Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

training.kalzumeus.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 270 posts

Re: How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

#201

Post by koevet »

luke_s wrote: post #161
koevet wrote: post #134

I have freelanced for almost 15 years in Europe and a bit of Middle East. I have done pretty well, charging easily 1K Euro a day, less in the last couple of years. Last year, with a colleague and friend, we started our consulting company. The main reason for that being "let's scale!". We contacted a bunch of freelance colleagues we trusted and respected and asked them to join us as hired guns, whenever we needed more…

"Another problem is that the clients are really interested in our specific experience: that means they want to work with me or my partner, not with the company. This bit is hard to crack." You certainly have a lot more business experience than I do - however I've been working recently on preparing a lots of tender responses. I work at a software consulting firm, with about 10 devs and 20 GIS analysts. In our tender r…

We are to small to even think of compete in one of the bids for a large company or the government. The majority of our engagements result from some kind of personal contact my partner or myself have in in our previous life as freelance consultants.

Nevertheless, I see your point. It's just difficult to apply just yet.

We also considered removing the "team" page from our site altogether and just discuss generically about the technologies and clients we have been working with.

I did my homework and went through some marketing and web-marketing books. My catch is that for professional services companies - especially at the early stage, the "who are those guys" question is the first that springs to mind to a prospect and it would be suicidal to remove a reference to the admittedly impressive experience that we have accumulated along the years.

Re: How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

#202

Post by eupharis »

jacques_chester wrote: post #176
tibbon wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, I always keep in mind that at some positions; there are people who want to spend more money if they can. Spending more this year might mean a bigger budget next year. Sometimes power at the company is somewhat stacked by who manages a larger spend each year. And sometimes perception of quality has to do with what you spend. A $60k consultant must be better than a $6k consultant right?

In fact I just a few weeks ago lined up a nice little contract on this exact basis. A customer had a budget allocation that they'd won but had been slow in lining up the work from another department in the same organisation. So now it's come to me, because they "need" to spend the money before the end of the year.

Meh. But doesn't it make you throw up a little inside? Don't get me wrong. I want to make a ridiculous amount of money. But I want to make it by creating a ridiculous amount of value. Not because I figure out how to game lame, inefficient, entrenched business model number 13 in ways X, Y, and Z.

Re: How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

#204

Post by philwelch »

F_J_H wrote: post #106

There seem to be a lot of comments centered on “wow, this sounds great – I wish I could charge more” or “how do I find these high paying contracts”? Here’s one way. It may seem obvious to many, but I think it bears stating. If you are looking for consulting contracts that pay really well, focus on providing a service that helps companies make money rather than save money. In other words, help grow revenues rather tha…

> If you are looking for consulting contracts that pay really well, focus on providing a service that helps companies make money rather than save money. In other words, help grow revenues rather than reduce expenses – people pay much more for that.

But decreasing costs by $1 is mathematically the same as increasing revenue by $1--it increases profitability by $1. Which means any process or mentality that prefers one to another is biased in a bad, purely self-destructive way.

Re: How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

#205

Post by daemon13 »

F_J_H wrote: post #106

There seem to be a lot of comments centered on “wow, this sounds great – I wish I could charge more” or “how do I find these high paying contracts”? Here’s one way. It may seem obvious to many, but I think it bears stating. If you are looking for consulting contracts that pay really well, focus on providing a service that helps companies make money rather than save money. In other words, help grow revenues rather tha…

It depends...

Although focusing on growing revenue is psychologically more comforting, economically saving on expenses is more beneficial.

When you save 1 dollar, your profit increases by 1 dollar.

When you sell 1 more dollar, your profit increases by 0.1-0.9 dollars (depending on your margins).

To put it differently, if a client is a mature company that is growing 3% annually and which gross margin is 10%, probably saving expenses is a better value proposition.

If a client is growing 100% annually and has gross margin of 90%, then, obviously, increasing revenue would be perceived a better value by the client.

Re: How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

#206

Post by jacques_chester »

eupharis wrote: post #202
jacques_chester wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact I just a few weeks ago lined up a nice little contract on this exact basis. A customer had a budget allocation that they'd won but had been slow in lining up the work from another department in the same organisation. So now it's come to me, because they "need" to spend the money before the end of the year.

