[HN Gopher] Every engineer should do a stint in consulting
___________________________________________________________________
Every engineer should do a stint in consulting
Author : forrestbrazeal
Score : 297 points
Date : 2021-09-16 01:21 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (cloudirregular.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (cloudirregular.substack.com)
| ctrlp wrote:
| A "stint" in consulting _typically_ has three outcomes:
|
| a) You fail at the business side, can't find clients, your
| finances suffer, after all the optimism and pleasure at owning
| your own time, you start looking for a job within a year or so.
|
| b) You succeed at the business side, get more clients than you
| can handle, start sub-contracting, start having to manage your
| sub-contractors, decide the margins would be better if you had
| employees, grow into a "boutique consultancy", stop coding mostly
| and become a full-time salesman and manager, but now with other
| people who depend on you for their livelihoods.
|
| c) You succeed just enough to sustain yourself, don't seek new
| clients or attempt to grow beyond a 1-person shop, outsource to
| subs when you need to for a little extra juice but otherwise shy
| away from taking on too much work, take the work that comes your
| way, subcontract for some of the bigger fish who need your
| special skills, and accept the 'feast or famine' reality of
| income, enjoy your freedom and time off between clients, but not
| entirely because you're always worried about where your next
| check is going to come from or "what if the work dried up?", but
| ultimately get trapped in the endless cycle of making pretty good
| money and "enjoying the variety" as you grow older, start a
| family, etc, and can't afford to take the hit trying something
| entrepreneurial any more since your kids need to go to college,
| until finally the burnout is so intense you hate consulting and
| the fact that your livelihood is tied to your labor, hoping that
| you've put enough away to at least retire early and maybe then
| you'll work on something you actually want to.
|
| There is a fourth approach (or path, if you will) which is to
| work for an established consultancy as per the article. This path
| itself has three typical outcomes:
|
| 1) You are a natural creature of the corporate consulting world,
| you prosper in the one true measure of value -- selling work, you
| ascend to director-level or something where you make very good
| money, if you're entrepreneurial you maybe can take your clients
| with you to buy into a partner role at another consultancy. Maybe
| you see this life as a good life that you're well-suited to.
|
| 2) You think success at an established consultancy is based on
| technical merit, you're gradually disabused of this idea and
| suffer burnout, if you haven't been there long, you maybe jump to
| the product world or (gasp!) start a startup solving some problem
| you solved for a client of the consultancy. Congrats, now you
| have a startup and all the attendant cares. There is a different
| list for that path.
|
| 3) You burn out of working in corporate but think "hey, I'm a
| pretty good consultant and what else am I gonna do?", you decide
| to go independent, see outcomes a, b, c above.
| ewag wrote:
| I couldn't help but think of Steve Jobs take on consultants when
| reading this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-c4CNB80SRc&t=10s
| vshan wrote:
| "How many of you are from consulting? Oh that's bad. You should
| do something.
|
| No seriously, I don't think there nothing inherently evil in
| consulting, I think that without owning something over an
| extended period of time, like a few years, where one to take
| responsibility for one's recommendations, where one has to see
| one's recommendations through all action states and accumulate
| scar tissue for those mistakes and to pick oneself up off the
| ground and dust oneself off, one learns a fraction of what one
| can.
|
| Coming in and making recommendations and not owning the
| results, not owning the implementation I think is a fraction of
| the value and a fraction of the opportunity to learn and get
| better.
|
| You do get a broad cut at companies but it's very thin, it's
| like a picture of a banana, you might get a very accurate
| picture but it's only 2 dimensions, and without the experience
| of actually doing it you never get 3 dimensional, so you might
| have a lot of pictures on your walls, you can show it off to
| your friends, I've worked in bananas, I've worked in peaches,
| I've worked in grapes, but you never really taste it, that is
| what I think."
| nodejs_rulez_1 wrote:
| Perhaps that was an advice for a different time and for a
| specific audience (MIT graduates can expect favouritism).
| Cannot see how spending a few years developing a tiny slice of
| some UI at Apple 2021 would make your experience "three-
| dimensional".
| twic wrote:
| > I'm not talking about becoming one of those contractors who are
| billed out by their companies as "consultants" but are really
| just serial hired hands.
|
| Even doing that is incredibly educational!
|
| I spent about six years of my career at consulting firms like
| this. Both were a bit more than body shops, though - they sold
| themselves on their ability to actually deliver projects, and
| teach clients to do the same. I spent those years being
| parachuted into complex, dysfunctional, ill-equipped
| organisations, and trying to work out what in that environment
| worked, and how to Macgyver it together into a project which
| worked.
|
| I don't want to do it ever again, though.
| _hilro wrote:
| Lol. You drank that KoolAid
|
| > parachuted into complex, dysfunctional, ill-equipped
| organisations, and trying to work out what in that environment
| worked, and how to Macgyver
|
| parachuted, macgyver.
|
| An overinflated sense of importance and worth is the only
| common characteristic of consultants.
|
| 0 chance you understood the business or tech r challenges
| before suggesting whatever tech du jour you were last exposed
| to as the True Answer(c) before disappearing out of sight
| before the duct tape starts to break away.
| twic wrote:
| I never once suggested a technology as a solution to a
| problem. I spent a lot of time trying to convince clients
| that technology was not going to solve their problems.
|
| Sounds like you would really benefit from spending some time
| doing consulting.
| starbase wrote:
| I agree with the author, and would add/modify a few things.
|
| If you're successful as a consultant, you'll soon discover
| economic incentives steering you towards an established business
| model, which can take some of the thrill out of it.
|
| By far the most valuable experience has been meeting people at
| all levels of an organization without being a part of their power
| hierarchy. When you're a neutral third party who has suddenly
| appeared in their daily routine, conversations go differently and
| people open up more. The company founder seeks your opinion about
| what direction to take the company--even when the question is far
| outside your scope of expertise. The forklift driver tells you of
| problems he dares not reveal to his manager. And the HR director,
| feared by many, turns out to be the best advocate for those who
| run the other way when she is near.
| vncecartersknee wrote:
| what do you mean by "And the HR director, feared by many, turns
| out to be the best advocate for those who run the other way
| when she is near." ?
| [deleted]
| sidlls wrote:
| HR is generally seen as being anti-employee, in the sense
| that the reason they exist is to protect the company (legally
| speaking) by managing its relationships, benefits,
| compensation, etc., with employees, and this often pits the
| company's interests against those of the employees.
| marsdepinski wrote:
| It's quite silly for anyone to see HR this way in the first
| place. They get paid by the employer. Union execs get paid
| by employees. Figure out which is pro employee.
| sidlls wrote:
| Depends on which union, really. Corruption is a real
| problem in some of them, and in others the will to fight
| is weak or state laws make them much less powerful.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| I don't know a lot about the mechanics of unions, but are
| the salaries not paid out of employee dues?
| cyberge99 wrote:
| Human Resources mean managing the resources that are
| humans. Not resources for humans.
|
| HR is there for the company.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Q: What's the difference between a contractor and a consultant?
|
| A: A consultant knows the difference.
| blitz_skull wrote:
| Can anyone give examples of the real problems that you're
| solving? I've wanted to do software consultancy for a while but
| just don't know WHAT I'm solving. Code is easy--there's a
| tangible output. But what exactly IS consulting producing?
| rcarmo wrote:
| As someone who is rotating out of a consulting unit, I tend to
| agree. It is a very valuable experience, albeit one that may well
| lead to faster burnout.
| nickjj wrote:
| I spent close to 20 years doing freelance and consulting work on
| my own as an individual that focuses mostly on smaller businesses
| (1-50 employees). There's a lot of truth to this article.
|
| One thing that I really like about it is it's not just coding
| coding coding (I do this too), but you get a chance to really
| break down the domain of a company and work with someone on how
| to solve bigger picture problems. It's not just empty bs
| recommendations either, it's things that get directly implemented
| and in my case often times I got my hands dirty with the
| implementation. If not doing the implementation, at least doing
| the research while ironing out and documenting a step by step
| plan for someone to do it.
|
| I would say I spend about 60% of my time coding and 40% of my
| time chatting with developers / CTOs, getting paid to do R&D and
| write documentation. For the coding bits it's everything from
| building web apps to doing ops related things like provisioning
| infrastructure and making it easier for other developers to
| release code changes.
|
| With that said, for the first time in my life I took a W2 job
| this week. I'm only bringing that up because if you decide you do
| want to transition into a W2 job later often times you may get
| fast tracked through any hiring hoops if one of your contract
| clients wants to hire you full time. In my case I didn't have to
| do an interview because I had worked with them for 10-30 hours a
| month for the last 3 years. It was an instant hire where all I
| had to do was let them know a start date.
|
| In a bunch of longer term contracts I was involved with there
| were always hints or offers to join them full time. Up until
| recently I never had an urge to pick one but this role is
| interesting and you only live once so I decided to try what life
| is like on the other side of the fence.
