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To become a software consultant, avoid letting clients pay you for code (2017)

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Re: To become a software consultant, avoid letting clients pay you for code (2017)

#41

Post by abainbridge »

warent wrote: post #33
PeterStuer wrote: post #20

Having seen all type of consultants over the year: - The strategic consultant you describe manages to have a higher tariff, but the sales cycle is long and the downtime between gigs significant - the 'software consultant' has an on average lower tariff (depending on the specialization), but little downtime and faster sales. Pick your poison and do what you feel most comfortable with.

When you say tariff do you mean price?

I think this is a British-ism. I'm British. The parent's post used tariff in a way I found normal. Google tells me:

  tariff - noun:

  BRITISH
  a list of the fixed charges made by a business, especially for use of gas, electricity, or a mobile phone.

Re: To become a software consultant, avoid letting clients pay you for code (2017)

#42

Post by weliketocode »

nkohari wrote: post #7
geekuillaume wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm working on a new consultant biz, oriented toward "freelance CTO" for early-stage startups. It's general purpose but provide a non-technical client a better view of the technical aspects of their product. I'm convinced it has a lot of value for this kind of clients.

I tried this a bit myself. You are right that you can provide tremendous value, but early-stage startups either don't have, or aren't willing to spend, the money that you deserve for the value you'd provide. Maybe there's a niche you can target that I was unaware of. Hopefully you have more success!

I'm not so sure about the lack of funding.

A number of startups really start having this issue once they start seeing some traction.

Maybe they're actively looking for new or additional senior technical leadership or just scaling the team.

Either way the opportunity is certainly there for companies to hire temporary technical leadership.

Re: To become a software consultant, avoid letting clients pay you for code (2017)

#44

Post by gk1 »

gabriel34 wrote: post #34

All is good and well until 5 years down the road you don't have experience implementing the newnosql.js stuff that is all the rage. You try to conform it to what you already know and end up with a myopic view of the solution. Since you are already respected people listen to you when defining architectures. Coders think you are a moron, impostor syndrome sets in. The doctors prescribe the new and improved treatment, b…

Do you think the VPs and CTOs know how to implement newnosql.js? The biggest challenges involve more that to get solved.

Re: To become a software consultant, avoid letting clients pay you for code (2017)

#45

Post by hyperpape »

stevenl42 wrote: post #12

And that ladies and gentlemen is exactly how American IT became taken over by Indian outsourcing companies and the quasi ones like Deloitte , Accenture. American exceptionalism and a good education system might make you a great consultant but who turns that spec to code and does the grunt work ? Surely you aren't hiring American college grads because they have already been told this work is boring and shitty and they…

I don't think that's true. Both paths he's describing are relatively lucrative. There are plenty of native born developers getting solid pay to do the less prestigious work of implementing specs.

It's just moving up the "value chain" is a lot more lucrative. The advice here applies to ambitious people who want to get paid even more.

Re: To become a software consultant, avoid letting clients pay you for code (2017)

#46

Post by goodpoint »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #28
rumok wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm genuinely curious, why do you believe scrum to be "stupid and horrible"?

Many years of experience with it across orgs of various sizes and ages. One-size-fits-all software management and metrics about planning and velocity are things that exist to give middle management surface area to tell whatever political blame/credit stories they want, and have not got shit to do with productivity, adjusting to change, or delivering anything. And don’t even get me started on why Agile is emphatically…

I've been in many companies including famous ones and I never seen scrum or agile deliver any value. It's just optics.

Re: To become a software consultant, avoid letting clients pay you for code (2017)

#47

Post by reubenswartz »

Another way of looking at this is to focus on the what the client is buying, rather than what you are selling. We all lives in our own worlds, so by default we tend to think the client is buying what we are selling. If you can switch it around, then you can sell (and deliver) what they are buying.

Re: To become a software consultant, avoid letting clients pay you for code (2017)

#48

Post by acct1771 »

acconrad wrote: post #38

I've only been at it a year but I find this to be nearly impossible. 95% of my income this past year was writing software. Whenever someone saw me as a "software consultant" they thought "well why don't we pay him to implement it too?" But I also made more than double what I made when I was full-time. I really would like to know how to not immediately be slotted as someone who is just a coding mercenary.

Don't take the work, or subcontract it.

Re: To become a software consultant, avoid letting clients pay you for code (2017)

#49

Post by Asooka »

jasode wrote: post #15

>Don’t ever let would-be consulting clients pay you for code that you write. A similar piece of advice is in the often-submitted article by Patrick McKenzie.[1] The common idea is that instead of being just a "code monkey", you position yourself higher up the value hierarchy to be more of a "solutions provider". In my observations of programmers that successfully sell consulting vs earning a W-2 salary, both articles…

> If you're just a generalist programmer in (e.g. C++/Java/Python), it will be difficult to sell that as "consulting" to companies

Difficult, but not impossible. You can sell coding training, basically do targeted lectures on areas where you see a company's coders struggling. The problem with this is that the improvement is long-term and practically invisible at the management level.

Re: To become a software consultant, avoid letting clients pay you for code (2017)

#50

Post by noxToken »

pwaivers wrote: post #43

This article suffers from too many analogies. After the long DaVinci analogy, he goes into a medicine analogy. Please just say your point clear and up front. I don't think analogies are necessary to explain each point.

Agreed. I think I understand what he was getting at, but when I read the analogies, I start to second guess whether I really understand the message.
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