

Ask HN: Am I good enough to do consulting? - aerovistae

Context: I&#x27;m a JavaScript developer working a nice day job, and I just keep hearing (in stories and comments on HN and elsewhere) about engineers who moved into freelance consulting and make hundreds of dollars an hour, and I feel like a chump getting &lt;$60&#x2F;hour at this day job.<p>But I&#x27;m only 23, I&#x27;ve only been programming for 5 years, and while I&#x27;m decent at what I do, I&#x27;m not a whiz and most importantly I&#x27;m rather slow to grok new code bases and infer the relationships between arbitrarily designed system components. I understand the technologies I work with pretty well, but I have a hard time understanding what people are trying to accomplish a lot of the time.<p>Ye of HN with more experience, could I consult anyway? Do I have to be really, really good? If you&#x27;ve done it, what was your experience with consulting? What skills served you the best?
======
hackerboos
It's easy to become seduced over the articles on HN, Double Your Freelancing,
Patrick McKenzie earning $30k/week and guys commenting they charge $180.

The reality is very different.

Most consultants are much older than 23. They usually know a few technologies
inside-out.

For example we had to hire someone recently - he was a guy in his mid-40s who
knew this particular thing we needed doing, this is a real email:

\----------

My rate would be £1350/day + expenses.

If the customer wishes to go ahead, I would suggest spending a day on site
when all the relevant [company name] staff will be available, and possibly
[third party company] who I presume is a supplier or partner associated with
the X.25 links or the function which runs over them? This would be split into
a meeting where I can discover more about their requirements and constraints,
and then some time investigating the systems to see what they're running on
the systems, what can be found of any development/build/testing environment,
etc. I can then return home and write this up for them, so they can decide
what they want to go. This is a minimum of 2 days work for the visit and
initial write-up, but it would be wise to allow for more because it's going to
depend on what I find when I get there which is a big unknown at the moment,
as they know so little about the system themselves -- it might take longer
than a day on site to work out what their current setup is.”

\----------

Note £1350/day is about $250/hour, however, he was worth every penny because
nobody in our company knows how to do this.

He was on site roughly 2 days though to gather requirements and around 2 weeks
to do the work. 12 days at that rate is $24,000.

~~~
zhte415
The tone and details of this email oozes a person with experience, has seen
problems before but heads-up this might be worse than you think, and despite
being worded quite formally seems a pretty modest (assertive, not aggressive
nor submissive). Given the technology that is X.25 they also seem to be aware
they can charge an eminently reasonable market rate to get approved yet put
their foot down on working conditions (their quote is their quote, hours and
'productivity' agreed in advance).

I'd imagine they get a lot of recommendations, just from extrapolating that
email.

------
MichaelCrawford
It is unlikely that you'll make hundreds of dollars an hour.

It is also likely that you'll spend most of your time trying to find new
clients.

The book "You Can Negotiate Anything" would be helpful. You also need to learn
some basics of contract law. While you may need a lawyer at times, sometimes
it is better to know when to just walk away from a bad contract, or negotiate
a small change so that a contract you shouldn't sign becomes a good one.

Where people want a consultant, is when they can't find the staff they need
in-house. For me that has commonly been to provide Mac ports to companies that
otherwise publish Windows software. What could you offer, that your potential
clients don't already have?

