[HN Gopher] The Prosperous Software Consultant (2018)
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The Prosperous Software Consultant (2018)
Author : mooreds
Score : 102 points
Date : 2021-06-23 15:44 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (dabit3.medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (dabit3.medium.com)
| b20000 wrote:
| i'm always amused that the answer is always "work harder" and "do
| more shit". meanwhile, in other consulting professions, people
| say "no". why is this so difficult? the only remaining solid
| piece of advice here is to specialize. i can confirm this works.
| mettamage wrote:
| > Specialization
|
| > One of the best pieces of advice I've acted on is deciding to
| specialize.
|
| How do you choose what to specialize in? I have experience with
| quite a few things, but I don't know if it feels the same once
| I'd be specialized in it.
|
| The author himself seems to be an expert in React + React Native
| + GraphQL.
| pc86 wrote:
| I don't think specialization in this context means framework or
| even language. Someone who is really good at JavaScript is of
| very little use as a consultant for a business. They want
| someone who _knows the business_. So I think specialization in
| this context either means knowing a lot about the
| infrastructure - e.g. being able to do whatever your client
| needs in AWS quickly and in a cost-effective manner - or,
| knowing a lot about the business domain, whether that 's
| healthcare, logistics, etc. The code is usually a byproduct of
| that and being an "expert" in a JavaScript framework isn't
| going to sell anything to a hospital system looking for a
| software consultant.
| rasikjain wrote:
| All good points about the marketing, billing and presence on
| social media. Worth reading for the folks who want to be in
| consulting side.
| astuyvenberg wrote:
| I concur with a lot of what Nader has laid out here.
| Specialization + Content are keys to unlocking much higher
| pricing power.
|
| Getting started is tricky, but my most profitable side work has
| been workshops and lunch-and-learns, which is beneficial as I can
| re-use a lot of the same content between engagements.
| ehnto wrote:
| We started with lunch-and-learns, but eventually moved to beer-
| and-briefings.
| geodel wrote:
| Both the above are better than dining and whining which folks
| disillusioned from modern software like me do.
| fsloth wrote:
| Can you elaborate critical difference between -learn and
| -briefing or does it just rhyme better :) ?
| ehnto wrote:
| It just rhymes better!
| _jal wrote:
| One contains beer.
| whytaka wrote:
| If you're not already familiar, I think you'll be
| interested in the concept of alliteration.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliteration
| ghaff wrote:
| I agree as well. You can be a "cloud consultant" or you can go
| all in on AWS costs, have a newsletter, keep your face in front
| of people, etc. Guess which one probably does better.
|
| Of course it has to be a specialization that enough people need
| to be willing to pay for.
|
| You also have to keep a clear lookup for a new area or areas if
| your specialty is in decline. You don't want to be the Y2K
| mitigation expert in 2001. Or the top performance expert for
| some legacy or discontinued computer architecture.
| jcadam wrote:
| I'm going gray and have been thinking about going the
| freelance/consultant route. Problem: Getting started without
| having to go to freelance sites and charge considerably less than
| what I can get as a FTE.
|
| I make a very comfortable salary these days, but I worry about
| only having a single income stream.
| _dwt wrote:
| One great thing about offering training and workshops is that,
| especially if you can partner with another company to handle the
| sales, marketing, online platform, etc., online courses built
| from this material make a great first "product" to start
| transitioning from a purely service-based (get paid for your
| time) business to one with some sources of recurring revenue (get
| paid for work you've already done).
| b20000 wrote:
| react native is like visual basic in the 90s
| n4bz0r wrote:
| An off-topic question:
|
| > When a client Googles your name, who is she more likely to seek
| out?
|
| > she
|
| Can someone elaborate the benefits/goals of using the feminine
| pronoun here?
|
| If "he" isn't (for some reason) acceptable as a gender-neutral
| pronoun, wouldn't "they" be a better fit?
|
| I fail to see how gender flipping is a step towards reduction of
| sexism if that's the goal.
| bavell wrote:
| I wouldn't read too far into it, probably just casual use of
| language instead of trying to push an agenda...
| n4bz0r wrote:
| > I wouldn't read too far into it
|
| I realize how my initial comment might sound bitter as the
| topic is quite controversial, but I'm more curious than
| anything.
