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The title is way off: he's talking about contractors, not consultants. Short version: Consultants tell the client what to do. Contractors are brought on to do what they're told. The advice in the article is a lot about "do you need someone do to ___ task" or "are you hiring an FTE, and could you do with a contractor instead" and that's contracting, not consulting. It's still valuable advice, but you don't find consul…
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>>Short version: Consultants tell the client what to do. Contractors are brought on to do what they're told. My company does both of these (we're in tech), and I can authoritatively tell you that in the overwhelming majority of engagements this is a distinction without a difference. Over the past five years I haven't had a single client who just had me "tell them what to do". Typically, if we're being brought in, the…
> Over the past five years I haven't had a single client who just had me "tell them what to do" Okay, great: that means you're a contractor. In the past five years, all of my clients have told me, "Tell me what to do." (I'm a consultant.)
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> (large corporations likely have the tech team and contractors to cover almost of their needs) I think some of the same magic involved in finding consulting clients draws parallels to getting large corporations to consider you for contract work?
How are consultants and contractors different?
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> Over the past five years I haven't had a single client who just had me "tell them what to do" Okay, great: that means you're a contractor. In the past five years, all of my clients have told me, "Tell me what to do." (I'm a consultant.)
Just to clarify, do you tell them what needs to be done and do it, or only tell them what to do?
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> Over the past five years I haven't had a single client who just had me "tell them what to do" Okay, great: that means you're a contractor. In the past five years, all of my clients have told me, "Tell me what to do." (I'm a consultant.)
I mean they don’t just have us tell them what to do, and then we go our separate ways after that. Rather, after we tell them what they should do, 99% of the time they respond with “okay that makes sense, can you give us an estimate for how much it would cost to have you guys do that? Because we don’t have the inhouse expertise for it”
Sometimes the answer to that follow up question would/should be: we don't do that, but we can help you evaluate and choose a vendor that does.
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I mean they don’t just have us tell them what to do, and then we go our separate ways after that. Rather, after we tell them what they should do, 99% of the time they respond with “okay that makes sense, can you give us an estimate for how much it would cost to have you guys do that? Because we don’t have the inhouse expertise for it”
This is really going to depend on the area an engagement. Sometimes the answer to that follow up question would/should be: we don't do that, but we can help you evaluate and choose a vendor that does.
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This is really going to depend on the area an engagement. Sometimes the answer to that follow up question would/should be: we don't do that, but we can help you evaluate and choose a vendor that does.
In those situations, we hire the other vendor as a subcontractor, rather than expecting the client to evaluate and establish a relationship with a brand new vendor.
I'm sure what you describe fits your firm's experience, but it isn't indicative of the range of consulting experience.
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Assuming this semantic distinction holds, what are the practical consequences? How do you find "consulting" clients? In fact, what is even the shape of a "consulting" engagement in software development, where I am telling the client what to do, instead of doing what I'm told? Do clients hire consultants to build software without knowing at least something about what software needs to be built? Not trying to put up a…
> Do clients hire consultants to build software without knowing at least something about what software needs to be built? Absolutely - that's what I do in the database realm. One common request is, "How should I re-architect this system to fix the problems we're having today?" Another common one is, "How should we be storing this data to retrieve it more quickly?" This type of work tends to be very senior, very archi…
I started a consulting business doing CRM work on nights and weekend about five years back that’s now running close to $100k/mo. It all started from a former colleague who’d moved onto a new role and asked me to help them set up their CRM. This colleague talked to their friends, I started mentioning it in casual conversation and more referrals started pouring in. This process of working nights and weekends meant I co…
Hmm that's not what I expected. I always thought DevOps consulting would be an easier to break into because your professional network is also who you'd sell to. Because as a developer I know where to find tons of developers, I have a large network of developers. But the only type of software they or their employers want to buy is staff augmentation.