| mrVentures wrote:
| What's w2 mean?
| sceadu wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_W-2 -- meaning he was a
| normal employee instead of freelance.
| fatnoah wrote:
| > but you get a chance to really break down the domain of a
| company and work with someone on how to solve bigger picture
| problems.
|
| I did a very brief stint doing work that was similar to
| consulting, and I think this is the biggest net gain for me. I
| really developed skill at identifying the actual problems and
| solutions by understanding the domain and not simply building
| what a customer said they wanted built.
| dzink wrote:
| I did this as my first job out of college and then within the
| core dev team at a large corporation serving multiple brands. You
| definitely see patterns and can help identify problems inside
| developers and managers do not see or dare admit. However you can
| also be seen as a warm body churning billable hours paid to the
| company at 4x your salary until you burn out. The lack of
| ownership of outcomes also means a lot of the real valuable
| lessons you get after your hard work are lost to you. It is
| however great for engineering roles where you are implementing
| tech the core team is new to. If you are an open source
| contributor or a specialist in a niche architecture, consulting
| would be a great gig, just make sure you make it a point to learn
| about the outcomes or decisions that come out to your work.
| xtracto wrote:
| Here in Mexico we have an opposite view of this: The majority of
| developers have spent their professional life doing "consulting"
| jobs in outsourcing firms. Few devs have experience developing a
| product and taking care of it 2 or 3 years later.
|
| The difference shows in the type of code they do, the "ownership"
| and engagement they have: Those with a consulting mind will do
| something and then have the notion that once its "done" they
| don't have to care about it. Those that have been bitten by their
| own code from the past have a better notion on how to write
| maintainable code.
| ern wrote:
| The article specifically excludes outsourced development from
| its definition of consulting:
|
| _I'm not talking about becoming one of those contractors who
| are billed out by their companies as "consultants" but are
| really just serial hired hands. I'm referring to a true
| consultant role, where you are paid to bring expertise, give
| advice, and drive technical change.*_
| ThePadawan wrote:
| Yeaaaah, I have never once heard anyone use the word
| "consultant" to mean the latter.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Same, having been a consultant for 10 years.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Then maybe you should do a stint in consulting -- you'll
| learn something new every day!
|
| See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28549676
| ThePadawan wrote:
| I have. That's why I stopped doing it.
| scrollaway wrote:
| Clearly multiple people in this thread and the original
| article itself. Maybe you're looking in the wrong places?
| ThePadawan wrote:
| I've spoken to multiple consultancies to try and figure
| out if the career path would work out for me.
|
| All of them made it clear that their MO is to provide
| asses in seats to build software quickly, then hand it
| over to the customer to whatever they liked with it -
| generally hire a bunch of outsourced developers to keep
| it barely alive, maybe add a feature or two per year.
|
| Now TBF this is Switzerland, where salaries are always
| very high, but employee stock options etc. are pretty
| much unknown (outside of Google). Generally that means
| that companies are already spending shitloads of cash on
| software developers, so they might as well hire them as
| employees, not contractors.
| PeterisP wrote:
| When a major company "brings in consultants" they generally
| mean _exactly_ calling up one of the major consulting firms
| and bringing in a bunch of outsourced short-term people
| (those "hired hands") and not e.g. freelance experts; and
| while these "hired hands" contractors are quite different
| in practice from "proper consultants" as the article
| describes, they usually are advertised as the same thing.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| By "serial hired hand" I think the article is taking about
| someone who is technically a contractor but gets repeatedly
| contacted by the same company for the same project over a
| period of years. They end with (almost) the same level code
| ownership as a regular employee. That's not what the parent
| comment was taking about.
| barbarbar wrote:
| Very interesting and unexpected points. Thank you for sharing
| that view.
| marsdepinski wrote:
| That's outsourcing, not consulting.
| askonomm wrote:
| That's outsourcing for the employer, but consulting for the
| employee. If I consult for a US company while being in South
| America, I'm still a consultant. They are the ones
| outsourcing.
| drw85 wrote:
| I don't think that's true.
|
| You're a freelancer, that works for a US company.
|
| A consultant is an advisor, that should have some specific
| technical or domain knowledge to advise people with.
|
| In reality, everyone can call themself a consultant and i
| bet you can charge better money calling yourself
| consultant, even if you don't possess any specific
| knowledge and just work as a regular dev.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| No, there are non-US companies that sell consulting
| services to US companies. If you are employed by one of
| these companies, you work as a consultant for a US
| company (usually as part of a team with several
| compatriots), and you are not a freelancer since you are
| employed by your company. If the contract finishes and
| you're left without a project, you're still employed and
| drawing a paycheck, and it's your company that finds you
| a new project to work on.
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| Right, but nobody hires code monkeys for their bargain
| outsourcing sweatshop. They hire "experts" with "years of
| experience" for "consulting" to produce "custom solutions."
| fsloth wrote:
| There is a category of consulting agencies that actually
| specialize in high quality developers, charge accordingly,
| and incentivize talent to stay by giving them a solid
| percentage cut of the customer fees.
| rgoulter wrote:
| I've seen a summary of consultancy business model
| described in three buckets.
| https://commoncog.com/blog/you-cant-ignore-business-
| models-i...
| stadium wrote:
| Consulting is outsourcing
| fsloth wrote:
| There is "cheap outsourcing" though and actually hiring a
| deeply talented expert for that one thing you need done,
| and done right preferably. And anything in between.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _The majority of developers have spent their professional
| life doing "consulting" jobs in outsourcing firms_
|
| I think the issue here is your correct use of quotes on
| consulting. Contracting is not consulting; the latter you're
| usually getting paid a premium for your expertise, not as a cog
| in the wheel of code production.
| kgeist wrote:
| >Here in Mexico we have an opposite view of this: The majority
| of developers have spent their professional life doing
| "consulting" jobs
|
| There's a saying here in Russia:
|
| Can't code? Consult. Can't consult? Manage.
| drw85 wrote:
| Love this saying and from my experience, a lot of people
| actually do exactly this.
|
| I've worked with many managers that used to be bad
| developers. Most of them were bad managers aswell.
|
| I've also worked with a few managers that were still very
| good coders, they tended to be much more hands on and
| productive with their managing aswell.
| jld89 wrote:
| What makes a good manager for you?
| drw85 wrote:
| Someone that actually manages things and takes away a lot
| of the communication between devs and users/customers.
|
| Someone that has a broad overview of things and keeps
| things in line between devs in different teams, QA etc.
|
| Someone that tackles existing or future problems hands
| on, by clearly communicating them and prioritising and
| assigning them to the right people.
|
| Someone that makes sure, that requirements/backlog etc.
| are always in a workable shape.
|
| Most managers that i work with lack in one or multiple of
| these areas.
|
| Some managers i worked with do none of these and just
| report numbers and budgets, while avoiding to do anything
| useful towards the actual project/product.
| wsc981 wrote:
| Based on my own experience as both an employee (~10 years) and
| consultant (~5 years) in The Netherlands, I'd say in The
| Netherlands generally the more experienced, more skilled
| workers tend to go into consulting. Most consultants I worked
| with did deliver better results and seemed to be slacking less.
|
| I attribute this to the following with regards to work culture
| in The Netherlands:
|
| - developers mostly interested in job security or promoting
| into higher roles within a company stay employees
|
| - developers who feel that as an employee they are underpaid
| with regards to their skills and abilities, these developers
| tend to move into consulting as it gives them more control over
| their income, since as a consultant they choose their own rates
| - these kinds of developers are likely not interested into
| management roles as well (or they might opt into consulting as
| PM, SCRUM master perhaps)
| jb1991 wrote:
| From what I can tell, consulting rates in the Netherlands are
| significantly higher indeed compared to employees. At least
| 50% more on average.
| WelcomeShorty wrote:
| Did both and consulting rates are indeed higher at face
| value but that is compensated by the risk. As an employee
| you will be paid if there is actual work or not, me as a
| consultant will be terminated the minute my work is done.
|
| So if you are good in a field where there is demand, and
| you actually like doing negotiations & finding
| opportunities, doing your own bookkeeping and not
| forgetting your pension funds: go for it!
