I consider Google a rare breed. Make no mistake, I absolutely love companies where software engineering is understood by the exco as first (and only) class citizen.
The real world is a matter of location and experience I guess. Silicon valley would not be my example of the real world. My experience is more companies see consultants as not another developer. They already have their architects and engineers to do just that. People typing code as their first commitment, stating they will commit code to archive in their core statement of work, do not scale. I'd rather have a consultant using his experience to teach my 100 developers what to make and commit to the archive. Have his experience, mind and vision executed by 100 people. That scales. That is worth the 5 (6,7) figures I pay him. If he can only work as hard as at most 2, or heck 5 of my developers I'd rather hire that at a fraction of the price.
Note that this thread was on consultants that ask 5 figures a week. I took that as upper half end of the 5 figures. Entry level consultants coming at 85-150€ an hour (in EU) are a different story. They would be seen as an architect with experience outside the company and as of such would most likely code and design like a regular architect.
Not all are clueless I guess. Just people from all over the world and from all sorts of companies.
P.s. Only have experience with enterprise consultancy. After writing I realize this may be entirely different from consultancy in/for a small sized firm.