~~~
tptacek
It is unlikely that you'll make hundreds of dollars an hour... because...

~~~
MichaelCrawford
The people who make that kind of money offer services that no one else can
supply. Or at least the client has that perception.

Contract programmers generally make more per hour than perm staff, but there
isn't generally even the perception that contract programmers do what no one
else can.

I can see how marketing consultants could earn that much money.

I've been wanting to get out of contract programming and into "real"
consulting. I've done a little bit of that but don't know how to find clients
on a regular basis.

------
brudgers
The key to consulting is not technical skill. You can hire that.

    
    
      technical skill != business value
    

The necessary element is knowing people who are willing to pay your rate and
convincing them to do so. If you're not in the orbit of people who are in the
habit of dropping $10,000 per person per week on consultants, such work is
inaccessible. Getting into those orbits is usually a matter of "paying dues".
It takes a deep rollodex to sustain a backlog.

Good luck.

------
charleshmorse
I am 24 and have been consulting for close to a year now, with no real end in
site. However, each assignment includes problems and skills on a spectrum
between pure dev and pure business. So your comment about not understanding
what people are trying to accomplish worries me. However from my perspective,
there is a lot of value from my confidence and being able to map out what my
client SHOULD do (not necessarily what he wants or is trying to accomplish)
and directing him down that path. You can't always get them there, but you
really need to be able to read people well to bridge the gap from a
potentially idiotic or doomed decision they are about to make and a much much
better one.

Also, I recommend reading Alan Weiss's The Consulting Bible:
[http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Consulting_Bible.htm...](http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Consulting_Bible.html?id=Pxx5knnbhR8C)

------
JamesReeves1988
I went into consulting at 24 and had around 3 years of commercial experience.

Fast forward a year later and I have numerous clients and am working on some
exciting projects. I currently charge £35p/h (Based in the UK). The hardest
part I found was that some clients do not trust you due to your age (Might be
a UK thing) but this is where your sales pitch will come in handy.

The most important skill I found was to be able to communicate effectively
with clients, to be able to break problems down and explain them in layman
terms for them. This builds up their trust with you and then the sale gets
easier.

Get out there and start networking, meeting business owners, your parents
contacts, your own contacts. One of the best contracts I had come from an
university friend I went for a coffee with.

Build up a few months of funds and work on some freelance work on the side and
then go full time into it.

You can always get another job, but the older you get the more
responsibilities you get and the less likely you are to risk it.

------
rufusjones
No, you aren't "good enough to do consulting."

Skills are important, but attitude matters. If you charge $200 an hour, you
have to BELIEVE that you can add $400,000 in value if they keep you around for
a year.

Note that "Attitude" <> "Arrogance". You don't go in thinking "I rule and you
suck; I know better than all of you." People skills are EXTREMELY important.
Clients have to give you the information and the guidance you need to do a job
well-- if they dislike you, they'll sabotage you in 100 small ways.

But if you don't believe, deep down, "I can walk in the door of anyone who
hires me and contribute to the company on some level", then don't consult.

------
dopeboy
I've talked about consulting here on HN in the past [0].

>> ... but I have a hard time understanding what people are trying to
accomplish a lot of the time.

This will be a problem. If you have non-technical clients, this will really be
a problem. Work on this first.

Given how the market is, you don't need to be really good. I've found
communication to be more important than technical skills.

[0] -
[http://dopeboy.github.io/consulting/](http://dopeboy.github.io/consulting/)

------
tptacek
There's a right answer to this question: take a job at a consultancy.

~~~
aerovistae
I appreciate this straightforward response, but (from where I'm standing) it
seems much easier to say this as a top cybersecurity expert than as a mid-
level front end developer who is often bewildered by the fractal-like
complexity hiding behind simple applications. I just cannot really grasp how
anyone could show up and contribute to a large foreign codebase in a
meaningful way in a matter of days or weeks.

~~~
kasey_junk
He meant go to work for n someone n elses consultancy. Not jump immediately
into running your own.

------
cafard
What can you do in a day or two that would take some business weeks, or that
the business could not do at all? If you can identify that, you're ready to
start consulting.

I'd recommend a look at Gerald Weinberg's _Secrets of Consulting_ and
_Becoming a Technical Leader_. See
[http://www.dorsethouse.com/authors/weinberg_gerald.html](http://www.dorsethouse.com/authors/weinberg_gerald.html)

------
BorisMelnik
Remeber that a lot of these consultants get hundreds per hour, but sometimes
only get 10-20 hours per week (other times 100 hours per week, just saying.)

I've been consulting for going on 10 years now. haven't had a boss in god
knows how long. Do it! There is more than enough work to go around. You can
probably link up with a larger consultancy and get some work outsourced to get
you going.

------
Mz
_could I consult anyway?_

Would it be possible to do it on the side while still working a regular job?
That might allow you to learn whether or not you can make it and/or learn what
you NEED to learn to make it work.