| inediblePotato wrote:
| Freelance consultant in NL here. The consulting-firm rates
| can be much higher, but usually freelance consulting is
| much cheaper than employees. One of the reasons I went into
| this is I was working in both academia and in companies at
| the level where I was hiring for projects, and the
| ridiculous money that just gets eaten by overhead and
| middle management is absurd. If you hire a PhD and pay them
| close to ~40keur/year (NL is comparatively higher salaries
| for PhD than other places), you need about ~100k per year
| for that person. University bench fees, or corporate
| overhead, computing resources, insurance, pension. If you
| go up from PhD for 1 FTE senior engineer in a company it
| gets worse, they get ~60k before income tax, it costs
| closer to ~200k for 1 FTE (this is a real recent example
| for a project I am involved in). On top of that you need to
| give them a contract, so if you hire a lemon (which will
| happen at some point), you are stuck with them at least for
| a year. For me, and I think for some experienced project
| leaders, it makes much more sense to hire someone as a
| contractor per month, if they keep delivering, then keep
| them, if not, don't. If you keep them, maybe you pay 80k
| for the year. Another aspect is that the cost of a external
| person is just a cost, like buying computing
| resources/equipment for a project, it can be easier/simpler
| to factor into a project (as its not a continuing cost
| commitment) and depending on the arrangement, can be
| deducted from the companies VAT. Freelance consultants do
| their own admin, handle their own expenses, work from home
| (though so does everyone at the moment) so the hiring
| company just pays directly for results. To a new
| manager/project leader, prospectively, it can seem like a
| higher cost up front but that's only if you compare 80k to
| 40k which isn't fair or what you will see when you look
| retrospectively at the project cost. Consulting firms lose
| most of this benefit because they still have all those
| extra costs/commitments involved. Business is strange.
| Aeolun wrote:
| > they get ~60k before income tax, it costs closer to
| ~200k for 1 FTE (this is a real recent example for a
| project I am involved in)
|
| That's a pretty ridiculous overhead percentage. Even
| given all the taxes in the Netherlands, I have no idea
| how you could possibly arrive at that (given legally
| mandated stuff, obviously you can make it as crazy as you
| want).
| mettamage wrote:
| Can I ask you some questions about being a freelance
| consultant in NL? I'm a Dutchie myself. If you're up for
| having an online chat or IRL coffee [1] my email is in my
| profile.
|
| [1] I live in the Amsterdam area.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| I've been to a few of these "Hackers and Founders"
| meetups in Amsterdam before Coronavirus hit, and ran into
| interesting people who know about stuff like that. I love
| their strict anti-douchebag policy!
|
| Cafe De Doffer or the Hacker Building might be a good
| place to meet up, once that kind of stuff is happening
| again. But I don't know when that might be.
|
| https://hackersandfounders.nl/
|
| https://hackerbuilding.nl/
|
| >We were originally a group of friends who co-worked from
| different places across the city. We dreamt about getting
| our very own building so we could create our perfect work
| environment of likeminded people. So when the moment was
| right, we made that happen.
|
| >Our group is pretty tight-knit but very welcoming to
| newcomers too. We have a strict anti-douchebag policy,
| which means we only have friendly people here who are
| open and welcoming.
| strangetortoise wrote:
| Just to be clear, you're talking about freelance consulting
| in NL, correct? I can believe that. Based on my conversations
| with peers, the big consulting firms seem to be the exact
| opposite however:
|
| - Spending endless time on useless reports.
|
| - Technically ancient development practices.
|
| - Delivering "courses" or workshops to clients on topics they
| only themselves learned about 2 weeks earlier.
|
| - Extremely low starting salaries, with long working hours,
| and a ladder culture that's been described to me as very
| corps-like (dutch name for fraternities).
|
| As a relatively fresh FTE, the "big consulting shops" have
| given me the strong impression that it is where technical
| prowess goes to die.
| wsc981 wrote:
| Yes I meant freelance consulting. People working at big
| consulting firms are just employees.
| dataflow wrote:
| Employee vs. consultant aren't mutually exclusive right?
| Were you thinking of employee vs. contractor?
| [deleted]
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Employee and contractor/consultant/freelancer aren't
| necessarily mutually exclusive -- they can be "layered".
|
| There are "management" companies that will employ you
| full time, and draw up contracts with other clients, who
| pay them directly, then they take a cut of their fees,
| withhold income tax, and pay you the rest.
|
| But they don't find clients for you, and it's nothing
| like working for a "big consulting company" (i.e.
| outsourcing shop): it's up to you to find the clients,
| and to agree with them on the work and the rate.
|
| Of course you need to have an agreeable client(s) before
| they will hire you: they won't help you look for work,
| and don't interact with your clients beyond drawing up
| contracts, sending them invoices, and taking their money.
|
| I've worked as a full time employee of the Dutch branches
| of a couple of international "payroll management"
| companies (Segment BV and TCP Solutions), in order to
| qualify for the Dutch "30% Ruling" for highly skilled
| migrants (which makes 30% of your gross income tax free,
| which is game changing especially in the higher brackets,
| and it has other benefits, which more than offset the
| management company's fees).
|
| 30% tax ruling in the Netherlands. Get to know the
| benefits of the 30% reimbursement ruling for highly
| skilled migrants and see if the tax advantage applies to
| you:
|
| https://www.iamsterdam.com/en/living/take-care-of-
| official-m...
|
| >Are you eligible to apply for the 30% tax ruling?
|
| >The most important factors are:
|
| >The employee has to transfer or be recruited from abroad
| by a Dutch employer;
|
| >The employer and employee have to agree in writing that
| the 30% ruling is applicable;
|
| >The employee should have skills or expertise that is
| scarce in the Dutch job market;
|
| >The employee must meet a salary threshold (this is
| indexed annually).
|
| >Read more in-depth information about the 30% ruling,
| discover more benefits of the ruling, and find out
| whether you are eligible.
| https://www.iamsterdam.com/en/living/take-care-of-
| official-m...
|
| Segment BV:
|
| https://www.segmentbv.nl/
|
| TCP Solutions:
|
| https://tcpsolutions.com/nl/
|
| TCP Solutions bills themselves as doing payroll services,
| HR services, fast payout and pre-financing, and
| recruiting and working abroad, and they help out with
| compliance with Dutch laws, taxes, and regulations.
|
| I initially applied for a full time job at TomTom in
| Amsterdam, but since it's hard to fire of somebody with a
| full time contract in the Netherlands, they first hired
| me as a consultant through Segment BV for a three month
| trial period, to see if I was a good fit.
|
| After the trial period went well and they were happy with
| my work (which gave me a lot of leverage), they made me a
| decent offer for a full time employment contract,
| including relocation and hiring bonus and a good salary.
|
| Although the full time salary TomTom offered was great
| for the Netherlands, it was actually less than the net
| amount I was being paid through the management company as
| a consultant. However TomTom's relocation and hiring
| bonus and full time benefits and stability made up for
| that, something a management company doesn't give you.
|
| The key role the management company served was to hire me
| full time as an employee of their Dutch company, which
| qualified me for the 30% ruling (successfully applying
| for which requires some specialized governmental
| bureaucratic expertise that TomTom wasn't good at), so
| Segment BV handled applying for the 30% ruling, my
| residence permit, did my taxes, and other stuff like
| that. TomTom paid them directly, they took their fee from
| that, and payed me the rest. When TomTom finally hired
| me, the 30% ruling was smoothly transferred from Segment
| to TomTom, with their help.
|
| But then I left TomTom after a while, because I got an
| offer I couldn't refuse to work from home as a contractor
| for a US startup on an exciting project for more than
| TomTom was paying me, but I still wanted to stay in
| Amsterdam and benefit from the 30% ruling, so I still
| needed to be employed full time by a Dutch company. And I
| also wanted to work for another old client at the same
| time, who wanted me to work on some code I'd written for
| them years ago (and still am maintaining).
|
| So I found another management company in Amsterdam (TCP
| Solutions) like the one TomTom used to hire me, then they
| hired me and wrote up contracts with my new and old
| clients, transferred and handled the 30% ruling, and I
| worked directly for TCP as a full time salaried employee
| (and indirectly for several other clients) for many
| years, until the 30% ruling finally expired (after a
| decade, but it's shorter now).
|
| TCP Solutions required me to have one "main" client that
| payed me at least a certain amount of money regularly,
| and then I could have additional side contracts on top of
| that, so the salary varied over time depending on the
| number of contracts and the hours I worked. They did
| charge a hefty fee for drawing up each contract, though.
| But the 30% ruling made it worth it.
|
| There's nothing shady or sneaky about the arrangement --
| just the opposite: they're a "compliance" service that
| makes sure I follow all the Dutch rules and regulations
| and pay my taxes. They operate in the sector of
| "organizational consultancy firms":
|
| https://drimble.nl/bedrijf/hilversum/6550436/segment-
| bv.html
|
| >The activities of Segment BV (among others) take place
| in the sector: Organizational consultancy firms. The main
| category in the SBI subdivision that the Chamber of
| Commerce uses is: 'Consultancy, research and other
| specialist business services' and in this case is further
| subdivided into: 'Holdings (not financial), group
| services within own group and management advice',
| subcategory 'Consultancy in the field of management and
| business operations'.
|
| But at the point the 30% ruling expired after 10 years, I
| no longer needed to be employed full time by a Dutch
| company to qualify, so it made a lot more sense to start
| a Dutch Eenmanszaak (sole proprietorship) and actually
| work as a freelancer instead of a full time employee. Now
| I can deduct my business expenses, which I couldn't do as
| a full time employee, and I can draw up my own contracts,
| and have a lot more freedom and less overhead.
