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Ask HN: Moving from a product org to a consulting org: What should I know?

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Re: Ask HN: Moving from a product org to a consulting org: What should I know?

#51

Post by RosanaAnaDana »

xondono wrote: post #35

My take from experience and from what I've seen with friends: - Consulting is great for people with good people skills, but it can turn into hell if you haven't them. - It's very easy for experienced workers in some shops to take advantage of the "new meat", and basically shove you their work. Be on the look for that situation. If it happens run as fast as you can. - Find out who are the top performers, get as close…

I think that final point is one of the most important components to being successful in contract based consulting. By the time the contract that we're doing lands on my desk its a game of telephone thats prob been going on for 2 years. Clearly understanding the client needs and priorities is the only path to successfully growing a program I've found.

Re: Ask HN: Moving from a product org to a consulting org: What should I know?

#52

Post by jsdwarf »

Consultancies/Contractors can be career boosters, because they have a rather high attrition rate, which allows you to grow into more advanced positions faster than in a product shop (e.g. Dev -> tech lead or software architect). You should insist to be hired with that perspective. Unfortunately, consulting is a low-margin business, so expect to be laid off quickly if projects run dry. Time-Tracking is a huge pita in project organisations too.

Re: Ask HN: Moving from a product org to a consulting org: What should I know?

#53

Post by eysquared »

I wanted to share a different perspective as a hiring manager that has worked at multiple FAANGs.

As you start looking to get into more mid/senior levels, the consulting work starts to hinder more than help. Typically when we are looking at candidates we want to see long term ownership of a product or project. This can include things like dealing with operational issues, shipping major versions, or leading large architectural changes. Most of these things are quite rare in the consulting case. Typically consultants don't have much ownership over the code or major decisions about the product, and that becomes increasingly limiting for the scope and ambiguity you are able to demonstrate.

This is of course purely anecdotal and not all consulting roles are like this, but it is a trend I have encountered.

I don't know what your long term career goals are or what stage of your career you are in, but in the off chance you may look to return to a product focused org at a higher level you should be aware of the challenges that can come from long stints in consulting.

Re: Ask HN: Moving from a product org to a consulting org: What should I know?

#54

Post by wombatpm »

ABB: Always be billing. Consulting is a game of renting people out by the hour. You want to be on customer billable projects. Being on the bench, means you are costing the company money - eventually you will be let go.

Change is Good: It is ok for customers to change their mind. Just make sure it gets documented as a change request and the Lead consultant gets the cost approved.

Never use the word No with a customer: You can propose alternative, argue, cajole, etc. But don't say no. No is a word that can be used by the lead consultant - not by the engineering team

Re: Ask HN: Moving from a product org to a consulting org: What should I know?

#55

Post by goodmachine »

xondono wrote: post #35

My take from experience and from what I've seen with friends: - Consulting is great for people with good people skills, but it can turn into hell if you haven't them. - It's very easy for experienced workers in some shops to take advantage of the "new meat", and basically shove you their work. Be on the look for that situation. If it happens run as fast as you can. - Find out who are the top performers, get as close…

Truly, an excellent summary.

Re: Ask HN: Moving from a product org to a consulting org: What should I know?

#56

Post by Buttons840 »

I get frustrated trying to improve things both big and small. As a small example, our endpoints return a list of JSON objects, as well as the length of that list, as though we're passing C pointers or something. I was under the impression that Javascript could determine the length of a list without help, but apparently that's the way it's done and it's not really worth a confrontation with the client to change such a small thing. Bigger changes are, of course, even more difficult.

Even in the best circumstances there is a slight adversarial relationship with the clients, I think that is the source of a lot of problems.

Re: Ask HN: Moving from a product org to a consulting org: What should I know?

#57

Post by jakub_g »

xondono wrote: post #35

My take from experience and from what I've seen with friends: - Consulting is great for people with good people skills, but it can turn into hell if you haven't them. - It's very easy for experienced workers in some shops to take advantage of the "new meat", and basically shove you their work. Be on the look for that situation. If it happens run as fast as you can. - Find out who are the top performers, get as close…

Brilliant advice, favorited. Thanks for writing that.

Re: Ask HN: Moving from a product org to a consulting org: What should I know?

#58

Post by notaslave »

My advice: stay away from consulting.

My user name itself is a result of my experience working in one of those body shops. Client doesn't care, my employer doesn't care. I see people here talking about 1-1s and promotions and so on. I never had a single one in 5+ years. Clients treat us as outsiders. I am not sure if they even see us as humans. Just keep on dumping work, and then suddenly you are kicked out one fine day. Makes you wonder why did you spent 10-15 hours a lot of days for free. No team activities, no trainings, nothing.

My employer has absolutely no interest in my well being either. No promotions, no salary increments most years. Only time my 'manager' talks to me is when they want me to relocate to some other state or client. If I say no, they will threaten me - 'I will snip you' is what my manager told me once. Now I categorize these so called 'managers' as 'slave traders, parasites or demons'.

Wider variety of technologies and languages may sound good initially, but at least from my experience, the work you do for these clients are basically things you can learn on your own. So if that's your only goal, I would say do some personal projects instead.

Every single one of my colleagues have jumped ship within 2 years working in our company. Only idiots like me stayed. My itinerary for today is this: work from 6am-4pm. Then log out. Prepare for interviews. Get a work in good product company.

Re: Ask HN: Moving from a product org to a consulting org: What should I know?

#59

Post by willio58 »

notaslave wrote: post #58

My advice: stay away from consulting. My user name itself is a result of my experience working in one of those body shops. Client doesn't care, my employer doesn't care. I see people here talking about 1-1s and promotions and so on. I never had a single one in 5+ years. Clients treat us as outsiders. I am not sure if they even see us as humans. Just keep on dumping work, and then suddenly you are kicked out one fine…

Man I’m so sorry you’ve had such a bad experience. I don’t think this has to be the case in consulting, a supportive team and a policy to only work with clients that treat you respectfully could go a long way in situations like this.
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