Ask HN: Moving from a product org to a consulting org: What should I know? • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by pmkiwi » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 4:13 AM UTC

xondono wrote: post #35

My take from experience and from what I've seen with friends: - Consulting is great for people with good people skills, but it can turn into hell if you haven't them. - It's very easy for experienced workers in some shops to take advantage of the "new meat", and basically shove you their work. Be on the look for that situation. If it happens run as fast as you can. - Find out who are the top performers, get as close…

Pretty much my experience as well. I suffered quite a lot from "Be ready to ship crappy products" when the projects were short (it happened quite a lot when I was doing AWS consulting).

I will also add that companies using consultants can be divided in two distinct groups:

1) The companies who know where they are doing and they are using consultants as extra hands/expertise. 2) The companies who expects consultants to (magically) fix their deep problems just because "we pay".

I have worked for both and 1) is definitely more enjoyable (as you can imagne!).

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

#72

Post by GianFabien » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 7:06 AM UTC

I have worked for several consulting firms, ranging from global ones to 10 person ones. In my experience there is a lot of repetition but across a diverse range of industries. So if you are only interested in the technology, then it might get boring. Having said that, I did learn new technologies by being willing to take on jobs involving tech that I was unfamiliar with.

Talking to friends working for other consulting firms, reveals that some firms focus on a narrow niche of technologies and don't touch anything outside of that. Others seem to take on clients only in a limited range of industries.

Your best bet is to research the company and ask questions in the interview. Only then will you be able to ascertain whether it is a good fit for your career expectations.

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

#73

Post by GianFabien » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 7:14 AM UTC

camjohnson26 wrote: post #65

szopa wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was the CTO of an R&D consulting company in Poland, and parent is mostly spot on. I disagree, however, about the way they describe in-house management vs giving engineers to the customer. The only thing of real value in a software agency is the team. If your programmers get pissed off and move to another company, you are going to have to spend money to hire and onboard someone, and leave money on the table (you nee…

While this makes sense in theory in my experience these companies end up relying on new grads for a lot of the work until they get wise and leave or burn out. For some reason they treat attrition as a cost of doing business, even though a lot of knowledge leaves when people do.

I have observed that some global consultancies throw lots of low performing grads at projects and bill like crazy. Typically the client pays around 8-12x the employees' rate. I am not exaggerating. I have been involved in the negotiations and bidding process.

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

#74

Post by austincheney » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 11:08 AM UTC

Product companies move slowly despite what they believe and all their agile ceremony. Consulting firms move quickly. The reason for the distance is cost center. At a product company a developer is always a fixed expense and never a driver of increasing revenue, such as sales and marketing. In a consulting company a developer is billing a client for their time and that billing determines the financial effectiveness of the developer to the business even though the developer doesn’t determine the relationship or set its terms.