| samhw wrote:
| > There are "management" companies that will employ you
| full time, and draw up contracts with other clients, who
| pay them directly, then they take a cut of their fees,
| withhold income tax, and pay you the rest.
|
| This sounds partially similar to how barristers' chambers
| work here in the UK. The chambers' clerks manage the
| barristers' contracts but also find them work, unlike in
| your example. In turn the chambers takes a cut of the
| barrister's fees (and the clerks, traditionally Cockneys
| with sales skills, can earn well into the middle hundreds
| of thousands:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-05-23/the-
| exqui...). Pupil barristers who are still in training are
| paid a salary of PS50-100k or so, which comes out of the
| 'pot' that the fees go into, but after that point they
| have no guaranteed earnings. The barristers are obliged
| to take any contracts they are offered
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cab-rank_rule),
|
| I think that would be an interesting model to adopt for
| software engineers. You would join a 'chambers' which has
| a good reputation, and, by accepting you as a member,
| they would signify that you're a talented engineer. They
| would do the work of finding clients - which after all
| isn't a natural part of an engineer's skillset - and take
| a cut in return. Essentially the chambers is being
| compensated not only for literally finding a contract,
| but also for the reputation which they built up over many
| years, which is valuable both for clients (who know they
| can find good professionals) and professionals (who know
| they can get good and steady work).
| wiedelphine wrote:
| It sounds more like an umbrella company than a chambers
| if I reading it correctly. in that they aren't finding
| you work like a chambers would
| question002 wrote:
| Don't do this on HN, this is a news site.
| Aeolun wrote:
| And that is why (as a Dutch citizen) I'm not working in
| the Netherlands any more.
|
| It'd be pretty nice to move back there, but my taxes
| would shoot through the roof and as a citizen I'm not
| eligible for 30% deduction.
|
| So those jobs they lack Dutch citizens to fill? Yeah,
| that's because all those people are emigrating to places
| where they're more appropriately rewarded.
| wsc981 wrote:
| I guess when I think of a consultant, in my mind it's
| implied a contractor. I think most people in The
| Netherlands would think the same and maybe it's a
| language or culture thing.
|
| Yes, I did mean contractor.
| timwaagh wrote:
| Most developers at the consultancy I work for work a normal
| work week, don't make reports, have normal (meaning neither
| ancient nor state of the art) dev practice. And there is
| nothing fraternity like about it, nor is there a climb the
| ladder idea. It's super boring. You're right about it not
| being amazing for those who want to work on interesting
| technical problems. Clients tend to be big, technology
| tends to be firmly in the legacy category. I think they
| mainly hire consultants because employees can be expensive
| to fire under Dutch law for institutions that are
| financially secure. Which makes it different from
| consultancy in other countries.
| mettamage wrote:
| I do think there's a difference between McKinsey, Bain and
| BCG
|
| versus
|
| EY, Accenture, KPMG, PWC and Deloitte.
|
| In terms of salary and work hours that is (i.e. MBB higher
| salary, more hours). I couldn't comment on anything else
| about it.
| arethuza wrote:
| Isn't that the difference between consulting firms who
| just do strategic consulting and the others that sell a
| wider range of services including delivery?
| mettamage wrote:
| I suppose so. I'm not too familiar with the industry.
| arethuza wrote:
| Based upon my own experience in the area - having a whole
| two weeks to learn something before being presented to
| customers as an expert is actually pretty good.
| darkwater wrote:
| So, you would be confident doing a presentation about a
| topic in which you have a total of 2 weeks of working
| experience? Personally, I would not.
| arethuza wrote:
| It was pointed out to me early in that phase of my career
| (happily long ago) that for most clients - talking with
| absolute confidence is _far_ more important than talking
| based on actual hard knowledge.
| dtech wrote:
| It depends a bit on the consulting firm, but most are
| indeed "serial hired hands" like the blog says.
|
| Most are fine to be for 2-5 years though as a fresh grad.
| You'll get some experience. Most good people move on to
| freelancing or something else after a while though*, I
| wasn't too impressed with most of the people who were there
| 10+ years.
|
| * The company I worked for has an exodus of about 10-30
| employees starting their own small company every ~10 years,
| since they reckon they can do the same with less overhead
| and bullshit for more pay. They're probably right.
| 01100011 wrote:
| I'll second this. US SWE who spent a good portion of his career
| either doing consulting or working for a consulting company. It
| left me unable to care about the products of the companies I
| eventually settled down and started to work for. I have a very
| problem-centric attitude where I need to be fed well defined
| tasks and can't seem to care about the overall product, with
| it's various problems and features.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I think consulting is a good thing for
| people to do, but don't let it distort your thinking. It's also
| easy to start to see everything in your life in terms of your
| hourly rate, and you start making weird choices regarding how
| you spend your time.
|
| In response to the other replies, I'll say 'consulting' entails
| both work for hire(I was a core member of the platform team in
| a major media device company for 6 years) and full project
| design('We have a rough idea and we need to to architect, code,
| test, deploy and sometimes maintain a system'). It is not just
| working at a body shop doing shit work for hourly pay(although
| sometimes it is, depending on the economy).
| scrollaway wrote:
| I'm a consultant right now after doing software engineering
| for almost two decades. I owned a lot of my code before which
| got me to appreciate caring for maintainability.
|
| I generally work as an advisor rather than a coder but if I
| do end up coding, one of my primary goals when working for a
| client is ensuring the code is high quality, maintainable,
| self-documenting and that any workarounds and cut corners are
| clearly marked as such and highlighted to the client.
|
| You can just do this because you want to be proud of your
| work. Because you don't want to hate your life. Because you
| didn't spend 18 years of your life learning to end up writing
| unreliable diarrheas just to save yourself 30 mins a week.
|
| And those dev shops in eastern Europe / asia are not
| consultancies. They're freelancing agencies with a sales
| pitch. Consulting implies expertise.
| [deleted]
| azundo wrote:
| Any founders or early employees out there who have experience
| doing this after their startup exits or closes? This idea really
| appeals to me and I could see myself doing this sometime in the
| next five years. I'd be interested to hear how it's gone for
| others.
| eightysixfour wrote:
| After shutting down my startup I went into consulting. Frankly
| the work was easy compared to startup life and my experiences
| trying to move fast and iterate were exactly what my clients
| wanted to do.
|
| I had a ton of knowledge gaps about enterprise, but they were
| relatively easy to fill in.
| iainctduncan wrote:
| As someone who does consulting now similar to what was described,
| I would say the pros and cons in this article are totally on
| point. I'm not sure it's _for everyone_ , but it's been great for
| me and I've learned a shit tonne that I couldn't have learned
| anywhere else. I get exposure to so many successful companies at
| inflection points and they have to tell me _everything_. You don
| 't get that from blogs or conferences or books where they only
| tell you what they want the public to hear.
|
| That said, at other points in my career I have been totally
| freelance, worked on a product team, and worked in an agency, and
| I would also say that each of those is hugely valuable and
| teaches you unique things. If I was advising a young and hungry
| tech worker, I would suggest they get a year or two of experience
| doing all four if they can.
| kube-system wrote:
| I agree that consulting experience is valuable, but I don't think
| that it's right for all engineers. The biggest difference in my
| experience is nothing to do with engineering, but that you're
| spending a lot more time wearing hats _other_ than engineering.
|
| A business doesn't hire a consultant to write code -- they hire
| developers on contract to do that. They hire consultants to
| figure if/when/where/how to write the code, and to navigate their
| business politics/procedures/processes/compliance/etc. Heck, I've
| completed several consulting contracts where I didn't write a
| single line of code -- they ended up being 100% strategy, design,
| planning, etc.
|
| To do consulting successfully, you have to be in a mindset about
| solving business problems, regardless of what the resulting work
| looks like. For someone who wants to solve engineering problems,
| they might be highly disappointed (or ill-prepared) with what a
| consulting job entails.