|
| Seeing such "unusual" placement of pronouns a few times in a
| short period of time made me wonder what's the deal.
| ghaff wrote:
| Although he was historically ostensibly gender-neutral, in
| practice, people tended to use the pronoun of the dominant
| gender in an occupation. If you're talking about a generic
| nurse, you'd probably refer to her or she.
|
| Which, if you're trying to avoid gender stereotypes, leads
| to awkward he/she, somewhat obviously switch among male and
| female personas, etc. The typical approach in style guides
| these days is use singular they. 2nd person got rid of the
| separate singular and plural pronoun as well so it's not
| unreasonable.
| fsloth wrote:
| Everything does not need to be made part of culture wars.
|
| Why would using she be any different than he? It's like Alice
| and Bob of oh so many quantum thought experiments but without
| Bob. If there is only one protagonist you have to go 50/50.
| bruce343434 wrote:
| Off topic question for you: I'm an ESL speaker and I notice a
| trend where some people phrase it like
|
| "Everything does not need"
|
| But in my head it sounds better as
|
| "Not everything needs"
|
| Is the latter not acceptable English? Or is it something
| regional? In my language, it is customary to negate
| individual nouns, but some English speakers seem to only ever
| negate the verb.
| jlund-molfese wrote:
| Sample size of 1, but as a native American English speaker,
| I'd use the latter phrasing of "not everything needs."
|
| The former example seems characteristic of non-native
| speech, but is completely understandable also.
| ambicapter wrote:
| In my experience as a native speaker "Not everything needs"
| is the more common phrasing.
| purerandomness wrote:
| Are you new to the internet, or the English language? This
| style has been done for several decades now, even before the
| internet, in various publications.
|
| Why do you think it's supposed to be a "step towards reduction
| of sexism"?
| _dwt wrote:
| "Back in the day", some of us used to deliberately alternate
| pronouns for these sorts of hypothetical people. The idea was
| to help nudge people toward perceiving "gender-atypical"
| occupations/situations/etc. as normal: "The programmer opens
| her text editor...".
|
| Since then the world has changed quite rapidly when it comes to
| norms around writing, pronouns, and gender, so perhaps "they"
| fills the same role for younger writers.
| jlund-molfese wrote:
| Large corporations sometimes come up with user personas,
| which I've always thought are fun to work with. Like
| alternating pronouns, they're a very reasonable,
| noncontroversial way to remind people their users might not
| look like them (busy parents, someone performing the same
| repetitive tasks all day with your application who would
| appreciation automation, etc)
| n4bz0r wrote:
| I find user personas in your example to be quite "out of
| the way" and in fact reasonable unlike mere gender
| "substitution" which I (being a non-native speaker) tend to
| perceive as some unnecessary (and even off-putting at
| times) piece of information.
|
| Calling that an "alteration" rather than a "substitution"
| gave me a different perspective, though.
|
| I'd often find Alice/Bob examples in (programming-related)
| books, but seeing "she" instead of "he" in situations where
| gender isn't important wasn't that common in my experience.
|
| Some other commenters pointed out that the practice is
| quite old in English. My use of English is mostly limited
| to reading technical information and blog posts so I can
| only assume that the alteration not being popular is (was?)
| mostly intrinsic to the technical articles/blog posts.
| handrous wrote:
| Native speaker here, and it took me most of a decade of
| seeing the use of the feminine for the non-specific or
| neuter pronoun before it stopped being _very_ annoying
| (it was uncommon outside certain circles, until fairly
| recently). I still have to catch myself when I encounter
| it to avoid glancing back over the text to figure out
| which specific person is being referenced, whom I must
| have missed in my first reading--IOW, it remains a
| distracting style, for me.
| n4bz0r wrote:
| > I still have to catch myself when I encounter it to
| avoid glancing back over the text to figure out which
| specific person is being referenced, whom I must have
| missed in my first reading
|
| That's funny. Saying "off-putting" I had exactly that in
| mind.
|
| _What? She? I must 've zoned out._
| handrous wrote:
| Yeah, I don't have a problem with the politics of it,
| exactly, but it's definitely more disruptive to my
| reading than favoring the masculine (only because I
| learned that way, of course--had I been taught otherwise,
| I'd have the opposite problem) or using the singular-
| plural form (they/them/their).
