Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How I went from programming to consulting (2012)

training.kalzumeus.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 495 posts

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

#301

Post by gist »

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 have found that the 'charge by value not by time' is true based on my use of it for a longer period of time than I want to mention (for fear of giving away my age). I actually discovered this when in my first business which I started right out of college (before the Internet for sure).

I think one of the problems with being a young person starting out now is that there is so much info out there that you can read (or watch) that you perhaps don't do as much "doing" as we did in the past. As well as learning and figuring out on your own. By thinking and reading the signals and making mistakes.

In the end I think the issue is reading does not make you clever and we used to call this 'book knowledge' back when I was growing up.

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

#302

Post by epicide »

kbuchanan wrote: post #283
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…

Loved this. It raised a question, though: how do your clients hold you accountable to your rates? How do you demonstrate $10K in a week was worth their while?

I think that's kind of the magic of it all: what is the value of having your critical systems work?

The only way to determine a price on something like that is usually by comparing it to someone else. Then, you have the protection from people lowballing since most take "you get what you pay for" to heart.

They wouldn't agree to the price if it wasn't worth it to them, so as long as you achieve what you promised, then you are worth it.

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

#303

Post by rev_bird »

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…

Thanks for sharing your experiences, this is really interesting. It seems like you had a pretty unpleasant experience as a traditional employee, which I can appreciate. I'm curious about this part:

>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 as a senior dev was like pulling teeth. At the time I was gritting my teeth to collect a paycheck.

The skills that you polished -- to the point of being "one of the best people someone could hire" -- seem heavily reliant on experiential learning. For example, I can't see how someone could get to be really good at "cleaning up disasters" without cleaning up a lot of disasters first. Would you say your experience as a (chronically underpaid) senior dev is what prepared you to be able to go out and perform the work that companies value so highly? Is the trick for us less-senior folks just to... keep working?

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

#304

Post by gist »

blhack wrote: post #142

A question that has bugged me about consulting: Why aren't there (afaik) consulting agents in the same way comedians/actors/musicians have agents? Find me a gig, negotiate the payment, accept the payment, and pay me. Also interface with the client for me. Ultimately the agent works for me doing all of the work I'm bad at. Does this exist? How do I hire somebody to do this sort of thing for me?

> in the same way comedians/actors/musicians have agents?

Many reasons for this. One reason though is simple logistics in terms of how the world has changed since that system was in place. And for what reasons.

In the 'olden' days there was no internet. So if you were a performer you needed an agent for one thing you probably had little business or negotiation skills and no source of information to figure it out (nor the knack or desire). And also there was no easy way for 'customers' to get in contact with you. (Now it's trivial to go direct to a developer by email).

Also with performing the product is pretty much always the same. If you are going to book a comedian for a certain night at a certain rate you know the product. With programming it's all over the map in terms of length and deliverables.

Above just a few reasons.

That said it's not a bad idea not to mention it is almost certainly being done but maybe not on a major known scale.

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

#305

Post by tshanmu »

rev_bird wrote: post #298
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…

I recognize your username from various threads, but I'm unfamiliar with your work. What is it that you consult on? And, if you don't mind me asking, how did you get "demonstrably technically competent" in it? Were you an employee in whatever field it was, and then struck out on your own? I'm fascinated by consulting but have a hard time envisioning what these consultants do that employees don't, at least in the more…

I suspect he is an infosec consultant who started off with pen testing...

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

#306

Post by epicide »

putnam wrote: post #273
pjmlp wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bu…

What's preventing a software developer from doing enterprise software consulting?

Pretty much nothing except what tools/companies they're working with.

You're a software consultant working with an enterprise company? Congrats, you're an enterprise software consultant.

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

#307

Post by patio11 »

andrethegiant wrote: post #300
patio11 wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My modal engagement was with a SaaS company with $20 million a year sales, a few dozen employees, and 1~3 very strapped people wearing the marketing hat. “How much email do you send?” “We have a newsletter.” “What else?” “Welcome to free trial email. “What else?” “Nothing.” I write proposal. You should: 1) Have a pre-sales drip campaign positioned as a “free course about X delivered over email” w/ 8 emails arriving o…

That's a good example of a marketing consultant, but what about an engineering consultant? Would talking tech stack pros/cons pull in a similar rate?

It is weird how I get persistently drummed out of engineering because when I write cron jobs, SQL queries, and React dashboards I make special effort to connect them to business outcomes.

Businesses, to a first approximation, don’t care about their tech stack except to the extent that it drives business outcomes. Can you articulate those pros/cons in a way a business cares about? Can you impact your deliverables to reduced costs or (much better) increased revenue? Then you, too, can look forward to a bright future where HN tells you you’re not really an engineer anymore because your rates are too high.

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

#308

Post by mgkimsal »

BeetleB wrote: post #151
mgkimsal wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the OP, but my own experience is that it's a more uncommon skill than I first thought. I know plenty of skilled developers, but only a handful have a combination of business savvy and enough social skills and graces to be able to talk to a variety of people in business settings without ... hosing it up somehow. I'm not at all saying all 'consultants' are great at this either - 'consultants' work for 'big 5' firms…

>I know plenty of skilled developers, but only a handful have a combination of business savvy and enough social skills and graces to be able to talk to a variety of people in business settings without ... hosing it up somehow. Of course most are like that: How much effort did they put in to become skilled developers, and how much on the business savvy? I'm guessing years on the former, and perhaps hours on the latter…

> It's not that people can't develop those skills. It's that few want to, or realize that they have to

I sort of agree, but ... we all know the people who try to get in to programming/development, but just never get it. They can try, and maybe even land a jr role some place, but it never really clicks, regardless of how long they work at it. I think the non-tech skills are like that in some measure as well.

Also, while I'm probably switching examples a bit, I'm not sure how much experience you need practicing skills like showing up on time, or answering emails (and without being rude or condescending). There may be people who need to "practice" not insulting clients' employees in emails to the same client, but I'm not sure how much practice one should need to have basic empathic ability. If you don't have some of that, how many years do you need "practicing" those skills?

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

#309

Post by z3t4 »

The money someone is willing to pay you, is roughly what it would cost to get the job done by someone else. If you have a good relationship of always on time, etc, that's worth some extra, but they wont pay you $1000 if they know someone else will do it for $100. But if everyone charges $1000 and you only charge $100 they will think there's a catch, even if you do a much better job. So the real trick is to find a market niche that people pay a lot for. Then go do that, and charge market prices. When reading success stories, like in Indie Hackers, the best info is how much they pay for different services. If you see something that is outrageous expensive, that you could do for 100 times less, then that is probably a good market for you. For example $500 for a single balloon ...

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

#310

Post by drdeadringer »

raldu wrote: post #172
dleslie wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having been in a position where a consultant was foisted upon me by management, at several different companies, near as I can tell they are paid huge sums to restate what the team already knows and has been saying needs to be done. Only they provide it with an approach and language which management can understand.

In the case you mentioned, that's basically "credibility." Although a lame story, Let's say you are responsible for initiating and managing a new software project in your company with complex bureaucracy and management. You have found that it is highly feasible to work with Agile methodology instead of Waterfall. But Waterfall has been how the things had always been done, yet you know that the team is ready for Agile…

How do employees gain credibility that management and "The Board" will listen to, or is this question a dream?
Post reply on HN