It’s great to be a consultant • Hacker News Board

Re: It’s great to be a consultant

#131

Post by whatshisface » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 4:14 PM UTC

brimble wrote: post #124

mjburgess wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is pretty universally the job of a management consultancy: interview the staff, and report what they're saying.

They're also the "legit" channel for corporate espionage (or, research sharing, if you prefer), especially for processes and such. They didn't make up that "best practice" they're teaching you now—they stole it from your competitor. They'll figure out if you're doing anything better than them and clue them in on their next engagement. And the wheel keeps on turning.

I'm not sure I can agree with the word "stole." It's clearly in everyone's interest that that process goes on, or at least the interest of everyone who hires consultants; if a company was uniformly better than all of their competitors or thought they were, they wouldn't hire external consultants.

Re: It’s great to be a consultant

#132

Post by tiffanyh » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 4:15 PM UTC

sails wrote: post #127

tiffanyh wrote: post #115

Counter argument for those who think consulting is "great" (because it's not - at least from a business owners perspective). TLDR: consulting has huge variable costs, you have to float A LOT of money, no reoccurring revenue, difficult to differentiate since people are your "product". - the business model of consulting is extremely grinding, difficult and exhausting for business owners - your "product" is your people,…

Great summary. Consulting not a great business to build to sell. Curious how these businesses possibly survive a slower market? Only thing I can imagine is the job market slows proportionally and your people/staff won't have better options.

For tech consulting, there was a lot of layoff unless a services contract committed contractual spend. Keep in mind, staff augmentation / time & materials is a very common contractual model - which has no committed spend.

Also, another point I didn't mention above is Marketing Agencies and Lawyers. These business are fundamentally "consulting". The massive difference is that (a) these industries found ways that allowed them to capture more revenue than just billing time, e.g. lawyers can get a % of a cash settlement case, or marketing agencies can get a % of ad spend from a company, and (b) they found ways to help with the cash flow float by creating "retainer" vehicles.

Re: It’s great to be a consultant

#133

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 4:20 PM UTC

throw1234651234 wrote: post #102

IggleSniggle wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, you might have just convinced me to consider consulting. This is my natural personality/upbringing and I’ve always hated the internal rah-rah needed to do well for business units in an org, but at the same time am comfortable with self-promotion as needed.

Just keep in mind that a lot of the time even if you start off right, new management comes in, thinks that consultants are for "busy work", tries to relegate you to that, then has you putting out little fires they create. And if you are clearly doing better work compared to what the new CTO is capable of? Well, it goes two ways - you are valued and praised or you are pushed out because you are perceived as a threat t…

[deleted]

Re: It’s great to be a consultant

#134

Post by nightski » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 4:21 PM UTC

jstx1 wrote: post #11

It can be very shallow though. Steve Jobs on consulting - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-c4CNB80SRc

Can be, doesn't have to be. I've had the same clients for over a decade. I've seen people come and go as employees and know more about the businesses than many employees themselves and help bring new executives/employees up to speed.

I've owned many projects that have had large impacts. I guess it just depends on how you go about it. So yeah, my experience doesn't align with Mr. Jobs at all.

Re: It’s great to be a consultant

#135

Post by sudosysgen » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 4:21 PM UTC

danjac wrote: post #129

sudosysgen wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't expect society to pay for you regularly if you choose to become a consultant. You need to charge more and keep a buffer.

If someone pays the same taxes and contributions into society as others, then surely they are entitled to something in return? I get there's no easy answer here but gig workers are also "consultants" who may not be earning enough to build a buffer.

Well yes, they do get something in return for their taxes, don't they?

As far as gig workers, they do get something in return for the instability, which is (in theory) higher hourly pay and more flexible achedules. If they aren't getting this, they aren't really gig workers and should be labelled as employees, but if they are, they get a benefit for the risk they take.

Personally I think that many gig workers should be simply classified as normal employees.

Another issue is that gig workers and consultants don't pay for unemployment insurance at all, so they're actually not paying the same contributions as others.

