I guess working on troubled projects is the story of my life. At one such problem project I found myself reporting to Pradeep Kumar. Pradeep was unique in that he was not an employee of my company. He was a subcontractor. This posed a number of problems for me. I could not get straight answers to questions on company policy. Pradeep had to consult someone else before giving me even the most elementary of guesses.
Pradeep had other problems like not having the right clearance level to view sensitive data from the client. So he had to use a hands-off policy of managing. Pradeep also came in when there was way too much work promised in too short a time. He told me he had success in many other projects. At first I thought they hired him to turn the project around.
In the end, Pradeep just turned out to be the fall guy. There were already prior managers that were coolateral damage on our doomed project. Pradeep was just another one that got fired instead of reassigned. I actually liked Pradeep personally. But he was unable to excel and overcome the obstacles of a bad project. And a lot of it was due to the fact that he was not a direct employee of our company.
