Tom Kenaley
By Tom Kenaley, Senior Partner and President, KORE1 A funded $500,000 initiative covers six months of a four-person contract team, with a mid-level business analyst, two mid-level software engineers, and a mid-level project manager costing about $392,800 at national index medians. Drop one engineer and the team fits a $300,000 budget at $280,600. Every seat … Read more
A mid-level contract mechanical, electrical, or manufacturing engineer bills about $75 to $94 an hour nationally in 2026. Bill rates by level and metro from the KORE1 Contract Rate Index.
By Tom Kenaley, President and Senior Partner, KORE1 SAP S/4HANA consultant interview questions in 2026 should hand the candidate real conversion artifacts, such as a precheck printout, a downtime window, and a custom report that still reads old tables, then ask what they would do first. Module trivia comes later, if at all. Plenty of … Read more
By Tom Kenaley, President and Senior Partner, KORE1 A principal product manager job description should name the bet the hire will own, the decisions they can make without anyone’s sign-off, the executive who backs them, and a base range, usually $210,000 to $300,000 in 2026. Leave those out and you have written a senior PM … Read more
By Tom Kenaley, Co-Founder and President, KORE1 Netflix has not confirmed any layoffs, but Puck reported on October 9, 2026, that the company plans to cut about 5 percent of staff, roughly 800 of its 16,000 full-time employees, possibly before October 20 earnings. Netflix declined to comment. Nobody has said which teams. For a hiring … Read more
By Tom Kenaley, President and Senior Partner, KORE1 An IT director job description should state the environment in numbers, which functions sit in-house versus with an MSP, who owns security when there is no CISO, and a base range, usually $160,000 to $210,000 at mid-market companies. Leave those out and you get a list of … Read more
By Tom Kenaley, President and Senior Partner, KORE1 A group product manager job description should name the product managers the hire will manage, who writes their reviews, the surface the hire still runs personally, and a base range, typically $190,000 to $285,000 in 2026. Strip any one of those four out and the posting reads … Read more
By Tom Kenaley, President and Senior Partner, KORE1 A firmware engineer job description should name the silicon, the RTOS, where the product sits in its life, who owns the bootloader and the update path, the memory and power budget, and a published pay range. Most postings name the first two and stop. That is why … Read more
By Tom Kenaley, President and Senior Partner, KORE1 Co-sourcing internal audit means your chief audit executive keeps the plan, the methodology, and the sign-off, and buys outside hours for specific gaps. Outsourcing hands the whole function to a firm. The decision is about who stays accountable, not about headcount. The quote came back at $410,000 … Read more
By Tom Kenaley, President and Senior Partner, KORE1 Good firmware engineer interview questions in 2026 make a candidate bring up a board that has never run code, defend an update path against a power cut, and say who files the vulnerability report. Mutex versus semaphore only sorts out who revised the night before. Shipping hardware … Read more
