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Ask HN: Resources/Steps for Becoming a Consultant?

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Re: Ask HN: Resources/Steps for Becoming a Consultant?

#81

Post by tptacek »

pault wrote: post #48
hardwaresofton wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read every single article on daedtech.com related to software consulting (and maybe some that aren't) -- the amount of insight contained inside those articles for free is insane. 99% of the people who think they are doing consulting (me included) are not doing consulting. If you're getting paid to write software, you're not a consultant, you're a freelancer/service provider. Let those words shake you then read all th…

Even in this thread I see a lot of people conflating consulting with working as a highly paid contractor. I accidentally fell into contracting two years ago when the company I was working for closed unexpectedly. I doubled my yearly income, but I'm still an employee in practice.

Are you perhaps thinking about the distinction between project-based work and staff aug? Staff-aug consulting does essentially make you an effective "employee", just paid differently and with a different level of commitment.

Re: Ask HN: Resources/Steps for Becoming a Consultant?

#82

Post by abledon »

edw519 wrote: post #37

Sorry to say, it looks like you're approaching this backwards. You shouldn't be looking for resources, steps, advice, pitfalls, experiences, or anything else. You should be looking for a customer whose hair is on fire. Then, and only then, should you be looking for whatever it takes to build them a fire extinguisher. Anything else is a waste of time.

so you go out searching for work and not necessarily know you can 'solve' or 'build' the solution beforehand? seems kinda risky

Re: Ask HN: Resources/Steps for Becoming a Consultant?

#83

Post by tptacek »

scarface74 wrote: post #14

Daedtech has an excellent article https://daedtech.com/software-consulting/ If you live in a major metropolitan area almost anywhere in the US, and your skillset is in tune with the market, you should be able to find some W2 or 1099 contract quite easily through local recruiters. Yeah they will take their cut, but you still should be able to negotiate close to market value. You will definitely get paid more than usin…

The technical term for the arrangement you're talking about is subcontracting. Subcontracting is not much better than using contracting sites; you can make it work as backfill with partners you trust, but be careful not to fill your schedule with it.

Re: Ask HN: Resources/Steps for Becoming a Consultant?

#84

Post by akulbe »

sitkack wrote: post #75

You need two things 1) an accountant and 2) customers. Lots of people get thrust into consulting because they are given a customer. Technical skill is required but not sufficient. Even average is ok. What matters is all the stuff around the technology. Most of it being diligence, follow through, following up and being predictable and consistent. You have those and you can write your ticket.

I'd add to that, as to some it's not always obvious… in order to get customers, you need to be able to SELL.

I'd argue sales is more important than the rest of what you need to do to get a successful consulting practice going.

It's common to focus on the technical skills above all else. That's a fatal mistake.

I speak from painful experience on this one.

Re: Ask HN: Resources/Steps for Becoming a Consultant?

#85

Post by pault »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #61
pault wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in this thread I see a lot of people conflating consulting with working as a highly paid contractor. I accidentally fell into contracting two years ago when the company I was working for closed unexpectedly. I doubled my yearly income, but I'm still an employee in practice. I will say though, if you can make the leap to contracting with large companies, the pay is insane. I'm currently making about $60k/year ove…

I'm really curious about this -- I actually left Austin to move abroad a while ago, and do contracting (which I erroneously call consulting, though I do also consult). While I plan to return to the US I never considered returning and continuing contracting. Based on what you're saying I'd expect that yearly base salary to be over 200k (based on what it was like in Austin years ago), would you mind sharing how you've…

Yes, around $220k this year. I got lucky through a personal referral to a staffing agency, found out how much another team member was making, and asked for that amount. I'm working with a local recruiter who sources talent for some of the bigger companies operating here. My email address is in my profile if you want to connect.

Re: Ask HN: Resources/Steps for Becoming a Consultant?

#86

Post by kasey_junk »

tptacek wrote: post #78
pault wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in this thread I see a lot of people conflating consulting with working as a highly paid contractor. I accidentally fell into contracting two years ago when the company I was working for closed unexpectedly. I doubled my yearly income, but I'm still an employee in practice. I will say though, if you can make the leap to contracting with large companies, the pay is insane. I'm currently making about $60k/year ove…

The distinction between "consulting" and "freelancing" and "contracting" is pretty much fictitious; it's like the consulting version of the "is it really a startup?" game.

Clearly staff augmentation has different tasks than expert consulting. How do you signal which you want/do?

Re: Ask HN: Resources/Steps for Becoming a Consultant?