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| I have two decades of experience as a consultant (not anymore) in
| different companies and even different countries and different
| states and at different levels in the hierarchy.
|
| I would say that getting to work on a "high impact" project is
| not all that common. It does depend on how you define "high
| impact"
|
| Most of the projects I got on were not green field, it was adding
| functionality to existing business application, written in legacy
| ways and legacy languages.
|
| I did a lot of figurering out why some obscure program does not
| work anymore or why it is suddenly so slow.
|
| Quite a lot of enterprises does hire in consultants to do _sh_ t
| work so that their internal devs dont have to do it. Of course,
| some do not have a dev team at all.
|
| Some people you end up working with in mid sized to large
| companies are hostile to consultants being hired in. Had that
| problem a few times.
|
| You do learn how to accommodate unreasonable demands, passive
| aggressive behavior, how to communicate bad news, lead a group,
| analyze an existing code base fast.
|
| You can fast end up doing a lot of cover your ass, both from a
| client and from the consultancy company you work with. All the
| ones I have worked for were cutthroat in some ways. Some more
| than others.
|
| Your billable hours are a huge factor. One coworker of mine was
| billing upwards of 90h to 150h a week, he got a lot of bonuses
| and perks. This was not physically possible, but since he had
| more than one client he billed full it me on several at the same
| time.
|
| IT consultancies are usually highly competitive in all ways.
|
| They are also only interested in what you have done this quarter
| and will sack you if that is not good enough. or have a pay
| stricture so you dont have a dime if you are not billig at least
| full time.
|
| Several places I worked 40h a week was the bare minimum.
| Tolerated for a while, but you would get notices about needing to
| apply yourself more, to get in the game. You are expected to
| learn all new things in your field on your own time and dime.
|
| In some places you have to keep X number of certifications
| current. You study on your own time but usually the exams are
| paid for, at least the first try. Failure to keep up is a grave
| problem.
|
| The sales team rules. You have to learn how to kiss their assess
| and become friends. They will have a lot of pull when it comes to
| who will be put on a new sale. You want them to think of you as a
| valuable asset. or you always get the sh*t jobs.
|
| I had perhaps 4 - 5 big fun projects. One was to write an ERP
| system from scratch (Yes I heavily advised the client to buy some
| existing product but the client was adamant that the business was
| so unique (it was not) that it had to have its own system.
|
| The one big thing they had was a multi-dimensional pricing model
| from hell. The founder of the company must have spent years
| coming up with it. All sorts of inputs, all sorts of options
| discounts, scale, employees, nation, state, order size, Previous
| orders, season, sports events, stock prices, number and types of
| cars sold in the last month, and a lot more.
|
| Working on that, and getting it to work was probably one of my
| best achievements. My team was superb.
| captainredbeard wrote:
| Consulting and contracting ingrains the opposite of "good"
| instincts for most product engineering. It makes money, it
| produces value for people, but it encourages throwaway behavior
| and activity which produces more hours than output (but not
| always).
| akg_67 wrote:
| Every developer should do a short stint (a year or two) outside
| development. It doesn't matter whether support, professional
| services, consulting, marketing, or sales. They will get better
| appreciation for the product they build and support system
| surrounding those products that make or break the product.
| bob1029 wrote:
| For me, there is something magical about having retail work
| experience. That special blend of sales and customer service
| combined with consumers of minimal patience...
|
| Understanding that good customer service necessitates sacrifice
| and compromise is at the core of it for me.
|
| Happy customers are _the_ most important thing for a business.
| Nothing else matters as long as you have strong advocates in
| your market.
|
| In pursuit of happy customers, you have to be willing to
| discard or compromise on all of your technical principles.
| Certainly, dont let the customer cut themselves on a sharp edge
| without warning them first. But, if they absolutely insist on a
| certain path, just give it to them. They are _paying you money_
| , correct? Clear exceptions to this would be ethical violations
| (i.e. plaintext pw storage for a public-facing app), but that
| should really be the only line you wont consider crossing.
| cowanon22 wrote:
| I agree with a lot of the points, however at most large companies
| solution architect is a significantly higher paygrade than
| developer. (I don't agree with this, but it is the case at every
| large place I've worked [non-FAANG Fortune 500].) Usually a
| career progression goes from developer to lead dev positions to
| solution architect, not the other way around. There is generally
| a big money drop if you go backwards.
| mzarate06 wrote:
| I strongly agree with the title sentimment. Strongly!
|
| But, I'll add this - work at a company first, full time, for as
| long as you find it rewarding. Maybe several years at least? ...
| the longer the better. Bonus for each promotion you receive,
| primarily b/c of different levels of responsibility and
| leadership that places you in.
|
| I think that's key to getting the most out of independent
| consulting, for 2 reasons:
|
| First, b/c fresh out of college or early in your career, you
| still don't know what you don't know. That makes learning w/out
| benefit of teammates, mentors, interactions with other teams
| (Customer Success, Sales, Marketing, etc.), quite dangerous.
| Without that wide array of awareness and guidance on a regular
| basis, it's easy to form bad habits. And bad habits attained
| during one's formative years can be long-term or hard to break.
|
| And second, b/c every engineer needs to experience what it's like
| to maintain and improve a product for years on end. E.g. while I
| didn't recognize it at the time, I believe time I spent with a
| product for 3 of its generations proved to be one of the best
| learning environments I've had as a software engineer. That kind
| of timeline provides first-hand experience to the long-tail of
| product decision making. It provides long experiential lessons in
| best practices like automated testing, a structured dev process,
| engaging in customer feedback, team culture & cohesiveness, etc.
| And b/c I was with the same cohort of employees for so long, and
| saw how leadership could fluctuate, I also found it helped
| develop my intuition for effective leaders.
|
| All said, I wouldn't have gotten as much out of consulting if I
| wasn't backed w/prior experience. From an engineering standpoint,
| I was able to hit the ground running since I already had years of
| experience developing software. Soft-skills gained during that
| same time translated directly and immediately to client
| relationships. I also felt fortunate and well prepared to handle
| longer-term needs and concerns from bigger clients (Fortune
| 100/500), some of which I still maintain relationships with.
| kqr wrote:
| This is very important. Experts in the field I look up to only
| became experts because they learned from the consequences of
| their choices. Sometimes these consequences don't materialise
| until 5, 10, 20 years later.
| bodge5000 wrote:
| I was always under the impression that consultants were some of
| the best in their field (that can be hired, at least), and
| therefore going into it fresh out of college just isn't
| feasible, let alone a bad idea. Though it sounds like I might
| be wrong.
|
| Edit: It's pretty funny how me and the article takes this
| differently
|
| "I always found this to be a stressful and not particularly
| honest arrangement. I'm not an expert, I'm just a guy who reads
| the docs. I didn't like having to project an air of competence
| that I didn't always feel."
|
| I've always taken a situation feeling stressful and dishonest
| as I sign I shouldn't be there, but if this is just how it is,
| maybe its not as bad as I thought
| jahller wrote:
| This is probably also down to your character. When I was
| working as a consultant for a big SaaS company I felt like
| the occupation really attracts a certain type of overly
| confident people who also like the attention. I'm 100% sure
| that everybody there had these blank spots in their knowledge
| which would potentially result in feeling stressed or
| dishonest when talking to the customer. Some people are just
| better selling their blank spots.
| bodge5000 wrote:
| Yeh, could well be it. I'd like the be a consultant of
| course but I don't think Im the kind of person to be able
| to sell other people on my abilities before I sell myself
| on them. Credit where credits due to those who can though
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Important thing to remember is that blank spots only last
| as long as you want them to!
| johanneskanybal wrote:
| It's a bit too broad of a concept to be general about it. If
| you go into consulting straight out of uni then imho either:
|
| a) Use a consulting company that heavily invests in it's
| people through internal learning and mentoring and support. I
| don't know any us companies like this but there has to be
| some I guess? In Europe Swedish Netlight operates like this,
| I had experience when I joined them a few years back but they
| employ people straight out of uni too. b) Do it yourself if
| you for some reason have a real niche super strength
|
| Local tax structure matters too. Here in Sweden it's very
| beneficial to start your own consulting firm instead of being
| tax'ed to death, to the tune of earning twice what you would
| in a similar role if you're employed so it's a road many
| including myself take for that reason alone.
| lbriner wrote:
| I knew a few friends at college whose first jobs were at
| consulting firms. It seemed a bit of a misnomer since they
| had no practical experience.
|
| I think sometimes people don't want to hire pragmatist
| consultants who will rock the boat too much and challenge
| sacred cows - even if they get things done, instead, they
| might prefer someone who organises meetings, Gantt charts and
| committees in order to make their hirers look good.
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| i've work for Avanade, many moons ago. i have couple years
| of coding experiences when i join. they put me into a
| project that basically doing phone support for one of
| Fortune 500.
|
| they just hire as many people with CS degree or working
| background in tech then send them out to do "tech stuff"
| regardless if it fit their employee's background.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| I've been a consultant for about 15 years of my career. I
| like to make the distinction between "product developers" and
| "project developers". It's just a different mindset. For
| product developers, there is a benefit in spending more time
| to make sure your code is correct and optimized -- mistakes
| cost more when you have a large user base (or are trying to
| attract one).
|
| By contrast, project developers have no such incentives.
| Their goal is to finish development within a time box and
| meeting certain acceptance criteria. Often they're building
| tools that are high value but low user counts, so mistakes /
| bugs are more tolerable and users can be trained on
| workarounds.
|
| In my opinion, it's largely a personality difference. I
| personally get bored working on the same thing for too long,
| so consulting works great for me. Some people hate the
| context switching of moving to a new project every few months
| or are just meticulous and slow developers, and they make
| great product developers. That's not to say you shouldn't try
| both sides of the fence, but you'll usually land on the side
| that best fits your personality and working style.
| chasd00 wrote:
| Im pretty far up the food chain at a large consulting firm
| and i too get bored easily. Consulting fits my personality
| type because each project has a deadline ( rarely exceeding
| a year ) and then you either sell an extension or go look
| for something else to do.
|
| There's also a lot of adrenaline involved in consulting
| too, some of my coworkers have left to go run a program
| somewhere in industry only to come back in a year or two
| because they were bored out of their minds and wanted back
| in the game.
| wayoutthere wrote:
| Same; I'm at the point in my career where I'm not really
| involved in project delivery anymore so it's more about
| sales and coaching new leaders. Your technical skills do
| eventually atrophy (at least mine have) but that just
| means you lean on your experts for that knowledge. But
| it's probably a more natural growth path than most
| technical roles in industry -- promotions at consulting
| companies are _far_ easier to achieve if you put in the
| work.
| OJFord wrote:
| Different people mean different things by it, but
| often/increasingly/safest assumption is that someone just
| means 'temporary contract work'. Which you can absolutely do
| as a new graduate, since 'need some fixed term/scope work'
| doesn't necessarily mean 'need some senior expertise' - it
| just means cash-strapped, or sudden need to scale out that
| isn't expected (or known) to last.
