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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)

#251

Post by cpitman »

ethbro wrote: post #42
mgkimsal wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those saying this doesn't happen any more... it still can, and does. However, the bigger issue most people face is finding those people who can actually get that sort of value from our knowledge/skills/etc. I can give the same info to 2 companies, and one can make several hundred thousand dollars (in savings, new sales, etc). The other may not even be operating at a scale where they'll see $10k in increased value…

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…

100%. I work in consulting, and we spend a lot of time trying to find ways to do this better. But no amount of clearly documented prerequisites, checkpoint meetings to try to make sure they'll be ready before kickoff, or anything else consistently works. In my experience, we often lose 1+ week due to the customer not being ready even though they have acknowledged the prerequisites.

I think it comes down to priorities, and the fire in front of you always has higher priority. That means that onboarding and prereqs are not the priority until the consultants show up on-site and you are paying for them to find other things to do while waiting for the real project to start. Then it is a fire, and everyone starts moving with purpose.

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

#252

Post by sheeshkebab »

jeffwass wrote: post #228
dsacco wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Step 1: Be popular/famous enough that people know your name. Step 2: Be good/accurate enough at opining in ways that make sense. Neither of these are prerequisites for being extremely successful at consulting. My consulting rates are now approximately $10,000/week with a 70% annual utilization rate. I'm not industry famous at all. I also do not maintain a blog or do "content marketing." For a while I had no website…

That's a nice rate. Mind sharing how many weeks you work a year? Ie, is there enough demand you can work in the upper 40's, leaving enough vacation time?

Here’s the weird thing I found out in my Dev/infra consulting - making $30-40k/month is easy if you you want to work at 100% utilization on a year+ contract. It gets sketchy if you don’t want that kind of utilization.

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

#253

Post by borplk »

user5994461 wrote: post #199
borplk wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Security stuff is notoriously difficult for demonstrating any kind of value. 99% don't care unless and until they get hacked, they will also forget about it all in 2 months. If they don't get hacked for years they will just attribute that to luck and probability, not valuable security consulting. And if they do... you can guess that one.

There is a big market around security audits and certifications. They don't pay by value provided, there is hardly anything measurable, but they pay good rates for professional specialized work that has to be done.

Yes but it tends to be around bigger companies.

Lots of smaller businesses just don't care. They also don't have "chief somethings" to tell them it's important, or to do it to save their own asses just in case.

They just fly blind and in many cases they get lucky which further solidifies their beliefs.

And in the odd case when they get screwed they just bury it and move on.

Or post a "we are very sorry! security is our TOP PRIORITY!" message somewhere and move on.

I mean just look at the Equifax fiasco. Then scale that down to the smaller companies and see what you end up with...

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

#254

Post by nabeards »

jeffwass wrote: post #228
dsacco wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Step 1: Be popular/famous enough that people know your name. Step 2: Be good/accurate enough at opining in ways that make sense. Neither of these are prerequisites for being extremely successful at consulting. My consulting rates are now approximately $10,000/week with a 70% annual utilization rate. I'm not industry famous at all. I also do not maintain a blog or do "content marketing." For a while I had no website…

That's a nice rate. Mind sharing how many weeks you work a year? Ie, is there enough demand you can work in the upper 40's, leaving enough vacation time?

He states a 70% utilization rate over the year, so probably about 37 working weeks / 15 weeks off.

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

#255

Post by walshemj »

s73ver_ wrote: post #192
Retric wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For that to happen, they would have to increase the number of teams. This requires new stadiums/arenas to be built, and expansion teams to be created. This requires rebalancing of conferences and divisions within the league.

Your assuming that every where else follows the socialist model that American sports do i.e. a pre entry closed shop for franchises with no consequences for failure - a premier league footballer has far more incentive to play well to stop his team getting demoted and facing a massive drop in his salary.

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

#256

Post by ZenoArrow »

Kinrany wrote: post #225
ZenoArrow wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue you're overlooking is that these management consultants are being paid large fees for information that a company can get for free just by listening to their existing employees. However, that's not a slight on the management consultants themselves (nice work if you can get it), but is a slight on companies that don't trust that their employees can give them sound advice. Problems at the ground level are goin…

How do the companies know that they can trust their employees?

They must trust them enough to employ them. Even if they don't think any single person they employ has "all the answers", if you listen to feedback from your employees you can get a sense of trends. Furthermore, these observations should be something verifiable. You're asking for concrete feedback on issues, not vague comments about what's wrong.

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

#257

Post by csa »

ivanhoe wrote: post #129
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…

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 depends on the kind of consulting you do, but this likely either selling yourself short or not framing your skills the correct way.

Generally speaking, most CEOs will respond positively to an offer that they put $1 in and get ~$3 out (with a range of possible outcomes around that ~$3). In fact, most smart ones will ask how many $1 bills they can throw at you before this proposition becomes untrue.

People who have the kind of combined skill set that 'patio11 has are relatively rare, but they need not be as rare as they are. For many people, all it takes is adopting an appropriate mindset for their work.

Location simply doesn't matter unless you are in a place where CEOs don't like money.

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

#258

Post by petermonsson »

aerovistae wrote: post #250

The problem with patio11's blogs is that he seems to exist in a different world from most programmers, I feel. > So $100 per hour, even though it is not a market rate for e.g. intermediate Ruby on Rails programmers Uh, $100 an hour is $208,000 annually full-time. Unless Patrick is referring exclusively to the Bay Area upper crust, I don't know how he reaches the conclusion that $100 an hour is "not even market rate f…

$100 per hour for an 75% loaded contractor is $53 assuming a 1.5x overhead for payroll tax, healthcare, office, etc.

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

#259

Post by pwaai »

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 1: Be popular/famous enough that people know your name.

This is what irks me about articles like this being posted on HN and indie hackers--You too can have a six digit MRR if you've spent the past X years building a community or mailing list around the topic...which is not a bad advice but not many people are able to do this.

So while not without merit and valuable bits, I feel like you've highlighted a very harsh reality that people like to forget....

This is the new entrepreneur porn disguised as content.

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

#260

Post by chris11 »

MrFoof wrote: post #222
putnam wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you a consultant?

I actually am, and I'm a Hacker News nobody that is 100% solo, including all of my sales. I started in mid-2012 after being fed up with every employer out there, but was well aware that I was one of the best people someone could hire for things that are necessary, but not glamorous -- database performance tuning, data warehousing, ETL process development, and cleaning up disasters. Yet getting market rate for salary…

> In 5 1/2 years I've averaged 42 hours of billing a year

Should that be month instead of year?

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