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It’s great to be a consultant

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Re: It’s great to be a consultant

#81

Post by Dave3of5 »

This is purely an advert for the company. I don't count any of these to be "Great":

* You are outside the company hierarchy - That means you actually have 0 power normally. Most consultants / contractors I've worked with have to do exactly what they are hired for no more or less. Permies generally have a bit of wiggle room and you should get more the further up the pole you go

* You have to keep learning - That's right slow down for even a year and you can be left behind in consulting. At least as a permie I can catch up at my own pace

* You get more exposure - For the types of companies that hire consultants this is a downside. The exposure you be getting is to toxic workplaces. They even admit this in the JD "the customers we work with will use legacy practices and technologies. "

* You meet lots of people - I already have plenty people in my life this isn't a positive for most programmers it's a negative.

You know who's the first to be fired when times are a bit more rough...

Re: It’s great to be a consultant

#82

Post by sails »

When you transition and you leave your old perm role, offer them your time via consulting to keep the lights on in whatever you were involved in (they will likely want this if you were any good...) but ensure you do two things:

1. plan for rate increases that very meaningfully increase as time goes on

2. keep an eye on when they transition from "glad not to have lost you" to "taking you for granted" and when this happens, it is time to move on and fire them as a client

* both of these presume you are successful in finding, pleasing and retaining new clients

Re: It’s great to be a consultant

#83

Post by tonyedgecombe »

nickjj wrote: post #68
noud wrote: post #21

I 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 value job security, and therefore a financially secure life, over any of the benefits this consultant has. As someone who has done contract work for most of my working life I think it's kind of the opposite. When doing contract work you have the option of having multiple part time jobs. Not everything is based on full time yearly commitments. You might choose to do 15 hours a week for 2 different gigs, or maybe 4…

You probably should have savings as well, if someone isn't good with their finances then it probably isn't an ideal career for them. Customers can smell the desperation for work a mile off.

Re: It’s great to be a consultant

#84

Post by wrnr »

immutology wrote: post #42

Is 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?

I understand what you are trying to say but it is also a form of master-slave dialectic, you don't like something and feel above it and try to organise your social life with strict rules to isolate you from it. It's not even always a bad thing to do, like I an a coder who tries to avoid working with people who think like you.

Re: It’s great to be a consultant

#85

Post by scrollaway »

adwn wrote: post #79
scrollaway wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not unavoidable no, but it certainly makes you a better consultant. I found this out only a few years ago and franze is right on the money. I'd say it goes beyond consulting, too, and that knowing how to "take the blame and distribute the praise" is a superpower. Especially that first part. Knowing to take responsibility for things, sometimes even things that are outside your control, puts you on a different lev…

> take responsibility for things, sometimes even things that are outside your control Although this might sometimes be a good idea for diplomatic reasons, it feels just as wrong and "bullshitty" as accepting praise for things that are outside your control. And it might lead to a loss of respect by people who see through this fake humility.

You're not wrong, but there's two situations that can call for it.

1. You are indeed sometimes (more often than not) responsible for things that happen under "your watch" even if they're none of your doing, because you're responsible for calculating things that can go wrong. For a recent news comparison, the JWST is a great example of this mindset: If something goes wrong, NASA was responsible for predicting the chances of it happening and ultimately, having a plan for it.

2. As a consultant, you're sometimes hired so bigger clients can externalize blame. It makes no difference to you, doesn't matter, it's not like they're hampering your career opportunities or something. They love that they have someone to blame for shit instead of blaming the actual people responsible. Yes, it's entirely bullshitty in this case. But it gets you re-hired :)

Re: It’s great to be a consultant

#86

Post by isoprophlex »

_57jb wrote: post #62
mettamage wrote: post #53

> When you’re an internal employee, you’re often encouraged to ‘stay in your box’ and not disturb the existing hierarchy. By contrast, as a consultant you don’t need to worry as much about the internal politics or history when suggesting changes. Indeed, you’re often encouraged to step outside your boundaries and make suggestions. What companies encourage this? I want to work for these companies. I have the feeling t…

You might have an approach that is unlikable. I say this because I am exactly that. I often cut straight to the point and can't really read the room. I think I'm helping and being brutally honest when in reality it comes off condescending or arrogant. I heard a quote that I really like, honesty without kindness is cruelty. That helped me rethink my approach towards how I communicate.

> I think I'm helping and being brutally honest when in reality it comes off condescending or arrogant.

> honesty without kindness is cruelty

That is so very spot on. I strongly identify with this, great quote.

Re: It’s great to be a consultant

#87

Post by rich_sasha »

ahartmetz wrote: post #58
garrickvanburen wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the last one is the toughest, and really comes down to how strong your stomach is and how your business model is structured - e.g. it can't be hourly & net 60, more like flat-fee, 50% upfront.

The solution is an old financial trick that has fallen a bit out of fashion: saving. Not spending everything you earn. It's easy given the very decent consulting rates in software. Sometimes I wonder if everyone is financially illiterate now...

Saving smooths the earnings to some extent, but the fundamental issue remains. Mortgages and schools are financial committments for decades.

Re: It’s great to be a consultant

#88

Post by jonahbenton »

Cederfjard wrote: post #72
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.…

Is your experience that this is universal, though? I could easily envision organizations (based on my own experience, albeit not as a consultant in that sense) that would take your representation at face value - if things go south and you take the blame, they will blacklist and badmouth you, and vice versa they will love you if you can somehow hoard all the credit for a success. Perhaps it rarely plays out that way,…

In my experience there is very little actual blacklisting/badmouthing in this way. Such behavior reflects poorly only on the badmouther.

In consulting there are always functional and non-functional criteria for a relationship- on both sides. Sometimes/often invented after the fact, after parties have gotten to know one another. Engagements will be described to others against that criteria. The listener can glean and infer what they are able to.

And sometimes for the careful listener, there will be some barely detectable tepidity in an endorsement.

Re: It’s great to be a consultant

#89

Post by tonyedgecombe »

ejb999 wrote: post #66
evancoop wrote: post #48

I 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…

While I don't think you are wrong, and that is a very common viewpoint - in my own experience I always preferred fixed price jobs - but you do need to be careful about the projects you choose. I love the freedom of just building what the client asked for, without tracking my hours and billing for them. Some projects I might spend more time on them - beyond what I had estimated - just because it was a fun project, was…

I've done a couple of fixed price jobs but they were very small (a couple of weeks work) and with a client I trusted.

In general I won't and I've found the more the client demands it the more I should be worried.

Re: It’s great to be a consultant

#90

Post by eastbayjake »

mettamage wrote: post #53

> When you’re an internal employee, you’re often encouraged to ‘stay in your box’ and not disturb the existing hierarchy. By contrast, as a consultant you don’t need to worry as much about the internal politics or history when suggesting changes. Indeed, you’re often encouraged to step outside your boundaries and make suggestions. What companies encourage this? I want to work for these companies. I have the feeling t…

I wouldn't characterize great consultants as "not worrying" about politics or history -- a large part of the job is change management, not just finding the "right" answer but helping ensure it is actually acted on and has impact.

But McKinsey does include "maintain an independent perspective" as one of our core values, and entrepreneurship (i.e. not just "staying in your box") is a common expectation across all our people whether they do strategy work or help clients build software. If you're interested in learning more, we're hiring: https://www.mckinsey.com/careers/search-jobs/jobs/seniorsoft...

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