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| Well, that's how you sell yourself to customers.
|
| Typically you'd have a team of actual hotshots who start the
| project, sell the consulting company as competent, they draw
| up initial plans for whatever they are consulting on, and
| then you replace them with your usual kind of
| developers/BAs/whatever.
|
| For example if your initial team had an architect with 15
| years of experience, including 10 years in your specific
| domain, they get replaced someone with 5 years of experience,
| with 2 years in the domain.
| mzarate06 wrote:
| I don't know about needing to be the "best", or an "expert",
| but I do believe a consultant should have a certain skill
| _level_ , or _set_ of skills, that provides some value to a
| team.
|
| That's to say some consultants are very strong engineers, in
| the general sense; very capable in various roles. While
| others might possess a sufficient narrow skill set. E.g.
| maybe a front-end React dev, or data engineer assisting with
| integrating parts of a data pipeline, or a SQL consultant
| helping trouble shoot database performance issues. Other
| times, a team covers both bases (high degree of skill
| breadth, and depth), but lacks time to devote to all pressing
| issues.
|
| So consultant relationships are formed for any number of
| reasons; they need not be an expert, necessarily.
| roland35 wrote:
| I have a fairly rough experience working at a consulting firm. I
| was on a long-term project, but even on relatively stable
| projects consultants are the first engineers to get cut or moved
| around when there is trouble.
|
| I ended up filling in on project management type work which
| certainly is better than getting laid off, but I did not enjoy it
| much (it was good resume building experience at least!)
|
| One good thing about being a consultant is that it is pretty easy
| to quit and move on! People are constantly rotating in and out of
| projects, so it isn't as personal as working on a small close-
| knit team!
| inshadows wrote:
| > But running your own business involves a whole bunch of other
| skills like sales and networking. This post is mainly focused on
| how consulting helps you become a better engineer, so I won't
| spend much time on the independent option.
|
| How do I do this?
| nunez wrote:
| Agreed. Many engineering leaders at big companies were
| consultants at one point, which is a big reason why I got into
| the game.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Have been in dozens of organizations as a consultant, and it
| gives you a powerful meta view of how teams work and org
| dynamics that is not possible any other way. However, the
| skills needed to operate in an environment where you have to
| see and deal with the same people every day for 5+ years are
| very different from those required to provide value as a
| consultant.
|
| Being an indie outdoor cat and being a big-5 employee are very
| different as well.
| ljsocal wrote:
| Consultants who have the ability to be selective about their
| clients and projects have the best chance of creating a
| satisfying work experience. It took me a while but when I got to
| the point where I could say "no, thank you!", it significantly
| improved my life.
| morelandjs wrote:
| Just to add some counter balance to the hyperbole in this
| article. First, I always approach articles of "every X should do
| Y" with some skepticism. Its not a statement everyone can make,
| and I think individuals under appreciate survivorship bias.
|
| Also you should know that being a self employed consultant is
| very different from being a company employed consultant. If you
| work for a firm, you won't be measured by your impact per se but
| rather by the number of hours you bill.
|
| Optimizing for hours billed is a cancer that kills innovation and
| creativity. I despised it, and it poisoned my experience in
| consulting. You'll also find that it's more profitable to create
| a factory that churns out 100 mediocre solutions than a few
| really good ones. You'll also write a lot of single purpose code
| if you do software development as part of your consultancy work.
|
| Consultancy has lots of great qualities but there are a few
| really awful ones that are prevalent in the industry as well imo.
| dnndev wrote:
| I completely disagree.
|
| Consulting is not for everyone and like everything you get out
| what you put in.
|
| Why I went into consulting - I was working hard as ever, it's my
| nature and I love what I do. - My pay was average - My projects
| looked amazing but in reality sucked and were driven by people in
| ivory towers
|
| My concerns with consulting - we had a newborn and worried about
| health insurance. In the US this is highly coupled with your job
|
| The outcome - I am still busy as ever and love it. - I am a
| seasoned 14 year dev with a lot to offer. - health insurance
| because of Obama care is amazing. We pay about $150 more per
| month but it's actually better health insurance. - here is the
| kicker, last month I made 50k profit. Consulting is extremely
| lucrative and makes me feel like I was wasting my time as an
| employee before.
|
| Will I go back to working for someone? Oh yeah in a heartbeat.
| But I must be valued according and can enrich the company as I do
| now with consulting for my clients.
|
| What's sucks about consulting - billing / payroll for other devs
| that help me as 1099 when needed.
|
| Take away - consult for the right reasons. You will learn a lot
| but you can learn a lot as an employee as well. Let it happen
| naturally. Don't force yourself to consult. You may be a
| completely happy employee and don't let anyone tell you different
| and anyone worth being a human won't discriminate against you for
| it.
| herewego wrote:
| I largely agree with you, except that I think the most valuable
| experience gained is that of exposure to information a typical
| software engineer is not privy to. I think this is often
| overlooked and is what doing a short stint in consulting should
| be about. Getting the opportunity to understand the inner
| workings of an organization at, often, a senior management
| level, was one of the most lucrative lessons of my professional
| life and is a selling point that I use when interviewing
| candidates because it's generally true if they conduct
| themselves intelligently. Also, to reiterate your point,
| consulting can be incredibly lucrative if you price yourself at
| market value -- most freelancers and consultants I've met are
| too afraid or nervous or get caught up in imposter syndrome,
| etc. to charge their true value. $300k/yr (in the US) is near
| trivial to make annually as a consultant, $400k/yr is where
| most capable software engineers should be, and yet few get
| there for reasons I attribute to lack of self confidence -- a
| shame really.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > $300k/yr (in the US) is near trivial to make annually as a
| consultant, $400k/yr is where most capable software engineers
| should be, and yet few get there for reasons I attribute to
| lack of self confidence
|
| It's not "near trivial" if few get there.
|
| I've done consulting myself and I've networked with a lot of
| consultants. I see a lot of people moving back to full-time
| jobs because they pay more for less stress a lot of the time.
| Some people thrive in consulting positions, but many quickly
| realize that normal jobs are a pretty sweet deal in 2021.
|
| A lot of consultants like to point to their high water mark
| compensation and imply that it's their normal rate. In
| reality, consulting work can be extremely hit or miss. Making
| $300K one year doesn't mean you're going to make $300K every
| year.
|
| Consulting can be a good fit for people who have strong
| diplomatic, communication, self-marketing, and business
| skills, but it's not an easy button $300K/year job for
| someone who just likes to write code.
| dnndev wrote:
| > I see a lot of people moving back to full-time jobs
| because they pay more for less stress a lot of the time.
|
| If you find that job, it's a keeper. I find consulting to
| be less stressful than employment. Not worried about being
| online during certain hours or the office politics, etc.
| Also, my code still has to work and be pushed to
| production. If anything the more levels of abstraction
| between me and the client just produces more stress and
| slows down the process.
| wobbly_bush wrote:
| > Getting the opportunity to understand the inner workings of
| an organization at, often, a senior management level, was one
| of the most lucrative lessons of my professional life
|
| Would you say one can learn similar things if they work in an
| early stage startup?
| dnndev wrote:
| I hear you. Management is one of those areas I have come to
| truly appreciate.
|
| I just dont think a stint will get you what you need. I guess
| it depends what is meant by a stint. 6 months - 1 year? I
| dont think its enough. Your just getting started.
|
| If you go into consulting for the experience my suggestion is
| plan on a 2 - 3 year stay with a strong start (clients paying
| you money before you leave your 9to5)
| Arubis wrote:
| Okay, I'll bite :)
|
| Did you pull that kind of income over a year or longer?
|
| How long did it take you to get there?
|
| Were there major jumps/realizations along the way, or was it
| linear-ish growth over time?
