Skip to main content

On Consulting

I promised more details on my new job and so here we are. I work for CSC as a Senior Consultant for their Federal Consulting Practice (FCP). In some instances, I may consult on projects the FCP has negotiated directly with the US government, but typically I am asked to step in on federal govt projects that CSC’s North American Public Sector (NPS) is already managing.  This means at a practical level that I consult to one division of CSC on behalf of another division of CSC.

CSC is a very large company (92,000+ employees) and it has fashioned itself into several divisions to handle different market segments. For example, it has a large division devoted to commercial work both domestic and abroad. It also has a major division devoted to US government work. This division or entity provides services to the US government under contract. The FCP division was created to maintain a pool of expertise to drop in to NPS projects as needed. This benefits the company to keep a supply of techie-geeks on hand at all times and benefits the consultants because our employment is not bound to any specific contract. Instead we are permanent CSC employees who don’t have to worry about finding a new job when a contract concludes. A win-win for everyone involved.

Currently I am consulting on a project CSC NPS manages for a government agency. They’re utilizing my SAS admin skills and I am learning a lot along the way. The implementation version on this project is SAS 9.2 whereas previously I’d learned and worked the ins and outs of 9.1.3. There have been a lot of changes to the application but nothing so far I cannot wrap my mind around or keep up with. My first few weeks on the job I’ve managed to resolve a pressing issues that was previously deemed “unsolvable” by SAS so I am feeling pretty confident.  And while it’s a bit tricky as a consultant to manage three circles of influence (the govt client and the CSC NPS employees I am consulting to along with my CSC FCP managers) I am enjoying the pace.

I live in a cube farm in DC during work hours.  While it was a rough transition in terms of managing my daily schedule after working from home for the past few years (see my previous blog post) it’s actually more enjoyable then having a big office all to myself (which I had when I first starting working for my last employer Orizon). The amazing office with a beautiful view was exciting for the first couple of weeks- look at me, I have an office!- but when the pride wore off it was just lonely. I am a social creature and cube farms are lovely. I enjoy the neighborly interaction and the quiet murmur (sometimes not so quiet) of work and conversation going on around me while I work.

One thing that has been vastly different about working at CSC versus any other previous employer: their attention to detail. There is a formal written policy for everything: even the fridge clean out schedule/rules is codified in policy. It’s not bad; it’s just very different and super organized.

CSC invests heavily in career planning for their employees. Every year there are two main career building activities. The first is KRA objective planning. This is sort of like your standard ‘work goals for the year’ section of your typical employee review, but on steroids. It took me a couple of hours to watch the instruction videos, learn all the lingo and understand the methodology CSC uses for the process. In the end, an employee ends up with approx 5 ‘Key Result Areas’ that they commit to accomplishing during the year on the job that should further their project, the company overall, and of course their own goals and interests as well.

Besides the KRA, CSC also requires all employees to complete an Individualized Development Plan (IDP). The IDP is designed to plot out your continuing education over the next year, keeping in mind your long range (greater than a year from now) career plans and goals. You have to conceive where you’d like to be in a few years (working the same job in the same division? working a different job in the same division? working the same type of job in another CSC division? working another type of job in another division?) and then plot out how you are going to work toward that this year. Deciding what I want to be doing in two years was the hardest part for me. I mean I freeze up when presented with 31 flavors at Baskin Robbins (so many choices! what to pick, what to pick?!). Imagine how hard it was for me to plot a course to set sail for the future in a company with nearly 100,000 job opportunities of all different kinds. As an employee, you also have to keep in mind (and work into the plan) skill development for any of your current job title competencies that you aren’t 100% developed on already. For example, one of my job title competencies relates to team management (even though I’m not currently managing a team on this consulting project) so I might elect to take some management courses. To complicate things just a bit, I have a job title description with competencies and I also have what equivalents to a seniority title description with competencies as well. For those familiar with the federal govt, think of a seniority title as GS levels. So you might be a programmer at GS10 or a lets say for illustration a programmer at GS11. You’d have the competencies expected of a programmer and also those expected of any GS11 employee, regardless of their job specialty.

As part of my blog audience you’re probably feeling a bit overwhelmed by now just reading about these complex processes, but just imagine how it feels to be the new employee having to work through them! The good news is that the story has a happy ending: I finished my KRA and IDP work before the deadlines and I was fortunate enough to still be on the bench (working for CSC FCP but not yet on a consulting assignment) during the tasks so that I could devote my full attention to them.

I’m getting along well with the govt client reps, the NPS staff and my FCP colleagues and it’s great to be back to work feeling useful and purposed again. If you happen to be job hunting (especially in IT) I encourage you to consider CSC as your next employer.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Board Game Review: Hues and Cues

Last week we received Hues and Cues from The Op Games. We recently finished playing through Scooby-Doo Escape from the Haunted Mansion (a fantastic game in The Op Games catalogue designed by Jay Cormier, Sen-Foong Lim, and Kami Mandell that you should absolutely pick up to play with your family) and wanted to give another game from the same publisher a go. I picked Hues and Cues because I’ve been pleasantly surprised by other “test whether our minds think the same way” games such as The Mind   and Wavelength. In Hues and Cues , players gather around a large central board comprised of 480 graduating colors of the rainbow surrounded by an x-y axis and scoring table. White and black (which are technically not colors) are conspicuously absent as are shades (mixtures of color + black; e.g., grey) and tints (mixtures of color + white; e.g., cream).  On each player’s turn, they draw a card with four colors and the x-y axis codes of those colors depicted and they select one. They are in the

Board Game Review: Obsessed with Obsession

I'm completely obsessed with Obsession! I received a review copy of the updated second edition along with all the expansions (Wessex, Useful Man, Upstairs Downstairs) and from the moment I took everything out of the boxes, my excitement was over the top. Actually, that's not even the half of it - I remember I was already quite excited before the game even arrived. I'd wanted to get my hands on a copy as soon as I learned there was a game that brought the lifestyle that we all fell in love with watching Downton Abbey to the gaming table. Back in 2021, I was having a great time at the Dice Tower Summer Retreat and a new friend Bonnie sang the praises of Obsession. She had seen me eyeing the box on the shelf and gave me a summary of the game mechanics as she owned the first edition. She explained that the theme is centered on running an estate in Derbyshire and competing against others to have the best home, reputation, gentry guests, etc. Based on her enthusiasm and descripti

Board Game Review: Anno 1800

Whenever Martin Wallace designs a new game, I am all over it. This is because I absolutely love Brass Birmingham (another MW designed game); in fact Brass Birmingham is my #1 board game of all time. Over the years, his other games I've tried have been pretty good, but not necessarily amazing must-buys. Still, I keep trying each new release of his, searching for that next star performer. That's why I'm excited to report that Anno 1800 is, in fact, a star performer, and an amazing must-buy board game. Anno 1800 was adapted by the publisher (Kosmos) from a Ubisoft video game of the same name. In the board game, players take on the role of industrialists, charged with developing their island economies and exploring other islands. Each player begins the game with a personal industry board with trade & exploration ships, a shipyard, and industrial goods tiles printed on the board. A starting collection of workers (wooden cubes) of various types to produce the goods is a