My company is a large government contractor. In fact, our vice president said we are the largest contractor providing services to our particular customer. There are some benefits to working for the big guy. I guess for the right people, there is a lot of money to be made. And we have the budget for overhead functions like proposal writing.
The current contract I am working on was coming to an end. Normally this is not a big deal. The client puts the contract out for recompete. And usually the incumbent contractor has a good chance to win the work in the future. Our situation this time was a bit different. We failed to deliver a huge rewrite of the system two years in a row. This cost the client a lot of money, both in paying us, and in lost profits from a lack of a new system.
Due to our situation, our company called in the big guns to ensure we would win the recompete for our contract. For once we got a truly competent project manager. And we got assigned a new director who was a superstar headed towards a vice president position. So listening to these guys, I was fully expecting us to pull off a win. And they put on a good show when presenting our case for why we should win the work. Unfortunately we lost the contract.
It appears a smaller and more hungry contractor underbid us significantly. They plan to do the same amount of work with less people. And I think they also plan to pay their employees less than my company pays us. If this new team can do the same work that my company can do, then the client has made a smart choice. Only time will tell. For now I am wrapping up work on this contract. Luckily my company is big. And they plan to roll me off onto another contract. In fact, my next gig will be a much larger project. Hopefully that means the potential to make a larger salary as well. Good luck to me.
