[Zurvan]

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It depends on the type of business. I'm an attorney, so can only speak of the legal field. But in the legal field there are certain cases that you can only get if the firm is a certain size. E.g., let's say a big, multi-million dollar law suit is filed, and the defendant thinks they'll need a team of at least 8+ attorneys working on a case. That client will reject a 5 person firm. So you have to expand your 5 person firm to 8 people in order to get those types of cases.

Since you can't just hire people off the street to become lawyers, you sometimes need to have more lawyers than you need at the moment, in order to get the cases you want--to show the potential clients that you have the capability to handle the case.

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Ok, well this had actually crossed my mind. My company has expressed a lot of interest in getting government contracts. You may be onto something here. But isn't it unethical to hire unsuspecting people just to puff up a firm? It seems pretty crappy to a bunch of us.


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This brings to mind a story.

I used to work for a call centre contractor, that had a contract with a major computer manufacturer that I will not name (but that doesn't use Windows [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]). They had a contract up for bid to replace an in-house call centre. This was a HUGE contract, that would triple our workforce, and open up higher level support jobs.

In order to look better for the contract, the company hired about 75 new support agents (when they started hiring, they had about 140). They got all trained on the bottom level product, and started working. They were taking 5-6 calls a day. I was taking 25-30 (the required standard), since I was working on a different product.

The company didn't get the contract. The day before their probation period was up, they were all taken outside to the smoking area for a "meeting". They were fired ont he spot, told that their security cards were disabled, and that they had to go home. They could return in 2 days to the head office to collect their jackets & purses, when they would have security on site. Fortunately, I had left by that point.