Re: It’s great to be a consultant

#136

Post by kelvin0 » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 4:27 PM UTC

leeter wrote: post #75

franze wrote: post #14

The secret on how to become a great consultant: Take all the blame, distribute all the praise. Here is the thing, being a consultant is a thankless job, and it needs to be. If a project does not go as planned, the success does not happen. Take the blame. You are an external, it does not matter. They got you into the company to improve the state of the client, to improve them. If it does not happen, you are to blame.…

This 100%, I've literally been hired onto a client to basically tell management something their internal team had been saying for ages. The challenge wasn't telling management that; but rather getting them to (politically very carefully) open their eyes to the fact they had the solution (and the people to implement) right in front of them the entire time. That was a very tricky situation as the management didn't trus…

There's a saying: 'No one is a prophet in their village/town'.

When the same info you communicate internally comes from an 'external' and 'credible' source, all of the sudden the message gets through.

Pretty frustrating for the 'internal' people.

Re: It’s great to be a consultant

#137

Post by DarylZero » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 4:35 PM UTC

dboreham wrote: post #114

vasili111 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How to grow network when you do not have it? Any advices to person who wants to get in to consultancy and do not knows where to start?

If you are willing to invest your time, open source projects can be a low barrier to entry route. Show up, work on a project for free, now you have a network. Probably you don't actually have to work for free either because there are some open source projects with funding.

Networking through cash-starved open source projects doesn't seem like a great idea.

> Probably you don't actually have to work for free either because there are some open source projects with funding.

It's not so easy to get that funding. Even founders of projects can't get adequate funding. A one-off "drive-by" contributor will not typically be compensated at all.

Re: It’s great to be a consultant

#138

Post by cm2012 » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 4:44 PM UTC

vasili111 wrote: post #111

cm2012 wrote: post #110

If you're good at it and have a good network, consulting is always better than FTE work. You make more money, grow your network faster, have more flexibility, etc. I was a consultant for 5 years and now run an agency, and I currently have ~50 consultants I work with across various projects. That "if" is big though. If you're not good at it, you won't keep clients. If you don't have a good network, you'll be stuck wit…

How to grow network when you do not have it? Any advices to person who wants to get in to consultancy and do not knows where to start?

Your first network is co-workers, so being hired at a big or venture backed company with well connected co-workers is a good start. If you get a job doing consulting at a consulting company, you'll meet new companies all the time in a risk free way.

Your second network is physical events - meet-ups, conferences. Note, these should be technical for your field of expertise, not like a business networking meet-up, which suck.

Third is your online presence - the open source communities you submit to, twitter connections you've replied intelligently to, etc.

Re: It’s great to be a consultant

#139

Post by nunez » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 4:46 PM UTC

100%.

Since you usually work across an org chart (not _in_ an org chart), and the company is paying more for your time than their FTEs, you can make great impact in relatively little time. Consulting is also great if you have trouble staying at a single place, as you usually don't spend more than a few months at any given assignment. (Usually. I know consultants who are on multi-year assignments with a single client. Those projects are usually very large.)

The disadvantage of being a consultant to large companies is that you're usually not working at the cutting edge, though this depends on the context for your presence. You're more likely to go deep (i.e. tweaking kernels, re-compiling source for major OSS products, etc.) if you're with $CLOUD_PROVIDER working with a client spending millions/year with them than if you're with a boutique consulting shop doing high-level strategy for which technical implementation is a minor factor. This is usually patched by your consulting company's bench time policy.

A consulting company is only as good as the consultants they employ. Good consulting companies hire opportunistically (i.e. ahead of their sales pipeline) and budget large bench times. In other words, their profit models plan for their consultants to spend, say, 30% of the year unassigned so that they can train/work on personal projects/breathe/etc.

Not-so-good consulting companies (IMO) (or very sales-driven consulting companies) hire just-in-time and expect their consultants to be staffed more than 85% of the year, with any training done after-hours or during the weekend. These outfits typically operate closer to agencies or contingent labor shops where profit is directly proportional to the number of people they staff, but some newer consulting companies start off like this (because it's easier) but never aim for the former model (because it's more expensive).

Re: It’s great to be a consultant

#140

Post by potamic » Tue, Jan 18, 2022, 4:52 PM UTC

brtkdotse wrote: post #91

danjac wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social security systems in European countries tend to be based around people earning a regular salary losing their jobs, rather than consultants having occasional dry spells between projects. This is a problem with the gig economy in general - our social security nets aren't very well designed for it (perhaps an argument in favour of UBI, or at least some different thinking into how social security should work for th…

The answer to this is "charge more". You should be pulling in _at least_ 2 hours worth of payroll costs (note: not 2 hours of pay) for each worked hour. This give you a buffer for lulls.

Could you elaborate? What's payroll costs?