The whole labor market in the US has been going that way for years. Employers are loth to make any sort of actual or implied commitments to their workers. They would rather pay overtime to the workers they have, or get them to work free overtime, or pay the overhead to hire consultants, who can be expensive in the short term. An employer who hires someone on a permanent basis expects to pay the employer's share of the social security tax, unemployment insurance, and the rapidly increasing cost of a permanent worker's expected benefits, in particular, health insurance. I read somewhere that the average American will work about 14 jobs during his adult life. Even managers move around a lot, and they don't see any reason why the rest of us can't do the same.

Programmers are particularly easy to hire as contractors, because they can be expected to already have the necessary skills. The keyword "FoxPro" and the parameter "1 year experience" are sufficient to produce a long list of people (in a big city, at least) who can make you a database. It's not like hiring an office worker who needs some kind of specialized experience which must be learned on the job. Since programmers are in demand, and can get benefits from their consulting firms, good ones are willing to work this way.

It's a terrible situation for low-end workers with less education and less marketable skills. They are often kept around permanently but treated as temporary.

>There are several reasons:
>1. Projects are limited in time. After the project is done, they don't need those developers anymore. They don't have to worry about having a big IS/IT department doing nothing... as it happens so often in Eastern Europe... :)
>2. The company doesn't have permanent employees with the requested skills.
>3. As Arnon said, an outsider can see things in a different way.
>4. An outsider is always ready to do any changes, use new technologies, etc.
>
>Vlad
>
>>Hi Tom!
>>
>>Thank for answer, but can anybody here explain why big company hire the
>>consultant even if this company have fulltime programmers? In my case I
>>just have an order from my boss about what to do or not ;)... We never make
>>decisions about platform, tools etc.... As result: we work as lazy
>>programmers ;)
>>
>>Have a happy day
>>Vladimir Shevchenko
>>
>>> long as you track yoour time is all that counts.The question is how does
>>> an employer know your being honest. The answer is by the work being
>>> produced. And to be quite honest how does an employer know if your on
>>site
>>> that you are actually producing? Really comes down to your track
>>> record/reputation.Tom
>>>