|
| (My own situ: started freelance consulting right before
| having two kids in a pandemic, and so have done near-zero
| bizdev & make about what a non-FAANG W2 employee would, if
| not a little less. For other readers--this has still been
| worthwhile, I've learned a _ton_ and am pressing on to give
| this a shot while less personally compromised.)
| throwaway713 wrote:
| > understand the inner workings of an organization at, often,
| a senior management level, was one of the most lucrative
| lessons of my professional life
|
| What is an example of something you learned about senior
| management?
| JamesBarney wrote:
| What type of consulting did you do?
| dnndev wrote:
| Software development
| hipsterhelpdesk wrote:
| I learned a lot about the way the world works through
| consulting. It is a different perspective
| belter wrote:
| After also working as a consultant for many years, multiple
| times, I proposed to my customers the following. Do not pay me
| per day, hour or week.
|
| Pay me 1% of the money, I will save your Company. Nobody ever
| took me on this offer... :-))
| [deleted]
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| You are both taking it too literally and not abstractly enough.
|
| The FACT is that you likely have a giant blindspot merely
| working "for the man" like you do that ultimately and adversely
| affects the quality of your work. Or minimally limits how far
| you can (or SHOULD) ever advance without reaching your Peter
| Principle or Dunning-Kruger limits!
| 74d-fe6-2c6 wrote:
| many if not most of the things I learned while working for a
| consulting company as a data engineer are of a kind I wish I
| wouldn't have to learn to begin with. it's basically a sped up
| course about how companies are through and through driven by
| egoism and cliques. so, it's useful. but sometimes I worry that
| staying longer in this business taints me for companies with
| actually ethical work ethics. but in Germany it's except for a
| job at FANGAM the only way to crack six digits as an IT guy.
| jedberg wrote:
| The author forgot one of the worst parts of consulting -- the
| frustration you feel when you make a recommendation and then get
| ignored. It can get really grating, especially when they call you
| back a year later when they are in trouble they could have
| avoided if they'd listened the first time.
| zachrip wrote:
| This sounds like a good thing though. Do you make more money if
| your clients make mistakes or if they are super successful?
| jedberg wrote:
| Of course I'd make more if they make mistakes, but only in
| the short term. I'd rather have a long term reputation of
| solving the problem the first time, which would get more
| clients. Also it's the right thing to do -- set them up for
| success the first time, even if it means less money for me.
| vander_elst wrote:
| Worked in consulting for 5 years mainly for large companies (>
| 20k employees) and it wasn't so nice. You'll end up solving
| problems that the digital natives solved 15 years ago. Moreover,
| half of the projects were staffed just because some C level read
| something about 'new technology x' and it was deemed to be
| cornerstone of the business. Of course our whole work was thrown
| into the trash the second we were out of the door. Lots of
| colleagues were in consulting just for their ego, they didn't
| care about the customer as much as being idolatrized by them. I
| switched to a swe role in a faang company and in half of the time
| I learned twice as much I did in consulting about the real
| engineering problems the industry is facing. Consulting is fine
| if you need an ego boost, otherwise go to a company doing serious
| engineering.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| I think that should be flipped around: every consultant should do
| a stint as an engineer and be forced to manage another
| consultant's code for an extended period of time. Writing code
| from scratch is easy and takes little effort. Dealing with
| product manager expectations when you're boxed into a corner due
| to the lack of foresight by other devs is a whole other thing.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > I'm referring to a true consultant role, where you are paid to
| bring expertise, give advice, and drive technical change.
|
| There's the hurdle; only a small percentage of engineers will
| consider themselves good enough to fit that role. And of those,
| another percentage has the social skills to move to a consultancy
| role.
|
| Don't get me wrong; I've done the "hired hand" version of
| consultancy, thankfully for a better company than the ones that
| can supply a hundred hands overnight, but still. I found it a
| valuable experience because of the higher level of expertise, the
| learning opportunities, and the variation in assignments.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| I've been on the lookout for consulting gigs, and they are far
| less common now than they were 20 years ago. I'd really like to
| know how OP is finding these gigs.
| ipaddr wrote:
| It is very true. Consulting was much easier. It looks like the
| market split into low budget places like upwork, low-code
| solutions, hiring someone directly, going overseas or going for
| a branded company.
|
| You have to out market/ brand /out sell before you get to code.
| It makes sense to partner with someone who has a customer
| funnel because your job will be to provide that funnel
| otherwise and still have to do the coding/technical work after
| that process.
| mpfundstein wrote:
| specialize and become a true expert in your niche
| lbriner wrote:
| Personally, I think consulting works well, like contracting works
| well, when you have a specific requirement that the
| Consultant/Contractor can meet.
|
| We paid a lot of money for a software consultant once to produce
| an encryption library in .Net (packaging things, not inventing
| algorithms) and although he was clearly confident and reasonably
| competent, he wasn't able to produce it in 2 months. Once he
| left, I did it personally in 2 weeks on top of my CTO role.
|
| If we had planned this better, we would have only recruited
| someone with experience with the specific issues we had around DI
| and .Net encryption and it might have gone a whole lot better.
| tootie wrote:
| I spent more than half my career in digital consulting for mid-
| size (500-5000 people) that did full service product development
| (strategy, design, tech, marketing). Eventually working my way up
| to director level that meant doing sales and writing contracts.
|
| We did some crazy stuff. Delivered some gigantic ambitious
| projects with pure chutzpah. Dove into tech we didn't know
| anything about. Go sell a project to an airline, read everything
| about the airline business, then walk in like experts. It felt
| like fraud at times but we pulled it off so well you just start
| to feel invincible. It was a meat grinder but also thrilling. The
| kind of stuff I feel privileged to have been part of but never
| want to do again.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"We did some crazy stuff. Delivered some gigantic ambitious
| projects with pure chutzpah. Dove into tech we didn't know
| anything about ..."
|
| OMG. I had exactly the same story word for word until I got fed
| up with this meat grinder and had started my own business 20
| years ago.
| Shinchy wrote:
| This is a great summarisation of what I feel being a consultant
| feels like too. I often find an avid eagerness to produce the
| best there is, learn and adapt is a must, but once that fire
| goes out - like you say - you would never want to do it again.
| coldcode wrote:
| I spent a 5 years out of 40 working for a consulting firm, and
| I think it was valuable, as you get thrown in to all sorts of
| random things, which provides some great experience at dealing
| with stuff you barely knew existed before the customer walked
| into the door. This was mostly around the turn of the
| millennium (including Dotcom era).
|
| The flip side was seeing some idiotic customers you had to
| build things for that clearly made zero sense, technical or
| business, and often led you to wonder about your sanity. I
| worked on one project for several months at which point the
| company pivoted to an unrelated business, and then refused to
| pay for the work done, as they no longer needed it. Another
| project was very successful in fixing their business issues,
| but they refused to pay for an extra week caused by a
| relatively major requirement change, so I had to leave the
| project incomplete. In another project the arguments about
| signing the contract took longer than the project did, so I was
| forced to work without any communication with the client.
| kokekolo wrote:
| > It felt like fraud at times but we pulled it off so well
|
| This hits home. 99% of work for those projects is common sense,
| and 1% is that special knowledge that you can learn on the job.
| zwp wrote:
| A colleague used to call this "reading the manual in the
| bathroom".
| tootie wrote:
| Exactly. And after you've done it a few times for different
| businesses you see really clearly what things you have to
| modulate. Then you just dig up your case studies that solved
| whichever set of problems they have to prove your bona fides
| and sprinkle on a bit of innovation and some design splash.
| unixhero wrote:
| >It was a meat grinder but also thrilling.
|
| Fully agree. It was thrilling. I also did the exact same thing.
| _alex_ wrote:
| I have a similar but different thing I tell people: I think
| engineers should do a stint as a product manager. Spending time
| trying to solve problems on "the other side of the table" forces
| you to learn a lot about the business impact that different
| design, implementation, and prioritization decisions makes. Two
| years in Product made me a better engineer than the previous 5
| years of cranking out features.
|
| Thats not to say that a career product person will immediately be
| a good engineer. You need to be good at writing software. But if
| you get to a point in your career where you think your learning
| has kind of leveled out, go do a tour in product.
| gumby wrote:
| > Once you've worked with a few clients, you'll realize that most
| of them aren't as unique and special as they think they are.
|
| Perhaps it's just the kinds of things I work on, but I n my
| experience it's mostly been the opposite: the customer is a
| domain expert in what they do, but not in what I do. I usually
| learn a lot (not by these experts' standards, of course, but by
| mine) about new domains and as a result the world just looks
| different after each project.
| chovybizzass wrote:
| so work on upwork for $15/hour?
| justicezyx wrote:
| What channels are best for advertising oneself for consulting
| opportunity?
|
| For example, I am good at general software engineer (dev process,
| culture, management philosophy), and detailed technical work for
| distributed system (cloud/backend).
|
| Where do I let people know that?
| [deleted]
| jlund-molfese wrote:
| You can also simply apply cold. Ultimately turned the offer
| down due to concern about burnout, but I had a great experience
| interviewing with McKinsey. Compared to most tech company
| interviews, I felt like I was given every opportunity to
| showcase my strengths as a generalist, and the people I spoke
| to were all very likeable and invested in the process.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| There's a difference between working as a consultant for a
| body-shop (no offence - and I do appreciate that McKinsey is
| nothing like Accenture) compared to doing consulting under
| your own name though.
|
| Out of curiosity, what would you have been doing under
| McKinsey?
