Ask HN: Moving from a product org to a consulting org: What should I know?

One challenge in particular is that I have next to zero inertia in my thinking...I will stay with an idea exactly as long as I think it's the best compromise of factors, but if I find a better idea I pivot like a light cycle in Tron. In the consulting world I always have to explain my thinking anyway so this was generally fine. In the product world I'm finding that people in my sphere build mental models of my thinking (or expect me to toe the line) and get surprised in not-great ways when that's not the case. For OP the advice might be that most people won't (likely) have a clue who you are or how you think, and the assumptions and patterns you've developed in a product org might be wildly different than the status quo from place to place. I would say overcommunicate and apply 'when in Rome, do as the Romans do' unless you see a compelling and explainable reason not to.

A related issue is that I will tend to argue multiple positions simultaneously. This might be specifically from the infosec part but I see everything as a tradeoff and unless I 'try on' a position I can't really fully appreciate the nuance. In consulting this worked because it let me test counterarguments and try to land on a well-considered place. In the product role this just tends to confuse people I think, especially if the arguments go against the party line. I don't know if there's anything valuable to extract here for OP.

I also struggle a bit with low 'ownership stamina'. Keep in mind that my average engagement length as a consultant was 2-3 weeks, but I'm great for MVPs and that's about the extent of it. For OP this really depends on your role...if you're staff aug on year contracts there's probably nothing for you to learn from this. If you're short term I think the lesson is that any tech debt or 'I can deal with that later' burden that you are assuming from a decision isn't actually going to be yours to bear. For OP, if applicable, I think the lesson here is to realize that all burdens are going to your customer so prioritize documentation, minimizing loose ends and lowering tech debt/operational costs.

Good luck! It's probably going to be stressful at first but you're going to meet a lot of cool people and neat problems along the way. If you used LinkedIn, get ready to blow that puppy up!

- The type of work you do is largely the same across all orgs - unless you're a specialist in some advanced field nobody else can do or you can convince someone in power that you know how to do the occasional cool project

- Both can have long useless meetings. Product orgs' meetings will be crap about how the company is awesome and will make zillions or crap about process-but-not-process-cause-we're-agile; consulting orgs' meetings will be all about having 5 muted engineers on reddit while the client comes up with 3 new requirements per minute

- Product orgs can get by doing way less work, if people lazying around and doing the bare minimum or nothing at all upset you, avoid product focused orgs

- I think you can divide consulting orgs roughly in two groups:

   - Doing client work with in-house project management: a nightmare of people trying to squeeze more work out of you until you die

   - Giving engineers to organisations: largely like working in a product org

 - Consulting orgs have the advantage of rotating clients more often, which means you'll have to deal with horrible people for a shorter amount of time (unless the horrible people are inside your consulting org). In product orgs you'll have to deal with them until they leave for somewhere else

 - Consulting on your own is definitely more work & more money but, more importantly, reduces the risk of running into horrible people

You will not get time to analyse technical details deeply enough before presenting to clients. Focus on code quality is seldom lesser. Be prepared for a lot more talking than a product org. Be prepared for a lot more work and constant pressure of timelines.

The agency landscape is pretty broad. Some shops are very technical, some are design lead. Some can dump an army of bodies on a project and some deploy lean tiger teams. My experience was doing a lot of strategic engagements. I got to do architecture and real planning and quality control. Sometimes it was fire and forget popup projects. Rarely if ever did we own any support role which was pretty great. Got to flip between web, mobile and even experiential work. Very frequently thrown into stuff with no training which is always exciting/terrifying depending on your personality.