Interview with John Cook: mathematical consultant

Regarding 7, working in such businesses I've often felt a tingling of "someone with greater mathematical sophistication could cut through the complexity I'm getting bogged down in and/or improve performance."

If I had the same feeling about a Java consultant I know about how and where to find one, how to present the problem and what form their solution might take.

I think spreading the word about how to do the same with an applied mathematics consultant would be very useful in expanding the market.

[dead]

I was excited to read this as someone with a mathematical background and is now an engineer and software developer. However, I think this just calls out all the open questions about this style of consulting and doesn't answer them. How does one get clients, how does one keep a steady income, how to invest for retirement, how does one convince clients you have the right skills, how do you know you have the rights skills, etc.?

Also, there are conflicting answers in that he wanted better control over income than traditional employees but then later says income can be infrequent, saving is hard, and payments come late. I have none of those issues as a salaried employee and also have retirement benefits. He also mentions that finding work is no harder than finding employment but then later said that finding work is harder than doing the work.

> Clients often need to have a conversation with someone who thinks like a mathematician. This means carefully defining terms and focusing on the largest ones, making implicit assumptions explicit, knowing when an approximation is or is not good enough, and so forth.

I love to see this mentioned, but in my personal experience, this has not been valued at all. I have tried it and discussed it, but nobody has appreciated it. This is really what domain-specific design tries to get at in software engineering, but almost no one practices it.

+1, learnt soooo much from it. I have this mentally categorised next to Paul Bourke's website, which was one of the best sources of information in 90s internet: http://paulbourke.net/

> Once I started consulting, several of my initial clients offered to hire me as an employee; my backup plan was to pursue one of those offers.

I've been consulting for ten years in software/AI/data science. One of the largest difficulties is that many potential clients actually want an employee, not a consultant (perhaps hoping I'll join full-time if it works out, similar to above). In fact, most people who reach out are only looking for employees.

Nowadays it's also become more difficult to independently consult in California, since there are tighter tests for independent contractor vs. employee. Even forming a single-member LLC may not be enough to get around the distinction for some types of work. Due to this, one of my 5+-year clients was forced to reconsider our contract, and ended up only offering employment.

Supplementing income with part-time employment could be perilous for a consulting business (note: ianal, consult your own lawyer). For example, there is potentially an explicit "duty of loyalty" not to work with "competitors." And, the IP ownership clause could include any work "related to" your employer's business -- even when created on your own time.