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To become a software consultant, avoid letting clients pay you for code (2017)

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Re: To become a software consultant, avoid letting clients pay you for code (2017)

#31

Post by thrower123 »

hypnotist wrote: post #10
nness wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there a market for general purpose software consultants? Certainly is, as indicated by the continued success of for Accenture, McKinsey Digital, Deloitte Digital, IBM, EY, KPMG, PwC, Aon Hewitt, and probably a million more smaller consultancies and agencies. Its certainly a suitable career choice if you enjoy a mix of technical solutioning, ideation and development work across a range of clients, geographies and…

These companies/people are paid not for their general purpose skills/consulting. They are paid for trust/brand. """No one got fired for choosing McKinsey/BCG/Deloitte/IBM/MS etc"""

I've seen a number fired over the years for picking Cap Gemini, Tata, Cognizant, Infosys, ATT Global Services or IBM Global services. Some of these are becoming anti-brands as they burn too many people with slow, shoddy work, disorganization and poor communication.

Re: To become a software consultant, avoid letting clients pay you for code (2017)

#32

Post by theriddlr »

stevenl42 wrote: post #12

And that ladies and gentlemen is exactly how American IT became taken over by Indian outsourcing companies and the quasi ones like Deloitte , Accenture. American exceptionalism and a good education system might make you a great consultant but who turns that spec to code and does the grunt work ? Surely you aren't hiring American college grads because they have already been told this work is boring and shitty and they…

Undertook a rewrite of grant tracking system for an NGO. The first solution was butchered by one these 'consulting' firms. They had set up fragmented Google Sheets, Trello and MSSQL and lots of repetition. Non-programmers shouldn't undertake this kind of work. The majority of the work was data cleansing to get rid of duplicates and normalising the database to 3NF. The rest is a user-friendly frontend to enter data and some data validation. Our solution worked out cheaper than the 'consulting' firm's and actually increased productivity.

Re: To become a software consultant, avoid letting clients pay you for code (2017)

#33

Post by warent »

PeterStuer wrote: post #20

Having seen all type of consultants over the year: - The strategic consultant you describe manages to have a higher tariff, but the sales cycle is long and the downtime between gigs significant - the 'software consultant' has an on average lower tariff (depending on the specialization), but little downtime and faster sales. Pick your poison and do what you feel most comfortable with.

When you say tariff do you mean price?

Re: To become a software consultant, avoid letting clients pay you for code (2017)

#34

Post by gabriel34 »

All is good and well until 5 years down the road you don't have experience implementing the newnosql.js stuff that is all the rage. You try to conform it to what you already know and end up with a myopic view of the solution. Since you are already respected people listen to you when defining architectures. Coders think you are a moron, impostor syndrome sets in. The doctors prescribe the new and improved treatment, but the new balm doesn't work as well as the goop for some cases.

You have to remember what made you a specialist in the first place was coding at challenging projects. Our market changes too fast for you to stop doing that. Studying and trying out new things using a private lab will only get you so far, the real challenges are the ones which push you to really master something.

Re: To become a software consultant, avoid letting clients pay you for code (2017)

#35

Post by TamDenholm »

mrfredward wrote: post #30
TamDenholm wrote: post #4

Very true sentiment in this article. Also a corollary to this would be to deliver based on the value you provide the client, not the time it takes you to complete the problem. I've written about this before on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14942561

I read your linked comment, and it's important to distinguish that you are a consultant in the "not on a W2 sense," rather than a consultant in the "people pay me fat fees just for advice sense." It's great that you are successful at getting contracted to build apps, and I'm envious because I hope to do something similar one day, but I regard it as a different job from the consulting described in the article, where y…

True, i also build but its a smaller part of my job since as i have employees etc that do the labour work. But the biggest part of my job is to listen to a problem and come up with a solution, more often than not, my company also delivers that solution, but i get paid for the answer to the problem, not the time taken to build it.

Re: To become a software consultant, avoid letting clients pay you for code (2017)

#36

Post by gk1 »

PeterStuer wrote: post #20

Having seen all type of consultants over the year: - The strategic consultant you describe manages to have a higher tariff, but the sales cycle is long and the downtime between gigs significant - the 'software consultant' has an on average lower tariff (depending on the specialization), but little downtime and faster sales. Pick your poison and do what you feel most comfortable with.

I disagree. I fit into the “strategic consultant” category and my sales cycle from referral to signing is a few weeks, with zero downtime because I work on several projects at once.

The great thing about being independent is you can design your engagements however you want. Not happy with amount of downtime? Find a way to do two (or more) projects at once. Not happy with sales cycle length? Simplify your offerings. And so on...

Re: To become a software consultant, avoid letting clients pay you for code (2017)

#37

Post by TomMarius »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #28
rumok wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm genuinely curious, why do you believe scrum to be "stupid and horrible"?

Many years of experience with it across orgs of various sizes and ages. One-size-fits-all software management and metrics about planning and velocity are things that exist to give middle management surface area to tell whatever political blame/credit stories they want, and have not got shit to do with productivity, adjusting to change, or delivering anything. And don’t even get me started on why Agile is emphatically…

From my personal experience with scrum in an enterprise environment, I agree with you completely.

Re: To become a software consultant, avoid letting clients pay you for code (2017)

#38

Post by acconrad »

I've only been at it a year but I find this to be nearly impossible. 95% of my income this past year was writing software. Whenever someone saw me as a "software consultant" they thought "well why don't we pay him to implement it too?" But I also made more than double what I made when I was full-time.

I really would like to know how to not immediately be slotted as someone who is just a coding mercenary.

Re: To become a software consultant, avoid letting clients pay you for code (2017)

#39

Post by acconrad »

chrisbennet wrote: post #16

One way to get clients to respect your input is to charge a lot.

Easier said than done. They may respect you but they'll also likely not hire you. They have to respect you AND know you. It's hard to justify paying someone a lot if they are an unknown quantity. I checked out your HN profile: do you think you can hire more because you specialize in Computer Vision/Graphics? I'd also imagine your clientele is highly-targeted as well?

Re: To become a software consultant, avoid letting clients pay you for code (2017)

#40

Post by acconrad »

jasode wrote: post #15

>Don’t ever let would-be consulting clients pay you for code that you write. A similar piece of advice is in the often-submitted article by Patrick McKenzie.[1] The common idea is that instead of being just a "code monkey", you position yourself higher up the value hierarchy to be more of a "solutions provider". In my observations of programmers that successfully sell consulting vs earning a W-2 salary, both articles…

When I got into consulting I read that MacKenzie article and answered an ecstatic "Yes" to all three and yet people see my resume and previous work and just immediately slot me into the "code monkey" territory. I am able to negotiate a great rate, so I've done very well, but I believe I could do better if I was able to get the higher value projects, but no one has yet to perceive me this way.
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