[HN Gopher] So you want to be a consultant?
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So you want to be a consultant?
Author : lobo_tuerto
Score : 75 points
Date : 2022-08-20 15:00 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (unixwiz.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (unixwiz.net)
| scarface74 wrote:
| My one rule is that I don't do "staff augmentation" under any
| circumstances. I only "consult" when I am actually bringing in my
| subject matter expertise or projects where there is a "definition
| of done" and I can put myself out of job.
| squirrel wrote:
| From 2005 (see bottom of http://unixwiz.net/techtips/ )
|
| Also, Alan Weiss and Jonathan Stark cover similar material in
| more depth, for those interested.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Read this one before, I think before I came self-employed. Made a
| few of the mistakes he's talked about. I'll share them in the
| hope it might help someone else.
|
| _Your customer certainly has to believe you can do the job, but
| they cannot wonder if you 're going to get back to them, or if
| you're going to do something stupid (again?), or offend one of
| their customers._
|
| I've definitely offended a customer of a customer before. It was
| a customer who was well known for being rude - a running joke
| through the whole company. But I definitely ruffled some feathers
| when I got sick of their shit and left the call.
|
| Part of me thinks I should have been more zen and let the insults
| wash over me. But another part of me thinks that prevention is
| better than the cure and a frank conversation with my client
| about what I was willing to tolerate would have been the way to
| go. I mean, do you have to be a smiling doormat to excel in
| business?
|
| _You have no job security, even if you think you do_
|
| Yeap. Twice at the end of a full time contract, I found another
| one extremely easily. The one I left at the beginning of this
| year I still haven't really covered from, and I've essentially
| had to change niches and start from scratch.
|
| Very keen to optimise for multiple part time roles from now on.
|
| _You are primarily in the customer service business, not the
| technical business_
|
| I have made this mistake before to an extent. Zero in on what
| your customer actually wants not your technical wizardry.
|
| _This is the easiest to manage: you work an hour, you invoice
| the customer for a hour. For occasional or ill-defined work, it
| 's hard to use anything but hourly billing. The customer bears
| the brunt of projects that get out of hand, and the customer is
| really at the mercy of the consultant for being fair._
|
| I disagree with this one though. An hour is way too fine grained
| - there's much less paperwork and micro accounting with daily.
| Strongly considered charging weekly next year.
| social_quotient wrote:
| Great points!
|
| "You have no job security, even if you think you do"
|
| This is a 100% true for consultants as well as agencies. Now
| matter how "partnery" things feel you are always as good as
| your last billable hour.
|
| When COVID started we got an email at 6am march 1st. Effective
| immediately no consultants or agencies. Boom revenue gone that
| we have depended on for maybe 5-6 years. Another client we had
| been doing Wi-Fi analytics for their 1200 retail locations in
| North America, 12 years. March 15th they said they cannot
| budget services any longer. For all the years we had been
| partners, you really are in a "nothing personal business
| engagement".
|
| I've been doing this 22 years so I've seen it all. The key is
| to not let these things drive the day to day interaction with
| the customer but you need not forget what's possible so you can
| plan accordingly.
| jaqalopes wrote:
| This is the consultant training course I never received but wish
| I had. Even now, 8 years into my consulting career (not tech but
| many of these ideas still apply), I found a lot here that either
| confirms what I've learned the hard way or spells out something
| I've encountered but never thought about. This is exactly the
| kind of stuff I come to HN for, great share.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| This is good stuff
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| Wow, that was one of the best articles that I've ever read on
| this topic.
|
| Well worth reading, for anyone self employed.
|
| Some of this advice could be applied to normal employment too, eg
| owning your mistakes and generally working in an authentic
| trustworthy way.
| em-bee wrote:
| _When your customer pages you, his timer starts: return his call
| immediately_
|
| this really depends on the customer. if the customer is of the
| kind that won't let me off the hook once i respond, then i won't
| respond immideately. (unless i actually have time to focus for at
| least an hour). on the other hand my best/favorite customer is
| wonderful at this front. while i don't always reply immediately,
| there is never a problem to listen to his message and tell him
| i'll get to that in a few hours or whenever my schedule allows.
|
| _Admit your mistakes_
|
| while i wouldn't have returned both the original and the
| accidentally duplicated fee since the error and the reason for
| the error was an obvious slipup, returning money for shoddy work
| or for any work that causes the customer to loose money is
| definitely something i like to do.
|
| a customer being always late with payments is the least of my
| reasons to fire someone. i may do that when i have more work than
| i need. but i rather have a customer that's pleasant to work with
| and pays late than an uncomfortable one that pays on time.
|
| _Generally, you cannot reuse a whole project because it
| represents customer-specific functionality_
|
| hardly. at least in web development the only thing customer
| specific is the graphic design. most everything else is reusable.
| i am not even writing custom backends anymore, but i reuse the
| same backend for all projects. it's mostly just CRUD. and maybe
| one or two custom functions added to an object in the backend
| somewhere. to that end, the backend i use is GPL, and together
| with the frontend framework makes up the bulk of the code. but
| that's all done. what little code i end up writing is custom for
| the project, and that is what the customer pays for.
| whiddershins wrote:
| > It's tempting to just get a good tax guy, but the taxes are not
| the hard part: it's the recordkeeping that categorizes which of
| your expenses are properly business expenses. It's not fair -- or
| at least a bad idea -- to drop off a box of receipts to your tax
| guy and have him try to read your mind. Good tax guys are not
| cheap, and you want to pay him to prepare your taxes, not do your
| bookkeeping.
|
| This insight is gold. Seriously. Everyone thinks they want a
| rockstar accountant when what they really need is a bookkeeper
| (or to just organize their books in a systematic, consistent
| way).
| iancmceachern wrote:
| 100%
| mackatsol wrote:
| Excellent article! Thank you. I've been consulting for a long
| time.. and this piece covered all the things that matter.
| extragood wrote:
| I found this really insightful as someone who runs a small
| consultancy/professional services department within a larger
| company. I agree with a lot of what he's written (some
| terminology aside), but we have different perspectives on
| billing.
|
| My department's engagements are exclusively 'fixed-bid projects'.
| Truth be told, I'd prefer hourly billing as it reduces _our_
| risk. There is an omnipresent danger that we 've horribly under-
| estimated the effort required to deliver a project, but the
| customer isn't concerned about that. They are interested in
| minimizing _their_ own risk. And the fixed bid is a guarantee of
| X results for $Y, which has more safeties in place. I suppose
| that 's why the author has to explicitly spell out how to fire
| him.
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