|
| Maybe the irritation's worth it for the effect that
| effort's having on culture. I really don't know. In the
| end, it's not _that_ big a problem for me, just a little
| irritating, so I simply hope it 's doing something
| actually-helpful for someone and don't worry about it too
| much.
| julianeon wrote:
| > If 'he' isn't (for some reason) acceptable as a gender-
| neutral pronoun, wouldn't 'they' be a better fit?
|
| There are people, today, who will fault you for not using 'he'
| or 'she', since client is singular and 'he' & 'she' (unlike
| 'they') is too.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I'm one of them. Grew up with "they" as strictly plural. Had
| enough red ink on school essays that the lesson sank in.
| Every time I see "they" in a singular context it's like
| mentally stubbing my toe on a tree root. I have to stop, go
| back and re-read to be sure I didn't miss something that set
| up the plural context.
|
| If you insist on being gender-neutral, you have to write "he
| or she" which quicky gets tiresome. Or rewrite without using
| pronouns, which can also be awkward.
|
| I learned that "he" is gender-neutral if there is no other
| context, and that's the way I continue to write.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| "They" has been an acceptable third-person non-determinate
| singular pronoun since at least the Canterbury Tales:
|
| "And whoso fyndeth hym out of swich blame, They wol come
| up..."
|
| That your English teachers were misinformed prescriptivists
| isn't the language's fault, and shouldn't be used as a
| ruler by which you measure the writing of others.
| jsjsbdkj wrote:
| They're from idaho based on the username, so they haven't
| caught up to chaucer yet...
| ghaff wrote:
| A couple of decades ago, I'm guessing that most English
| teachers/editors would have corrected, Chaucer
| notwithstanding. But, yes, general style these days does
| favor "they" as preferred third-person non-determinate
| singular pronoun because it's better than all the
| alternatives for various reasons.
| erdos4d wrote:
| I can almost not read your comment, it's so downvoted by the
| herd. You can't question things like this, even though what you
| say makes total sense.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| >Can someone elaborate the benefits/goals of using the feminine
| pronoun here?
|
| Culture wars, but a much more gentle version than the current
| variety. There's definitely an agenda here as it wasn't done in
| any kind of unthinking organic fashion, especially given long-
| established norms (which weren't always male). Rather like
| replacing BC with BCE.
|
| Some future historian will probably look at an AP style book
| over time and pass judgement on us all. Dunno how it will look.
| Maybe they'll think of the singular use of 'they' as implying
| that humans of this era had multiple personalities.
| mettamage wrote:
| > Flat Rate Pricing
|
| > This also applies to software development. If an e-commerce
| application you are building will bring in $500,000.00 in sales
| in the next year, then charging 10% to 20% of this amount is
| acceptable. The same goes with feature implementation. If your
| feature will save them $200,000.00 in the next year, price with
| that in mind vs the hourly rate.
|
| And how do you know what amount of money they'll make or save? Do
| you estimate it yourself? Do they tell you?
| handrous wrote:
| I was about to write that a guide to estimating savings or
| income from partial information would be really useful, then it
| occurred to me that, since businesses & management do that _a
| lot_ , this is probably exhaustively covered in business &
| management literature.
|
| Maybe some case studies of how to do this specifically with the
| kinds of info a software consultant (or, indeed, a low-ranked
| development employee--all are advised to attach a dollar value
| to their work for later bragging/self-promotion purposes, after
| all) may readily access, then, would be enlightening.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| It seems to me that the person who researches how to do this
| for software development, then packages and publishes the
| information, is themselves producing a valuable (and
| therefore saleable) piece of content.
| 0xEFF wrote:
| Just ask. A good client thinks of you as a trusted business
| partner and will want you to be fully informed.
|
| Maybe you can help them make or save even more.
| bruce343434 wrote:
| Why does medium break text selection?
| jolmg wrote:
| Because they tested on Chrome/Chromium but not on Firefox.
|
| Maybe the selection disappears on Firefox because their custom
| context-menu is rendered on top of the selection, thereby
| "obstructing" the selection by a few pixels?
| kubanczyk wrote:
| Firefox? Use the C-Alt-R, Luke. (Reader mode.)
| kazinator wrote:
| Ctrl-Alt-R restarts the browser.
|
| Reader view is toggled by F9.