#87

Post by mdn0420 »

Evan_Hellmuth wrote: post #65

I did this less than a year ago. Two things I wish I had done off the bat: 1) Choose a specific skillset that you want to use and only accept jobs in that skillset. For me that should have been React/Node projects (even this is too general, but much better than “web programmer”). People hire consultants for instant productivity, and the type of person that has so little experience working with technologists that they…

#1 is something I've been pondering as well. I've been developing games on Unity for quite some time but questioning if I'd be better off retooling into a tech stack that is higher demand?

Re: Ask HN: Resources/Steps for Becoming a Consultant?

#88

Post by tptacek »

kasey_junk wrote: post #86
tptacek wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The distinction between "consulting" and "freelancing" and "contracting" is pretty much fictitious; it's like the consulting version of the "is it really a startup?" game.

Clearly staff augmentation has different tasks than expert consulting. How do you signal which you want/do?

Consultancies take staff-aug projects (and also sometimes turn them down). It's part of the dealflow.

The easiest way to signal that you don't want a staff-aug gig is to say "no" when you're offered a staff-aug gig. Advanced: counterpropose with a project proposal.

People overthink this stuff, I think.

The one important thing to know is that it's important to be "available"; even if you're not going to pick up the staff-aug gigs, it's probably best to entertain them (and, even more advanced: refer them out to other people), because you can only say "no" 1-2 times before people will stop asking you for anything.

I don't believe "expert consulting", as apart from "freelancing" or "contracting", is a real thing in our industry.

Re: Ask HN: Resources/Steps for Becoming a Consultant?

#89

Post by szaroubi »

sitkack wrote: post #75

You need two things 1) an accountant and 2) customers. Lots of people get thrust into consulting because they are given a customer. Technical skill is required but not sufficient. Even average is ok. What matters is all the stuff around the technology. Most of it being diligence, follow through, following up and being predictable and consistent. You have those and you can write your ticket.

I would add to this the following points: - being 5 minutes ahead of your customer in terms of what is hot and useful (or: the second part is super important) - constantly ensure that your deliver value to your client ( if they negotiate you on price, bring it back to the value your deliver ) - good communication skills (the capacity to explain your thoughts in plain , concise language) - good situational awareness (understand your clients problems and solve for that (not the tech that you want to test) - get your ego out of the way, if your client or someone on their team doesn't accept your solution, raise ) argument once or twice, then stop. Your client understands his/her context better than you. If your solution is not retained, it is not a reflection of how good you are. - steernaway from internal politics. - build good personal relationships with people (your client, their employees, other providers / consultants) this will help you build your network and get more work.

Hope that helps.

Personally I had great projects and others were lawyers were involved. But all in all, switching projects every other month, meeting new people , playing with different architectures ... It keeps me sharp and super happy.

Again hope that helps.

Re: Ask HN: Resources/Steps for Becoming a Consultant?

#90

Post by eldavido »

This whole thread is misguided.

You're starting from a position of what do I have (software dev skill) and trying to backfit a need onto it.

The right mentality is to think hard about your buyer: What are you selling, why would someone buy it, and how would they find you? Ideally it should be some kind of business need, like "I want to stop using Expedia at my hotel and transition to get more direct bookings" or "I need a very high-value, complex system migrated from one thing to another". The more risk/difficulty/P&L impact/fewer people can do it, the more you can charge.

What you don't want to do is come in and just be a coder. Those are a dime a dozen. Even though developer skill varies dramatically, there's no way to really bill for that. Most business buyers are going to see "C# developer" and want to pay the lowest rate they can. It is outrageous how little the pay difference (even at software companies) is between high and low performers. It's like 2x, it should probably be like, 10x (no company outside finance would ever tolerate this kind of pay difference). You will never win charging 2x when the other guy is charging 1x for what, on paper, looks like the same skill (a relationship/reputation can offset this partially).

Don't become a "consultant" unless you want to do sales and marketing full-time, as that is the end-state of a successful consulting career. If that isn't your cup of tea, either find a better dev job (if you want to keep coding professionally) or find a company like 10x who will place you with good clients and do the grunt work for you of selling, where you can simply come in and provide value as a high-skilled technical person (which has its benefits, including decent pay, work from anywhere, put up with less of the posturing/BS of typical office life).

Source: did this. Wasted a lot of time doing bottom-of-the-barrel dev work before I realized probably 95% of the software that gets written in the world is boring, not particularly well paid, and has no real career trajectory in front of it.

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