I have a customer who employed a guy I've known for over ten years, let's call him Doug, as their IT manager. Let's say he's one of those people you meet in life who could fall in a cesspit and climb out smelling of roses! In my experience, he knows enough about IT to scrape by. Now for me, this is a perfect relationship. He needs me (us) to make sure he keeps his job, so we tend to do lots of things that he should be doing.
We have a relatively new member of staff, we'll call him Ben, whose previous employer was a school, so he's not used to multiple customers and all the quirks that come with that. Plus, he's used to making sure his employer saved money, not make money which is a big difference.
We've been providing support to Doug's employer for around eight or nine months now, and sadly, Doug is going to get an assistant.
Ben: "He should have sent me a link to that job advert. I could do it with my eyes closed."
Me: "Ah, but you don't employ someone in a junior role that knows more than you do, especially not when you've only been with the company for six months."
Ben: "But he's useless!"
Me: "And long may he continue being useless. I've arranged for us to be on a retainer when the new assistant starts."
Because of my age and experience, I can guess what's happening. The customer is probably paying Doug something like £38K, but they're questioning why they are paying over £10K a year to us, so Doug has laid it on thick how he's overworked, and that's why we have a support contract. And so, senior management probably thinks that getting a junior in as an assistant will save money. I suspect once the assistant works out how useless Doug is, he (or she) will start to let us pick up the slack, which means I can ask for a bit more money; neither of them two will say anything.
Poor Ben still can't understand why a company would pay so much for two staff members while also paying an external IT company, namely us. 🤣