How I went from programming to consulting (2012) • Hacker News Board

Re: How I went from programming to consulting (2012)

#161

Post by emodendroket » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 5:24 PM UTC

putnam wrote: post #130

CyberDildonics wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He used an exaggerated metaphor to illustrate that pragmatically, not everyone can market themselves to become well known, no matter how good they are at writing software. You then turned that into an irrelevant comparison of the difficulty of becoming an actor vs a consultant.

Thank you. Do you think that someone who is good at writing software can not learn to market themselves to become well known?

Some can, some can't, but realistically, even if everyone were turning out articles as good as Steve Yegge's they couldn't all achieve the same name recognition. If you want another example look at mobile app stores. Surely there were thousands of games just as good as Flappy Bird that you've never heard of.

Re: How I went from programming to consulting (2012)

#162

Post by ZenoArrow » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 5:26 PM UTC

borplk wrote: post #153

valuearb wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my case my company has a terrible product development process, and it’s a big reason why our app sucks, it doesn’t deliver the key value customers and the company need. I have said as much to everyone up to the VP level, and provided detailed recommendations (I am a Sr Dev, but in prior jobs I successfully managed dev groups of 40+ people). The response I’ve gotten has been coaching on delivery (stop being so blun…

A huge huge part of it is just persona, profile, reputation and perception. A fancy consultant with a laundry list of "credentials" will be automatically trusted. When Joe Schmoe developer says the same thing it will be dismissed. You can see a variation of this happen with books, particularly self-help books. A nobody author writes lots of valuable stuff and people flick through it and go mehhh. A famous self-help p…

> "The point is if you ignore this or don't understand it you are going to be disappointed."

You can recognise it exists whilst still being disappointed that it exists.

Someone I work with suggested "Perception is the only reality", which seems to fit here.

Re: How I went from programming to consulting (2012)

#163

Post by Retric » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 5:26 PM UTC

ineedasername wrote: post #138

putnam wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think being a consultant is as rare as becoming an actor?

Not everyone can be in the top 1% of paid professionals in their field. That extends to acting or consulting. And there simply aren't enough clients that can pay that much to support a significant increase in the # of folks pulling down those fees, regardless of the quality of the service offered. If 100 Michael Jordans showed up tomorrow, that would just increase competition for the same scarce resource of NBA playe…

I would argue that increasing the number and quality of great actors increases the profitably of movie studios, and thus the number of movies made.

Similarly with sports, there is a huge range of player incomes and assuming the sport becomes more interesting to watch and thus profitable their would be room for more highly compensated players.

Re: How I went from programming to consulting (2012)

#164

Post by mcguire » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 5:27 PM UTC

zdw wrote: post #17

Step 1: Be popular/famous enough that people know your name. Step 2: Be good/accurate enough at opining in ways that make sense. Most people won't have either 1 or 2 going for them. There's one more thing - charging a lot is how to signal value, which is a a huge thing. I know a guy who used to manage an A-list rock band (everyone knows their songs) who went into consulting, and started out lowballing people, for $1k…

Step Somewhere-between-1.5-and-infinity: Market the holy shit out of everything you do.

Re: How I went from programming to consulting (2012)

#165

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 5:27 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: How I went from programming to consulting (2012)

#166

Post by smelltest » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 5:28 PM UTC

Patrick is a charismatic and compelling writer, and he writes in such an earnestly nerdy way that you think what he's saying must be true. Similar to the guy who wrote The Gervais Principle posts. It sounds great and you feel like you're hit with a series of epiphanies. But it doesn't pass the smell test. The author isn't a wealthy consultant. He's a full-time salaried employee at a YC startup (where he assuredly makes less than $x0,000 per week).

Re: How I went from programming to consulting (2012)

#167

Post by putnam » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 5:31 PM UTC

ThomPete wrote: post #134

putnam wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your agency has 10 people? Was you the first person in your agency?

No we are two looking to hire 4 more. Have freelancers do some of the work until we find the right people. My first agency was 80 in its peak, but its just too much people handling imo.

Did you start the first agency? What was its niche?

Re: How I went from programming to consulting (2012)

#168

Post by kamaal » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 5:31 PM UTC

Delmania wrote: post #36

zdw wrote: post #17

Step 1: Be popular/famous enough that people know your name. Step 2: Be good/accurate enough at opining in ways that make sense. Most people won't have either 1 or 2 going for them. There's one more thing - charging a lot is how to signal value, which is a a huge thing. I know a guy who used to manage an A-list rock band (everyone knows their songs) who went into consulting, and started out lowballing people, for $1k…

> Most people won't have either 1 or 2 going for them. Not at first, no, but even Patrick had to start at zero, right? It's true that there's a lot more personal branding and content marketing going on, but that doesn't mean a person can't execute a similar strategy and find success. It may not be as profitable as it once was, but it can be enough to relieve some financial stress.

>>Not at first, no, but even Patrick had to start at zero, right?

More or less everybody starts at 0. I don't exactly mean 0 as absolute nothingness, but some a low enough value of opportunity possible. That's the seed available to you, and from there you have to bootstrap.

Of course not every one will make it big in this game. But a sure shot way of going failing, is to not try.

Re: How I went from programming to consulting (2012)

#169

Post by putnam » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 5:31 PM UTC

fnbr wrote: post #157

ivanhoe wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO it's a mistake to focus on his particular fees, that's what he managed to make for himself. You need to find your own realistic path. For instance I, living outside of US, will probably never be able to charge $100+ hour my clients, I'm fully aware of that. But no matter who you are, you probably still can push for a little bit more, and that's where Patrick's advices are solid. Often, it's just a matter of askin…

It's very doable to find remote consulting/freelance work. I'm in a region of Canada where the goal freelance/consulting rates for software engineers are well below $100/hour, and I could regularly find remote consulting work in the US around the $100/hour mark .

Are you consulting on one project at a time, or multiple?

Re: How I went from programming to consulting (2012)

#170

Post by pjmlp » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 5:33 PM UTC

kleiba wrote: post #57

To this day, I'm still not quite clear about what a consultant actually does. I mean, beyond some vague idea ("goes to some company, talks with people, gives some recommendation"). I'd really love for someone to give some example or describe in a tangible way what the work of a consultant entails, what skills one typically needs and actually employs, what a typical gig looks like from beginning to end and so on. If a…

Depends, there are many ways of doing consultancy.

I do enterprise software consultancy, which means that those big companies that don't think twice about buying Oracle or Visual Studio Ultimate, hire companies like my employer to come in and develop software for them, instead of having an internal R&D department.

Usually because for those companies software is a by product, something that they need for their real business, the one that they earn money with.

Then you have business consultants, than come in, evaluate the current set of working processes and provide optimization guidelines based on a specific set of targets.

There are other variations.