Earlier quoted context omitted.
In a similar boat - I have a couple of customers that generate repeated business more or less regularly, but have no idea how to generate more. My niche is very profitable but very small and not really based around where I live. I am also really lazy... I'm tempted to give a spin to Linkedin premium features, or just exit the niche and sell myself as a regular coder.
what's that niche?
Ask HN: Resources/Steps for Becoming a Consultant?
101–110 of 116 posts
Re: Ask HN: Resources/Steps for Becoming a Consultant?
#102I regularly see the salaries in FAANG companies; a senior specialist can make 400k a year there. Does it make sense to be a freelancer in the US with all hustle attached, if you can just put on "golden handcuffs", and make similar or more money at a large corp?
Re: Ask HN: Resources/Steps for Becoming a Consultant?
#103You 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 (…
Your comment reminds me of something else you touched on, make everyone around you look good to great all the time. Never call anyone out and give tactical advice to all levels. If someone is really into Redis, tell them about some new cool extension module. If someone likes Kafka, show them some new commit that does a cool thing. Go out and seek these things in technologies the customer uses. They think ur on the ball, and they are given something that they can pass on and look even better.
Re: Ask HN: Resources/Steps for Becoming a Consultant?
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would be interesting to know more about your personal circumstances and how you set yourself up for success here. I feel like we need to start planning long before we get burnt out. For many people it's hard to avoid things like mortgages, or other situations which impose a financial burden of some sort. I personally think 10 months off for me would be healthy right now in a lot of ways. It would be survivable fin…
Sure, I was living with my girlfriend, got laid off from a startup but was burnt out a good 6 months before. Financial struggles of that company just made it worse. My previous job had been pretty demoralizing too. I needed a change. 28 yrs old, I got on a plane to Spain with my girlfriend who rented her house out to cover her mortgage. She didn't enjoy it and needed to work to survive financially as I couldn't suppo…
It's much cheaper to go somewhere like Asia..and the weather is really nice too.
7 years ago, I was burnt out from my job and wanted a change, so I quit and picked up everything and moved to Asia with my girlfriend (now wife).
Luckily, I had some savings, so I didn't have to work for a month or two. But, I didn't want to eat through it all, so I got a contracting development job and I stayed there for a year and a half.
My rent for a really nice apartment in a great part of town was around $200 USD/month. Food was insanely cheap and good.
It's easy to get lost in that lifestyle though. It's fun, but it's difficult to save money or build a career. There are many distractions and almost all the other expats that I met were only interested in drinking/partying.
I was glad to finally come home, but happy I had the experience.
Re: Ask HN: Resources/Steps for Becoming a Consultant?
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 st…
Can you please elaborate on "I don't believe "expert consulting", as apart from "freelancing" or "contracting", is a real thing in our industry."?
Many in this topic wrote about being a real consultant rather then a contractor in software industry. By that they mean, as I see, providing advice, recommendation to clients.
I know you are very experienced in this area, so you mean one cannot be a pure consultant in software?
Re: Ask HN: Resources/Steps for Becoming a Consultant?
#106Daedtech 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…
Excellent tips. Bookmarking your blog for future reading.
Re: Ask HN: Resources/Steps for Becoming a Consultant?
#107Some great tips shared in this thread.
I'd also suggest reading up and following Jonathan Stark and his ditching hourly mantra.
Re: Ask HN: Resources/Steps for Becoming a Consultant?
#108Hi. That's quite a topic! I've been consulting as my primary source of income going on 13 years consecutively (and consulting / freelancing for far longer than that).
I occasionally post about my experiences. Perhaps you'll find something useful in my archives: https://joshrichards.net/tag/self-employment/
Re: Ask HN: Resources/Steps for Becoming a Consultant?
#109It's all about creating value for your customer. "Don't give me some trend analysis, give me actionable insight ". Recommend watching this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2SdmYuMMIg I earn $180000/year, recently raised my rate to $280/h and working 40h/weeks. Feel I create way more value for my customers than my cost, so I started several small projects in parallell the last months to move away from consulting. Mos…
Hey! It sounds like both your consulting and budding start-up are very interesting. I'm looking to get into consulting. Python and SQL and my specialties.
If you want to cut back on your consulting perhaps I can try to take some of the work off of you. I could work under you at half your price $140/h, so you could spend more time on your start-up and still be making money from your consulting and keep your clients. It makes sense for me as it would be a quick way for me to get into consulting and it seems like you already have the workflow, etc down.
Or perhaps you would want to work with someone on your startup. I have had a few successful start-ups over the years.
You can check my LinkedIn and my email is in my HN profile. Get in touch if you are interested!
Re: Ask HN: Resources/Steps for Becoming a Consultant?
#110I have been working as a consultant/contractor since May last year. I found my first jobs on UpWork, where Robotics is quite niche field. Being a niche field there are not many jobs available (I'd estimate there are 2-3 a month that fit my skill set) but also there are not so many freelancers doing Robotics. Starting on any freelancers platform you need to start building reputation, which can mean you will need to se…
It's crazy what kind of services you can find on upwork
For instance, food scientists