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

I have done both and I currently work in a consulting company like the one you describe, but in product as opposed to engineering. Like all jobs it has pros and cons. The big advantages to consulting are the opportunities to work on a lot of different projects and in different fields. You'll get much more exposure than working for a product company where you'll have a singular focus for years. I've been in consulting for two and a half years and have worked with insurance, automotive, grocery, and retail marketplace companies doing web, mobile, b2b and b2c products. That's a lot of variety for that time period. And as others have mentioned your network grows much faster as every new project means a whole new set of people to meet. Consulting can be a great way to 'trial' certain sectors without taking a dedicated job there. I now know much more about where I don't want to work in the future as much as I do because of that experience.

As for disadvantages there are several. Your main concern is the first one and it is real. You can only spend so much time on a project, and that means you may never get to take it to the depth and maturity that you want. In most cases you're there to start something or fix something. Once it is started the client will take over, and if it is fixed, it's fixed. So if you want to go deep into a subject, I would pick a different path. It can be a bit sad to put your heart into something for a year and then not be able to see it all the way through. The other disadvantage is around the politics of the kind of work. This is a three party system - there are your goals, the goals of your company and it's consulting business, and the goals of the client. Those don't always align and it can be complicated to navigate. You can also find yourself in situations that are uncomfortable - like dropped into a project timeline that you weren't part of estimating. It can be a bit sink or swim in my experience. The most important factor in being successful is communication / stakeholder management and making sure expectations are clear to everyone.

It's given me a lot of experience quickly, but it's a real challenge. It is fast-paced and intense and thus it is not for everyone - but if you're thinking about it it is probably worth doing for a few years to get the experience and see how you like it.

Writing lots of boilerplate is an opportunity to build new libraries, frameworks, code generators, and other tooling; use that as something extra you can share with your colleagues and sell to clients, or use it to build an open source portfolio. Some companies might let you do it under your own name, others will want you to use their Github org.

If you find a technology you really like that's popular with clients, it may be that you get to use that with every client and then you can gain deep expertise in that. Don't be too picky here, this is an opportunity to get access to a lot of customers to find out what technology is really in demand. Contract-to-hire is also a valid thing that happens if you find a client with full-time positions open that you really like working for; you may have to negotiate with the consulting org for a finders' fee. Some orgs are not okay with this though, so I would only suggest it if you know it will work, or if you have a backup plan for another job in case it fails.

Extra advice I can give is that the relationships involved when doing consulting is pretty different; in my experience, unless the clients are all big IT firms, you likely won't have strong engineering management guiding any projects, and the client may not even be able to help you out with technical issues at all. It's on your team as technical experts to get in, figure out what is going on, and then get out. There are a number of ways to deal with this but the number one rule is: cover your ass with clients! I've seen lots of projects go south because of bad communication and failure to manage customer expectations.

I have done both and can say: IF your product org pays you very well and you like the people you work with stay there. This also assumes you have freedom to do your own R&D projects.

If any of the above is not true go the consulting route with the goal to have your own clients. Its exciting, you pick the people you work with and the work you accept. At the time of this writing there is plenty of software work for consultants who are interested in long term B2B companies. You dont need many. We are a team of 4 and have about 5 large long term client. We are also building a product on the side (and this is the real icing on the cake)

When I made the change I was worried about healthcare. Using the healthcare.gov market place I ended up paying about the same for slightly better (local) insurance.

One thing to think about, it terms of deep experience, is that in a product role you'll often only be using part of a stack. If, for instance, you are making a CMS you won't touch the numerical parts of the language. In consulting you may get to choose between using more of what's available in a stack or branching out to other technologies.

The entrepreneur thing is true too, I went from an employee to running my own operation and nothing was really surprising. I'm not sure how many other jobs you can make that transition so easily.

I definitely want to hear both the positive and the negative, so thank you!