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

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

#371

Post by twobyfour » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 9:58 PM UTC

jghn wrote: post #362

twobyfour wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on how high up the ladder the management is you're talking to. Your line manager may be interested in a technical issue / improvement and understand its value without further explanation -- for instance, we're using a brute force algorithm that takes exponential time to foo the bar in the Baz module. It's got test coverage and the problem has a known logarithmic solution, so we could rewrite that in a week to…

Exactly. The other piece I've seen is being able to handle "I want Foo by X". It's easy to take on the engineer mindset and say "Sorry, that's not possible. The whizbangs alone would take more than that time!", but what do you do when they simply repeat "I want Foo by X"?. Picture the various Star Trek series where the engineer would say it'd take 5 hours to fix something and the captain retorts "you have 2". It's re…

I agree - the why skill is crucial and difficult. I won't claim to be any good at it (it's actually one of the things my current manager excels at intuiting and I want to learn from him).

One tactic I can suggest (if your manager isn't a totally unreasonable cartoon tyrant) is to simply be explicit about it and ask "can you explain more about why you need Foo?" and then "what's driving the deadline of X?" Understanding the business case is generally necessary - though not always sufficient - for coming up with an alternative solution.

I suspect that part of the gap between people who are and are not good at this is how well apprised they are of the general conditions, initiatives in other departments/teams, and short-term strategic goals of the company.

Some of that is on the person who may or may not put in the effort to remain informed; and some of that is on the company's management that may do a good or a poor job of communicating those things proactively between departments/teams and from senior management down to junior management and line workers.

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

#372

Post by emodendroket » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 9:59 PM UTC

chrishacken wrote: post #364

perl4ever wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't teach any arbitrary thing (nor temperament) to any arbitrary person. For a specific example, consider: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teichm%C3%BCller_space I can say that not only would I never get anywhere with math at that level, but some of the related mathematical pages on Wikipedia surpass my ability to even tell if they are real or the work of cranks. For any random person, there are things they can't…

Given enough time and training, anyone who puts their all into learning it, is capable of understanding that. It may take them 20 years to learn math from the ground up, but they can do it. Saying someone can't do something is bullshit. That's sheep mentality.

Many people do put their lives into things without ever becoming world-class talents.

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

#373

Post by emodendroket » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 10:00 PM UTC

chrishacken wrote: post #358

yequalsx wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say anything about being an introvert or any other personality type. I don't know patio11 or anyone else who commands high consulting fees. But clearly it is more than just knowledge that gets patio11 high fees. There is personality too. If patio11 were a raging asshole then his employability would decrease. I've met Marines that were assholes so I'm guessing that 'join the Marine Corps' isn't as great advic…

You're completely missing the point. Being an asshole is a choice. My point is that anyone can be a consultant that puts their all into it. Being an asshole isn't in your DNA. A Drill Instructor being a dickhead is also a choice. It doesn't make him any less able to be a leader. My point was, joining the Marine Corps turns weak individuals into respectable men that can command dignity and respect into people. What th…

Even if we generously assume this is the case we still have the problem that the demand is limited.

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

#374

Post by emodendroket » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 10:01 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #299

emodendroket wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today's pro sports players are, as a rule, far better than pro sports players in the past. Why isn't this happening already? People only have so much time and attention. Also, many leagues operate with salary caps. You also mentioned movies, but a lack of competent actors is far from the biggest reason there aren't more movies being produced.

Plenty of great movies had a ~20 million dollar budget, but few moves with that kind of a budget had high returns. In terms of movies, studios look a lot like a VC firm with a term sheet from hell. However, plenty of studios died over time and would be making moves today if their past movies where more profitable. Sure, you needs a direct / script / special effects etc, but low budget movies with simple scripts and g…

There are also countless starving aspiring actors so I doubt actor supply is your problem

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

#375

Post by beambot » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 10:01 PM UTC

derefr wrote: post #243

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…

You are industry-famous (or at least have the potential to be), to exactly the degree that "virtually all work comes to me via referrals from past clients." To put it in more technical terms, your work seemingly has a positive viral coefficient , such that when you do work, it gets you exponentially (if only with a very slightly-above-1.0 exponent) more work. If you just exist in that state for long enough, you event…

10k/wk * 52 wks * 70% is $360k/yr. A good number of engineers earn this amount in total comp in W-2 gigs without being famous.

At $5k per wk, you're looking at Junior engineer at AmGooFaceSoft comp levels.

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

#376

Post by emodendroket » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 10:02 PM UTC

walshemj wrote: post #255

s73ver_ wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You should be required to pass a test on what the word "socialist" means before you're allowed to start throwing it around like this.

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

#377

Post by bmitch3020 » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 10:02 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…

The simplest answer I like is:

Employee: Does what the boss says, and works when the boss wants them to work.

Contractor: Does what the client asks them to do, but has the flexibility to do it on their own schedule and according to their own way. In the US, the IRS may want to reclassify you as an employee if you dictate too much of how the work is done.

Consultant: They review what the client is doing and recommends what they should be doing, often performing that work too. The key difference to me is the client accepts they may not be the most knowledgeable in what change they want to make.

To give examples for programmers:

Employee: works on a app in the office from 9-5 adding the features requested.

Contractor: adds requested features to the app.

Consultant: reviews the app and proposes some features to add.

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

#378

Post by edraferi » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 10:09 PM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #307

andrethegiant wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

Some folks get nervous when they have to justify the actual value of their work. Sometimes it’s because doing irrelevant work well or relevant work poorly. More often, I think the business impact connection is just difficult to make. The further you get from pure sales, the harder it is. Regardless, you should always consider answering this question as part of your job.

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

#379

Post by walshemj » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 10:12 PM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #376

walshemj wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You should be required to pass a test on what the word "socialist" means before you're allowed to start throwing it around like this.

I think I have a better idea than you do and your seelioning here BTW the way the NFL etc are set up is very similar state controlled enterprises where run under more socialist regimes British Leyland ICL and so on.

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

#380

Post by osrec » Sat, Dec 23, 2017, 10:16 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…

In my experience, the answer is pretty much anything they can get paid for. For example, we hired a big 4 consulting firm to help us do some software testing. They were not great, but did something (I'm not sure what exactly, but they did produce some reports). We hired the same big 4 firm to come up with an algorithm for reducing financial risk weighted assets, and guess what, some guys from the testing team turned up! I was surprised, as there was no obvious crossover (and the lack of knowledge showed)! Anyway, the partner convinced us they'd do a good job so we played along for a bit. During this exercise, the guys did everything from manually typing in data to making a few spreadsheets to providing some opinion on financial rules and methodology. In the end, it was obvious they'd do almost anything (short of cleaning the toilets) to increase their billable hours. So you right to be confused, as the definition is flaky at best! Also, most consultants add very little value (especially big 4 firms), but every so often you do meet a superstar that's worth every penny.