Meh. But doesn't it make you throw up a little inside? Don't get me wrong. I want to make a ridiculous amount of money. But I want to make it by creating a ridiculous amount of value. Not because I figure out how to game lame, inefficient, entrenched business model number 13 in ways X, Y, and Z.

Sure, it bugs me sometimes.

But I am actually creating value for my clients beyond helping them game a broken budgeting process. I will be saving them potentially thousands of hours of tedious labour and freeing up qualified specialists for much more productive tasks.

The good comes with the bad, sometimes.

Re: How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

#207

Post by raverbashing »

daemon13 wrote: post #205
F_J_H wrote: post #106

There seem to be a lot of comments centered on “wow, this sounds great – I wish I could charge more” or “how do I find these high paying contracts”? Here’s one way. It may seem obvious to many, but I think it bears stating. If you are looking for consulting contracts that pay really well, focus on providing a service that helps companies make money rather than save money. In other words, help grow revenues rather tha…

It depends... Although focusing on growing revenue is psychologically more comforting, economically saving on expenses is more beneficial. When you save 1 dollar, your profit increases by 1 dollar. When you sell 1 more dollar, your profit increases by 0.1-0.9 dollars (depending on your margins). To put it differently, if a client is a mature company that is growing 3% annually and which gross margin is 10%, probably…

Yes, but

Savings are naturally limited, growth is potentially unlimited

Let's say your company sells a product and it costs $10 to make it. You can go and maybe make it cost $9 to make it, but not much less. So you improved their profit by $1 (hopefully)

Instead, if you can make it sell 10x more product (which could be feasible), hence having a better effect than savings.

Re: How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

#208

Post by Sarien »

nandemo wrote: post #172
F_J_H wrote: post #106

There seem to be a lot of comments centered on “wow, this sounds great – I wish I could charge more” or “how do I find these high paying contracts”? Here’s one way. It may seem obvious to many, but I think it bears stating. If you are looking for consulting contracts that pay really well, focus on providing a service that helps companies make money rather than save money. In other words, help grow revenues rather tha…

> There seem to be a lot of comments centered on “wow, this sounds great – I wish I could charge more” or “how do I find these high paying contracts”? Actually, I'm wondering how can I get gigs that pay $100/hour in Japan.

I can't agree more. 8k as a Rails dev? Converted to USD at current rates I make about 4.9k as a C++ dev. I feel like I am doing something seriously wrong. :/

Re: How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

#209

Post by orwens »

philwelch wrote: post #204
F_J_H wrote: post #106

There seem to be a lot of comments centered on “wow, this sounds great – I wish I could charge more” or “how do I find these high paying contracts”? Here’s one way. It may seem obvious to many, but I think it bears stating. If you are looking for consulting contracts that pay really well, focus on providing a service that helps companies make money rather than save money. In other words, help grow revenues rather tha…

> If you are looking for consulting contracts that pay really well, focus on providing a service that helps companies make money rather than save money. In other words, help grow revenues rather than reduce expenses – people pay much more for that. But decreasing costs by $1 is mathematically the same as increasing revenue by $1--it increases profitability by $1. Which means any process or mentality that prefers one…

It depends on how you add $1 to revenue. If you do that by increasing prices, you are right. If you add $1 by extra sales, you have to take the cost of delivering the service/product to the client into account, and there is often a marginal element to that. In other words, your cost base is not totally fixed. So some of that dollar is eaten up in delivering the service

Re: How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting

#210

Post by mdonahoe »

paulsutter wrote: post #139

A friend of mine is a marketing consultant and a real genius. He got paid $x0,000 to come up with the title and general theme for the book "Rich Dad, Poor Dad". But the author has made $x0,000,000 from it, despite the mediocre (at best) quality of the book. Really it was the positioning that made it catch on. My friend's career is full of stories like that, so it's not a one off. If you do work as a consultant, defin…

That author is bankrupt now, for what its worth.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/rich-dad-poor-dad-bankrupt-163...

Post reply on HN