A potential downside with consulting is that it seems to me that your pay may be lower if you are a consultant vs working as a developer at a product company (and no stock options etc).
It’s great to be a consultant
41–50 of 187 posts
Re: It’s great to be a consultant
#42Is this "consulting" or "contracting"?
In my mind, "consulting" is knowledge work. Your role is to lend knowledge and expertise, help with strategy, architecture, tool/platform selection, etc.
"Contracting" is high-skill grunt work. Your role is to code your fingers off, deliver-deliver-deliver, typically according to someone else's (possibly ill-conceived) plan.
Have these things truly become synonymous?
Re: It’s great to be a consultant
#43I quit my job few months back. CEO was just starting to project so much negativity on my path that I had it. “I fuked his wife and I left” Totally kidding, I was thinking about the Step Brothers scene lol. Anyway humor aside, I been struggling in what to do, and what path to take. Been registering bunch of domains, thinking on creating some micro startups. But whenever I want to dive into my projects, I just lose int…
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Re: It’s great to be a consultant
#446. The sense of relief when your invoice is paid is amazing. 7. Having to go into projects that really don't make sense but pay your bills teaches diplomacy and patience. 8. Having long-term financial committments on the one hand (mortgage, school and medical bills etc.) and short-term uncertain revenue is an interesting mental exercise to engage in. The last one is the killer for me I think, having dabbled in this a…
9. In many countries job is viewed as a tax dodge and people become hostile if you tell them you work as a consultant. Often this messaging is sponsored by big corporations providing consulting services - they hate independent consultants and spend a lot on lobbying to make it as difficult and costly as possible to work as independent.
Re: It’s great to be a consultant
#45Is this "consulting" or "contracting"? In my mind, "consulting" is knowledge work. Your role is to lend knowledge and expertise, help with strategy, architecture, tool/platform selection, etc. "Contracting" is high-skill grunt work. Your role is to code your fingers off, deliver-deliver-deliver, typically according to someone else's (possibly ill-conceived) plan. Have these things truly become synonymous?
> Is this "consulting" or "contracting"?
The former is an activity and the latter is a business relationship, so they're orthogonal. Many consultants are contractors but not all are. Many contractors sell consultancy but not all do.
Re: It’s great to be a consultant
#46I did not hear a single consultant telling me how great it is to be one, when a collective announcement by the director was made that due to financial problems not a single consultant contract would be extended this year. This would help the company to get into financial stability again, and would prevent to fire anyone in the company. I'm happy I'm not a consultant. I value job security, and therefore a financially…
Which reminds me of the scene several years ago. They gather us in a big room, thanking us for our great contribution, everyone is getting fired.
I can't remember what I said, but something really funny and my friends consultants can't hold the laugh in.
Our Indian colleagues are screwed because their visas depended on them being employed.
We just went to another client, great company, our rates got bumped up.
Really sad situation.
On the other hand, sometimes when they want to save money, they would fire me, usually because I am most expensive of all. But then again, more often then this, they would keep me last, because I can do most work.
Re: It’s great to be a consultant
#476. The sense of relief when your invoice is paid is amazing. 7. Having to go into projects that really don't make sense but pay your bills teaches diplomacy and patience. 8. Having long-term financial committments on the one hand (mortgage, school and medical bills etc.) and short-term uncertain revenue is an interesting mental exercise to engage in. The last one is the killer for me I think, having dabbled in this a…
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 the growing precariat).
Re: It’s great to be a consultant
#48I might add two amendments here:
The first is that "time and materials" is infinitely preferable to "fixed scope." In the former case, both client and consultant have an incentive to set priorities and make difficult, pragmatic choices. In the latter case, the potential for inadvertently over-promising is ever-present. Then comes either "fail and take the blame" or work through sunrise to deliver.
The second is that over-communication with the client throughout the engagement is often the difference between joyous interactions and the various horror stories that become commonplace.
Consulting can be spectacular IF the contracts are time and materials AND consultants over-communicate with clients.
Re: It’s great to be a consultant
#49I did not hear a single consultant telling me how great it is to be one, when a collective announcement by the director was made that due to financial problems not a single consultant contract would be extended this year. This would help the company to get into financial stability again, and would prevent to fire anyone in the company. I'm happy I'm not a consultant. I value job security, and therefore a financially…
I don't really understand this comment. I've been in consulting for my whole career, and my job security has never depended on a single contract. When a client doesn't extend, you move to a new client. Sometimes this can be disappointing or feel unfair, but it's never resulted in me losing my job. The whole point of having management in a consulting company is surely to make sure that the consultants always have a cl…
Sadly not everyone has been as lucky as you. When the pandemic hit the flexible workforce and outsourced activities were the first things to go in a lot of industries, as businesses naturally looked to their own survival and the protection of their permanent staff. The first few months of COVID were brutal for a lot of smaller businesses whose revenue comes from offering services to larger clients.
Re: It’s great to be a consultant
#50The 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.…
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