You seem very casual about this. This is a line of work which is at the forefront of industry right now. People like http://www.k2intelligence.com/ and Palantir are going to beat you to it, but that's besides the point. Do you have knowledge in distributed systems? Do you even know what trends to look for? Have you played with Petabytes, or even Terabytes of data before?
Ask HN: Tips for a Big Data consultancy
11–15 of 15 posts
Re: Ask HN: Tips for a Big Data consultancy
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you going for a developer type role?
From a personal standpoint, no - I'll be working towards building relationships with mandarins. But at first, I would be writing code myself, as well as writing up reports and stuff. Eventually, I'm looking at a scenario where we have coders, and we have people interfacing with governments, reporting on our findings.
You're just going to have to land your first gig, then expand your way from there. You'll have to knock them dead, and slowly bring in more people.
Sidenote - Sounds like you're in the DC area, and if you're going for government work, I hope you have a lot of solid connections because 2-3 years of experience isn't always enough to land much more that a contract workerbee position.
Re: Ask HN: Tips for a Big Data consultancy
#13To me, "big data" looks to become one of the most over-used words in tech for 2013. So if you're planning to consult in this space you're probably onto a winner :) In addition to the good advice already offered in this thread, consider hitting up some of the prevalent consultancies in the region who already have government contracts. Subcontract directly or offer them a "big data analysis as a service" - some proposi…
Thanks :)
The interesting thing is, that atleast in India and Pakistan, the private sector has never been "allowed" to work on large-scale government contracts. For instance, all think-tanks in New Delhi and Islamabad are government projects, where people are still stuck in that Cold War mentality: two superpowers, and India's stuck in the middle. Unfortunately, while the world has changed, these views haven't. This was just an example of the prevailing situation here.
So that's the problem - what I'm attempting to do is actually a lot more difficult, simply because the kind of partnership you'd see in the West between companies and organizations like Stratfor and Lockheed, and Western governments, simply doesn't exist here.
Re: Ask HN: Tips for a Big Data consultancy
#14You seem very casual about this. This is a line of work which is at the forefront of industry right now. People like http://www.k2intelligence.com/ and Palantir are going to beat you to it, but that's besides the point. Do you have knowledge in distributed systems? Do you even know what trends to look for? Have you played with Petabytes, or even Terabytes of data before?
Actually, as it so goes - I do. I majored in history and computer science. I've worked with IBM, on a contract with Amazon, harnessing EMR for analyzing customer sales, in order to figure out prevailing market patterns.
Apart from that, I've freelanced as a policy analyst for think tanks in the Middle East, which in turn, collaborate with the State Department.
My apologies for the apparent casualness - but my view is that even if I - or anyone else for that matter, doesn't know much, should it matter? It musn't serve as a barrier to doing something new. As long as one is ready to learn, though. That's the clincher.
Re: Ask HN: Tips for a Big Data consultancy
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
From a personal standpoint, no - I'll be working towards building relationships with mandarins. But at first, I would be writing code myself, as well as writing up reports and stuff. Eventually, I'm looking at a scenario where we have coders, and we have people interfacing with governments, reporting on our findings.
You're just going to have to land your first gig, then expand your way from there. You'll have to knock them dead, and slowly bring in more people. Sidenote - Sounds like you're in the DC area, and if you're going for government work, I hope you have a lot of solid connections because 2-3 years of experience isn't always enough to land much more that a contract workerbee position.
Okay. That sounds a little daunting, but hey, not going back now.
Actually..I'm not in DC. I'm based out of New Delhi right now. My take is, that the lack of such a consultancy in South Asia and the Middle East would mean, that my thing could really work here. Is that being naive, or am I actually on to something? Thanks a lot for the offer, though!