| tptacek wrote:
| This is a pretty good post. I've also done pretty well
| consulting. Some quick notes.
|
| First: $210k/yr is not necessarily really good money for a US
| software consultant. When consulting full time, please try to
| keep two things in mind:
|
| (1) Your cost basis is higher than it was when you were a W2 FTE.
| If you're making $100k/yr in salary, your employer is paying
| substantially more than $100k/yr to keep you on staff; you have a
| "fully loaded" cost that includes not only infrastructure stuff
| like computers and office space and Google accounts and training
| and vacation and sick days, but also your benefits and a pretty
| substantial chunk of taxes, and a bunch of tax planning stuff
| that your W2 hides from you. You're now on the hook for all of
| that.
|
| (2) More importantly: employers are on the hook for the fully
| loaded costs of their employees indefinitely. Well-run companies
| hire developers with the expectation of keeping them on staff
| with no fixed end date (run don't walk from any that don't).
| Which means that the decision to hire a freelancer versus a full-
| time employee is not simply based on rate; it's also based on the
| fact that the freelancer comes with a guarantee that the
| relationship can be severed the moment it's no longer valuable.
| That guarantee has a _lot_ of value; "double your FTE rate"
| isn't even stretching it. If you're giving that up for free, by
| working at a rate comparable to what you'd be making in a good
| job, you're doing it wrong.
|
| I don't think it ever makes sense to work hourly. I've written a
| ton of posts here about why that is; here's a link to the one
| people seem to like the most:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4103417
|
| What I can say with almost 10 years remove from that post is that
| I was if anything underselling my position on this. When I was
| beating the drum on not doing hourly work, I was at Matasano, and
| we had a day rate (you couldn't buy work for us at increments
| less than a day). After that, we started another consultancy,
| where our minimum billable increment went up... uh...
| substantially from that. You can do week rates, and not sell in
| less than 1-week increments; you can do month rates; you can do
| more than that.
|
| The classic dumb argument about hourly versus not tends to
| devolve to debates about the pitfalls of fixed-rate work. I don't
| advocate for project rates (I'd do a project rate, I guess, if it
| made sense; I'm not religious about them). Rather: I think you
| should provide your customers with a proposal for a total cost
| for the project based on an estimate of the number of days
| (weeks, months) you think it'll take, and a SOW for a T&M project
| with available prorated overages if it takes longer. Then do your
| best to deliver according to your estimate; if you blow the
| estimate because you screwed up, eat the overage; if you blow the
| estimate because your customer didn't get you access to the
| systems you needed to work on until 3 weeks after the kickoff,
| they eat the overage. Nobody has ever pushed back on me for this.
|
| When I spelled this out on HN back in like 2010, people responded
| as if it was black magic. I think what's really happening is that
| people who run serious consulting firms just don't write a lot of
| HN comments, because I know of lots of big firms that work this
| way.
| zerr wrote:
| > day rate
|
| Didn't the clients expect holy 8 hours in this case?
|
| Another class of freelancers/consultants which are missed out
| from this discussion (hourly rate vs other): long-
| term/indefinite flex-time workers. No estimations or promises,
| just pay-as-you-go for several years or more. With the hourly
| rate, in this setup, one can work 5 hours one week, 0 hours
| second week, 35 another week... So a kind of very flexible
| employment arrangement disguised as consulting.
| tptacek wrote:
| Clients expect the work they plan to get done. They don't
| care about the hours you spend unless you demand they care
| about it, by running an hourly meter.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| One thing I've always been curious about is why law firms
| so aggressively meter. Wouldn't most arguments you'd apply
| to software consultants apply to them as well?
| swinnipeg wrote:
| Not all do.
|
| For example a defense Attorney defending a DUI charge
| will likely be a flat fee. They will also charge
| according to what it is worth to you.
|
| e.g. If you were Palo Alto's most successful real estate
| agent, and were at risk of losing your drivers license,
| you will be charged accordingly when you show up at the
| doorstep of a prominent defense Attorney.
| tptacek wrote:
| It's a good question, and I really believe the answer is
| just that they've been given social permission to gouge
| (at least, if you're not big or savvy enough to work out
| a fixed-fee arrangement) that other professions don't
| really have. Everyone expects a law firm to nickel-and-
| dime. And, of course, you're really wary of that when you
| take calls with your lawyer.
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