Are you a prostitute or a consultant? You work very odd hours. You are paid a lot of money to keep your client happy. You are paid well but your pimp gets most of the money. You spend a majority of your time in a hotel room. You charge by the hour but your time can be extended for the right price. You are not proud of what you do. Creating fantasies for your clients is rewarded. It’s difficult to have a family. You have no job satisfaction. If a client beats you up, the pimp just sends youto another client. You are embarrassed to tell people what you do for a living. People ask you, “What do you do?” and you can’texplain it. Your family hardly recognizes you at reunions (at least the reunions you attend.) Your friends have distanced themselves from you and you’re left hanging with only other “professionals.” Your client pays for your hotel room plus your hourly rate. Your client always wants to know how much you charge and what they get for the money. Your pimp drives nice cars like Mercedes or BMWs. Your pimp encourages drinking and you become addicted to drugs to ease the pain of it all. You know the pimp is charging more than you are worth but if the client is foolish enough to pay it’s not your problem. When you leave to go see a client, you look great,but return looking like hell (compare your appearance on Monday AM to Friday PM). You are rated on your “performance” in an excruciating ordeal. Even though you get paid the big bucks, it’s the client who walks away smiling. The client always thinks your “cut” of your billing rate is higher than it actually is, and in turn, expects miracles from you. When you deduct your “take” from your billing rate, you constantly wonder if you could get a better deal with another pimp. Everyday you wake up and tell yourself, “I’m not going to be doing this stuff the rest of my life.” Some striking similarites 
tarek_demiati@ureach.com
Time to change your career path Tarek :o) David Cox MindSource (UK) Limited Navision Solutions Partner Email: david@mindsource.co.uk Web: www.mindsource.co.uk
You are self-employed and master of your time. You only accept projects up to 60% of your capacity knowing you will end up with 100% anyway. You work 6-7 hours a day and make more money than colleaques who are employees. You work at home whenever possible. You work less hours but are more productive during this time. Making the customer happy and leaving more time for family. If the weather is beautiful you decide to play with your child in the afternoon rather than working. You found the balance between the amount of working hours you need to make money and the amount of time you need to relax, refresh and enjoy life. I mean, you wouldn’t get enough money if you’d only work 50 hrs/month. But on the other side you do no good to work 300 hours/month, get rich, your family forgets about you and you have a heart-attack with 40. So find the balance my friend, don’t work more than you need and want and take your time to enjoy your life. Especially if you have a child. You might end up like me and say “I love my job and I don’t want to do anything else” ------- With best regards from Switzerland Marcus Fabian
Hooray for Fabian - and I feel exactly the same way 
Lars Strøm Valsted Head of Project and Analysis Columbus IT Partner A/S www.columbusitpartner.com
Tarek old mate If you feel that way, come back to the UK, your skills are required here. lots of people you already know, maybe find one of the big NSC’s to employ both of us, how scary would that be! David Cox MindSource (UK) Limited Navision Solutions Partner Email: david@mindsource.co.uk Web: www.mindsource.co.uk Edited by - David Cox on 2001 Apr 21 07:56:33
Marcus, I sure love your equation, less work for more money. Lucky fellow David, I do miss London however I’m planning to stay a little while in Asia, at least a year or two and see how things are going. However working together for the same NSC is somewhat very tempting. Have you got any plan to relocate somewhere in Asia ? I’ll let you know when ever I’ll be back in the UK for some holiday so we can meet for a drink again. Ha guys! and the prostitute or consultant thread was just a joke that I thought funny enough to post here, actually I don’t do much consulting, so far it has been purely development work which is office based. But I’ve done my fair share of traveling ;-D tarek_demiati@ureach.com Edited by - Tarek Demiati on 2001 Apr 23 08:32:28