the secret. He says "I'm working for you now" but is working for someone else. That's why it's secret
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@retoor that doesn't make sense because he's a contractor to them, not an employee. that would be illogical to expect exclusivity unless you're actually explicitly paying for exclusivity in the contract and that will come at a very high premium for a contractor -- think of the opportunity costs! hell you could get sued for having faux employees!
what kind of company hires a contractor instead of an employee and expects exclusivity? if you want exclusivity you get an employee; they have no choice, you have total power over all their work, you own every IP they ever make, every document, you have access to all info. to hire a contractor and expect such loyalty would be insanely bad business sense, and if they do have such bad business sense you should take full advantage of them -- where else they gonna go expecting a cake and to eat it too? they'll be in for a bad bad bad time
so anyway I think the company is playing off the clients. it isn't that esoteric a strategy -
@jestdotty wtf, ofcourse you expect a contractor to work 40h for you if you pay him to. Contractors are also people with ethics
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Eternal confusion.
TL;DR: This year I changed job to a quite toxic company and because I have to work for two different clients in parallel I'm burning out. I need suggestions about telling about my mental health to my employer or request to change clients because of their incompatibility
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At the begin of this year I changed work from a small startup (which was nice, but they didn't pay very much) to a consulting company and since then I'm experiencing my first burnout.
Just to give some context, the first month or two months in this new position were nice: the project I've been put on was difficult, but the other people in the team were very kind and helped me navigate through the codebase. After there quiet months, I've been put on a second project (in parallel with the first one), same domain but different client and the two clients must not know that I work for other clients. This doesn't work particularly well because both of the clients require me a full--time presence and both the teams have the tendency to call you without any warning and without setting up a meeting on calendar and beacuse of this I pass 3/4 of my day on such useless meetings (which many of them I have to be present at the same time, and sometimes one meeting is in English and one in Italian) without getting any job done and now both my leads are getting frustrated by my delays.
To make it all worse, when I was contacted from the headhunter it was for a mobile developer position, but because of my previous position my employer thought that I could temporary work on one java project because there was scarcity of developers and I could be a nice fit.
I'm not sure if I sum up my situation clearly of it's confused (I'm sorry about that), but tomorrow I plan to call my employer to tell him that I can't take it anymore and something has to change, I just don't know if I should put it on the incompatibility of the two clients, my mental health or both
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burnout
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