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How I went from programming to consulting (2012)

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

#231

Post by ethbro »

putnam wrote: post #50
ethbro wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The weird thing with consulting (in my experience) is that a customer almost never knows how capable they are of effectively using a consultant's time and output. "Okay, we signed a one month consulting engagement, starting Tuesday." Consultant(s) show up on Tuesday, no db's or credentials have been set up, everyone seems surprised they're there. It consistently amazed me how much consultant time companies waste. Whe…

Why do you think this happens?

My gut is it's a combination of things.

1) The decision to hire a consultant is (in most orgs) made at a level abstracted from day to day operations. So the person hiring you may simply not know what needs to be done.

2) The consultant's patron didn't take the time to get buy-in from all necessary stakeholders. This happens a lot at the VP level. You may have absolute commitment from your project's VP, but when you need resources from another part of the organization this turns into "what's that person's VP's relationship with my VP." Which may be great, or may be terrible. Navigating office politics to aid a project's success is 10-25% of being a successful consultant (result wise).

3) Inconvenience to ongoing work. I know if someone failed to loop me in and introduced a stranger to me on Tuesday, then asked me to do something that impacted my ability to do the work I already had scheduled, I wouldn't be overly happy.

4) Poor IAM (identity and access management) discipline and IT organizational structure. Consultant access and timelines are normally very different than new hires / "business as usual". The client may not be able (technically, process wise) to successfully complete an ad hoc request on an accelerated timescale.

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

#232

Post by saryant »

mcguire wrote: post #164
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.

Yes. I literally got a job paying 3x my previous compensation just based on my StackOverflow reputation.

IMO, best way to start, as a programmer? Regional conferences. Start speaking. My first talk was just a presentation about how we used Akka at a small Scala conference in Portland. Last year I presented our use of Kafka at a much larger conference in Austin and now I'm prepping a submission for ScalaDays 2018, the largest conference in the field.

The point isn't even making it to the larger conferences, just keep getting your name out there. Learning to speak in venues like these doesn't just market yourself, you'll learn how to effectively present your ideas to an audience—a critical skill itself.

Then link it all on yourname.com or whatever and off you go. I'm at http://ryantanner.xyz.

The result? When I left a job a few years ago I just tweeted out that I was looking for some short-term consulting work and people I'd never met came out of the woodwork looking to hire me.

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

#233

Post by yequalsx »

chrishacken wrote: post #176
ineedasername wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not everyone can; but anyone can.

As an extreme counter example can a person with an IQ or 50 do it? Clearly not. So not everyone can. There’s a range of abilities and personality types. I suspect the number of people with the ability/personality type necessary for $10,000 a week gig is much less than you imply.

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

#235

Post by uiri »

smelltest wrote: post #166

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 mak…

I think the post is at least 4-5 years old given the references to Matasano which was acquired before the startup that patio11 and tptacek did before Patrick became an employee at Stripe, I would guess that the post is a bit dated - probably circa 2012 give or take a year or two.

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

#236

Post by ethbro »

user5994461 wrote: post #185
putnam wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think they cared that you spent 12 hours on setup?

Of course not! If they cared, it would be handled or they wouldn't use consultants.

I'd put a caveat on that where they care if it makes them look bad. If it's readily apparent that your patron dropped the ball in prep (either through incompetence or simply ignorance), then that can be a very bad round of the blame game.

This is where providing transparency and insight (in a "how can we fix this?" way) up to management can help engagements go more smoothly. If everyone was aware from the first that "that QWSV system access issue" has been impacting the projects for weeks, that's much better than "the project is weeks behind" being communicated up at a random status meeting.

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

#238

Post by saryant »

projektir wrote: post #205
putnam wrote: post #2

I have an Internet buddy in Chicago named Thomas Ptacek. [...] I decided to invite Thomas out to coffee. At the end of the conversation, Thomas said something which, no exaggeration, changed my life. Thomas: Some food for thought: If this hadn't been a coffee date, but rather a consulting engagement, I'd be writing you a check right now. Me: Three hours at $100 an hour or whatever an intermediate programmer is worth…

To some people, probably. I'd wager most people don't have someone like tptacek as an internet buddy or knowledge that would interest them, though. They literally mentioned HN karma rank titles... so much for fake internet points? Does this sound odd to anyone else or just me? There's likely some small percentage of people who can go on to do consulting and charge lots of money. That this applies to a greater amount…

"Internet buddy" can be as simple as emailing someone with a question. Someone once emailed me with a question about a talk I gave at a conference. A few years later we ran into each other—he was working for a major client of my employer and I was asked to give them a technical presentation, neither of us knowing that we were about to run into each other.

Most people are too afraid to cold-intro themselves. Just send an email, worst someone can do is ignore it.

FWIW, I emailed Patrick, author of TFA, a couple years ago with a question and he helped me out. Then last month I emailed him again and we met up for coffee in Tokyo. Just email someone you'd like to meet and ask.

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

#239

Post by calimac »

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…

This has been going on for years in the big 4 accounting firms. Graduates work hard establish networks and street cred the go on to freelance consulting or sweet positions in top tier companies.

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

#240

Post by dejv »

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…

Back at university I had a chance to attend a guest lecture given by chairman of huge public telco company and he stated something like "you are not paying consultants to bring new ideas, but to let them sign your ideas so in case something went wrong you have somebody to blame".

Of course, this was different type of consulting than what Patio11 did, but there are a lot of different kind of consultants.

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