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > my strengths as a generalist
|
| I'm curious to understand this phrase, and how the interview
| process helped.
| jlund-molfese wrote:
| I think a lot of developers would prefer to sell themselves
| on their ability to take high-level business problems and
| work with a team to come up with software solutions, rather
| than just their raw technical skills. Of course, it's
| important to understand the details too, but I get more
| excited by delivering solutions which make my customers'
| lives easier than implementing a low-level algorithm that
| already exists in a library somewhere anyway.
|
| McKinsey case studies are more similar to real work than
| most interviews. You're given a large business problem, and
| then you're responsible for demonstrating the sorts of
| questions you'd ask a real client in order to do product
| discovery and get accurate requirements. Then, you talk
| about the way you'd architect a solution and go into the
| details if you have time. At the end of the interview, your
| interviewer asks you realistic questions like a client
| would.
|
| I do like pair programming exercises (the ones where you
| get a realistic problem with an open-ended solution, not
| the type where the interviewer yells at you until you get
| the One and Only Solution). And McK does a bit of that too,
| with questions which validate your ability to develop
| across the stack, but aren't anything you wouldn't
| encounter in a normal day at work ("implement a JS
| component in whatever framework you want", "given this
| table structure, write a query to do X in whatever SQL
| dialect you want", "implement a basic REST API to fulfill
| this use case in whatever language you want").
| aerioux wrote:
| different teams are very different but I also can say McK
| Analytics was +10 -- lots of invested and interesting people.
|
| Though I do see that only 1/6 of my interview panel is still
| there 4 years later?
| mgkimsal wrote:
| networking events, conferences, previous colleagues. face to
| face encounters, most of which have been severely cut back the
| last year.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| All of which work for people seeking a normal job as well.
| rpmisms wrote:
| I work in an agency. I'd love to work on a mature product
| someday.
| jamesfinlayson wrote:
| I only realised this after working in an agency for my first
| job - I find it more satisfying to improve a product than to
| keep producing new products.
| Demonsult wrote:
| The impossibility of getting good, reasonably priced health
| insurance for a small family ended my stint years ago. I am
| employed for healthcare.
| phreeza wrote:
| Not an American, but I thought Obamacare was supposed to solve
| this?
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| I agree they should try. Of course MOST will not succeed but
| that's the educational aspect of the experience. It's far harder
| than most would imagine. Yet the ONLY REASON 99% of engineers get
| paid and have their services valued is what is delivered to the
| customer in terms of value. Without that, engineers would be as
| non-essential as typists or any other declining job category.
|
| You efforts have NO INTRINSIC VALUE without that customer being
| willing to pay money for the results!!
|
| That is a reality and universal truth of economics - NOTHING has
| economic value UNTIL it is transacted for exchanged value. It is
| ONLY at that moment that the value is known. And even then the
| certainty of that value decays exponentially with time. After a
| few time constants/half lives, the value is again indeterminant
| because you don't know for sure if somone will commit to paying
| for your value again. It's always "What have you done lately?"
| combined with "What does the 'market' (i.e. any other individual
| or group of humans) think they are willing to commit to
| exchanging?" Commitment = Value.
|
| This is literally how bourses/exchanges work: they do nothing
| more than record what two parties have been willing to commit to
| in terms of item and price for the item, on an instantaneous and
| average basis over time. That's the low-level algorithm of all
| bourses (e.g. stock exchanges, bond exchanges, derivative
| exchanges, etc. - it's all ultimately negations between parties
| and explicit commitments to those trades). There is NOTHING
| "magical" about it - they are not mystical oracles of truth.
|
| But learning this directly is always more effective than being
| "told" what a thing is or how things work. Direct experience will
| responsibility (however short) will make you a better person and
| more aware of your own specialty. It also helps you know how to
| look out for yourself and when to say "no" and when to "walk
| away".
| OneEyedRobot wrote:
| I'll pitch in my own two cents.
|
| In the worlds I've worked in it would help a lot for every
| engineer to do a stint at a customer site. The bigger places I've
| worked for could have easily placed people with a customer for a
| while.
|
| It's remarkable how much stuff is designed by people who don't
| use it for a living, will never use it for a living.
| atlgator wrote:
| Yes, unfortunately my "stint" has lasted 10 years. Now I'm having
| difficulty finding an engineering role.
| rhacker wrote:
| I tried, I really did. I make a pretty great salary, but the
| company I was working at started to tank (this is pre-pandemic).
| So I reached out to my network but everything was pretty dried up
| at the time, so I looked at one of those sites that let you post
| your rate and skills and people could hire you. I had it up for a
| month and I got 1 hit from someone that wanted to learn Docker. I
| exchanged a few emails and in the end instead of hiring me he
| really just wanted to pump me for information. So after that I
| just reached out in my network a tad bit more and found my
| current position.
|
| I'm never going to attempt it again. It's just not worth the
| frustration.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I think the problem here is using one of those sites. They're
| just a race straight to the bottom.
| black_13 wrote:
| Every engineer should do a stint in a call center or better
| understand results of collateral damage most engineers I
| interface with have since come from two parent affluent families
| and dont understand what it means to be poor is or don't
| understand what the loss of a job is or if they become a manager
| what poor management decisions might cause.
| quanticle wrote:
| _You don't bring in a consultant to help you maintain the status
| quo, but to help you drive change._
|
| I don't know what industries or companies this person has worked
| for as a consultant, but the ones I've worked for have absolutely
| used consultants to maintain the status quo. They bring in
| consultants because the full-time employees got reassigned to
| whatever new shiny project the senior managers have their eye on
| this week, but, in the meantime all this old legacy cruft still
| has to be maintained. Hence, consultants.
| 123pie123 wrote:
| yes, the shiny new green field projects keeps many contractors
| in jobs as perminant people seem to hate working on older tech
|
| migrations and decommisioning (large complex systems) also get
| lumped into the same pot that most perminant people seriously
| hate.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| That's a different model. That's generally called staff
| augmentation, whereas generally the bigger consulting firms get
| pulled in to help the business deliver on the AI agenda (or
| whatever McKinsey's selling to clueless execs this year).
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| A slightly more direct and IMO better name for this is "body
| leasing".
| EveYoung wrote:
| In my experience, it's also common that those big
| consultancies get those impossible projects because none of
| the internal teams what to work on them. And when they
| inevitably fail, they'll convince senior management to pivot
| to something more feasible.
| belter wrote:
| Been a consultant, not a contractor, for many years. You cannot
| be a consultant without reading Weinberg:
|
| "The Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice
| Successfully"
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Consulting-Giving-Getting-Suc...
|
| "More Secrets of Consulting: The Consultant's Tool Kit"
|
| "https://www.amazon.com/More-Secrets-Consulting-Consultants-T..."
|
| These books kept my sanity and showed me the Universe twisted
| sense, twisted...But nonetheless a sense.
| throwaway984393 wrote:
| Nit-pick, but
|
| > Empathy for customer needs
|
| You can't have empathy for a need, but you can have empathy for
| the pain the person is feeling due to their needs. Empathy isn't
| really all that useful. What you really want is _compassion_ for
| the customer and their needs.
|
| When you pay a therapist to listen to you, do you want them to
| feel anguished, anxiety-stricken, rage-filled? Or do you want
| them to listen to you, understand your feelings, and calmly help
| you cope with them? The former makes for a very ineffective
| therapist; they wouldn't be able to get through the day doing
| that for every patient. But the latter allows them to do their
| job, which is to help you solve your problems.
|
| Compassion also helps you choose better solutions. When you're
| empathizing, you're using your emotions, and we don't think
| clearly when we're emotional. When you're compassionate, you can
| consider their emotional state, but you may need to ignore it to
| provide the _best_ solution, which might not be one that appeases
| their emotions. I have often over-empathized with customers '
| problems, and subsequently gotten angry when a solution I wanted
| to use [to alleviate their pain quickly] wasn't implemented. The
| calm approach was longer, but better in the end, and didn't have
| me lashing out at the bureaucracy.
| wpietri wrote:
| I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. For me, empathy
| is a root of compassion.
|
| E.g., a friend of mine had an OS problem where she lost a bunch
| of files. I felt empathy first, and expressed it first as well.
| Only then did I turn to compassionate aid.
|
| It's true that one has to manage those emotions, but that's
| true of all emotions.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I concur. Compassion seems impossible without empathy.
|
| If you can't imagine how someone feels (or why), how can you
| feel sorry for them?
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