A bit of a battle is being waged on the TechRepublic Web site over the question of who are better, consultants or the internal corporate IT team.  A post by Erik Eckel asserting that IT staff members are "minor leaguers" compared to consultants sparked some well-articulated pushback .  A post by Justin James makes a good case for the IT department.

Eckel argued that IT pros working for large corporations are highly specialized while consultants are required to know a wide range of technologies.  James points out that specialization versus generalization is largely a matter of the size of an organization, whether it is a consultancy or a corporation.

Consultants are required to work fast in a high-stress environment, and they don't have the luxury of learning as they go along, Eckel argued.  But as James notes, IT staffers in corporations frequently face the same working conditions.

"When Walmart's email servers are down, does [Eckel] think the IT staff punches the clock at 5:00 PM and says, `oh well, I guess we'll fix it tomorrow?' If corporate IT was as stress free as Erik makes it out to be, no one would become a consultant," James writes.

For IT pros in the trenches, working for a consultancy or a large corporation often works out to befie a similar experience.

"I've worked 55 hours straight as an internal IT person. I've had situations where I was sleeping on the couch with the cell phone in my hand, so I could be immediately notified of progress while I was internal IT. There are many occasions when I worked 60 - 80 hours a week as internal IT," James writes.

For more:
- see Justin James's post at TechRepublic

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