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

training.kalzumeus.com

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

#221

Post by brc »

pseut wrote: post #82
sown wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Go to conferences. ... Find conferences that relate to it and attend... later, speak at said conferences. Well, I'm screwed. I can barely speak in private or deal with people. Perhaps someone else can use your advice, though.

>>Go to conferences. ... Find conferences that relate to it and attend... later, speak at said conferences. >Well, I'm screwed. I can barely speak in private or deal with people. Maybe things are different in tech, but I don't know anyone who likes attending or speaking at conferences. Don't think of them as trips, think of them as work. Because they are.

Are you kidding? I love going to conferences and speaking at them! Especially if you do not work in an office, they are a great way to find who is doing what, what's new, where you are behind,nowhere you are in front.

If you aren't prepared to go to, ad get involved with, conferences, then all of the advice in this article is going to pass you by. Because it's all about establishing credibility and then leveraging it.

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

#222

Post by tiramisucode »

I'm just a beginning Ruby on Rails programmer right now, and I would love to start consulting on the side. Not just for the money, but just to gain business savvy. Negotiating and delivering goods is an essential skill I believe a business owner should have.

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

#223

Post by tiramisucode »

flyinglizard wrote: post #145

Here are my lessons after 6 years running a consulting firm in a pretty specialized business (high end ARM/embedded stuff), from the top of my head: 1. Avoid billing by hours, exactly for the reasons listed here. You can only lose like this; it carries more administration overhead, more friction with the customer and at the end there's a max budget allocated on the customer's end anyway - it's not like you can bill i…

I think one of the biggest reasons why people hesitate to get into consulting or freelancing work is because the hourly billing makes them nervous. Actually having to record every single hour and recording what they did seems pretty tedious. It's good to hear that weekly billing is considered to be viable because that makes things a lot easier.

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

#224

Post by brc »

SonicSoul wrote: post #4

ha, when i saw the headline and read the first paragraph i assumed this was a sales pitch for something.. but after scrolling down to the bottom and not finding anything i shortly realized this is the author of kalzumeus.com which is the source of some of the best advice I (as a programmer) have read on the internets. One gotcha here is that not every programmer can be as successful doing such business consulting. I…

1st lesson : stop using language like 'suits'. They are just people with budget to spend on problems they need fixed. The key here is that talking to people is a skill which can be learned. The way to learn is to start, and make some mistakes and learn quickly.

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

#225

Post by komlon »

You just go and be a contractor. There are tons of contracting positions open in London that will pay £500 - £600 per day. It's easy to make over £100k (pounds) if you're a good contractor.

http://www.cwjobs.co.uk/JobSearch/Results.aspx?Keywords=core...

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

#226

Post by ams6110 »

ams6110 wrote: post #182
pfanner wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have absolutely no idea how people start consulting. How old are they? Did they work something else before? Did they major in anything? Are they all independent or work at consulting companies?

Yes.

OK, the point is any of these things could be the case, or not. Some people start consulting immediately. Some don't start until they have been working "regular jobs" for 20 years. Some start young, some start old, etc. There is no one way to start. Just start.

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

#227

Post by gregpilling »

debacle wrote: post #27
bmelton wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SAAS? PAAS? I think it's fairly well known that Patrick consults to help fund his other projects, with the ultimate goal of becoming independent of consulting in favor of passive income. (Apologies if I'm mischaracterizing Patio's intent -- that's at least how it always seemed to me.) Alternately, you could raise your rates a bunch, save the difference and try to retire early.

It might just be me, but I don't see a market for consulting based on writing RESTful APIs. I could be very wrong about that, though.

Many businesses doing annual volumes of sales in the millions don't understand what a RESTful API is. For example, me. I have a small manufacturing business and I enjoy reading hacker news but I could not program anything with and API today because I can't code.

So do I concentrate on new product development (welded steel items that we sell) or customer development (some of our customers spend in the hundred of thousands per year on our product) or do I hire someone who can program so that I don't have to learn it? Time I spend learning a RESTful API is time I don't spend making the new widget that will buy my wife a new vehicle. Time I spend learning to code is time I can't spend converting our customer who spends a million a year with my competition and only a 100K with us.

Patio11 email is really about time. How to use your skills to help out companies that have a shortage of time. If we had all the time in the world we could all learn programming. But I don't have any where near enough time to do the things I want to do. I have four kids and all the time sucks that go along with that (school, soccer, art class, etc) and a couple of businesses and a dozen employees. I have to travel for work 8 weeks a year, plus manage a dozen employees and two dozen machines, an outside salesforce and over a 1000 resellers. I have hired computer consultants with underwhelming results several times in the past. I have spent thousands and thousands of dollars on crappy results.

What Patio11 is selling is his competency. He has proof from previously satisfied customers. He clearly can provide leadership on a project and deliver results. He doesn't sell what he can't do, and has said multiple times that he doesn't take on projects that he can't deliver on (thus protecting his reputation). Leadership is way undervalued on projects. It is the result that matters not the price.

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

#228

Post by nvarsj »

emmett wrote: post #198
sabat wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No idea why this would be downvoted except for the fact that Patrick Can Do No Wrong. He's wildly opinionated, questionably successful before his sudden consultancy (he wrote a mildly successful Bingo card program in Java), and self-satisfied beyond measure.

Because it's mean spirited and adds nothing of value to the conversation. Your comment is similar; your dislike of Patrick is based entirely on who he is and doesn't bother to engage with the content of the essay at all.

I'm not sure I agree that the post above has no relevance. Every time I encounter (an extremely highly voted) patio11 post, my used salesman alert starts blinking. The guy is obviously a master at garnering karma and links, SEO, what have you, while seemingly providing some value. And he makes his money from this combination. So it is useful to realize where the OP is coming from (self-promotion) when considering the validity of his posts, since they are largely anecdotal.

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

#229

Post by jeremysmyth »

To be a consultant, rather than an hourly-rate freelancer, you need two things:

- insight

- reputation

The reputation (from prior work) gets you in the door, and the insight (from your wealth of experience in the field, which you have, right?) is what gives you the right to call it a "practice", and the right to get you the 5- and 6-figure paychecks for each engagement.

Insight is more than just experience; you'll have to offer something unique and valuable for each customer that they can't just get from their local recruitment agency for commodity rates.

You have to be able to communicate at senior management level, in big picture terms, but also operate at the ground floor and all the way up. You must be able to advise at each level of the organisation, while understanding the nuts and bolts of the guy doing the programming (and quite probably doing it yourself).

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

#230

Post by baruch »

nfm wrote: post #215
philwelch wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The problem is that reducing costs doesn't typically scale. If you want to grow a businesses profit significantly, you need to increase sales. It's entirely reasonable to double your sales. It's pretty difficult to halve your costs.

In order to double the profits you need to either double the sales or eliminate all costs.

Or do a mix of both. Doubling sales multiple times is more likely than making profits on your infrastructure... Amazon AWS is probably the exception here.

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