

On Consulting and Consultants - drfatbooty
http://tony.pitluga.com/2012/01/03/on-consulting-and-consultants.html

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j45
Nice article.

I've found too many companies lack the ability to setup a proper team in house
which uses consultants beneficially to retain their intellectual capital in
house.

Fun example:

I've had a recent project where I have been hired as an outsider to develop
and run the core of the software to the company. At that time the customer
saved money because they were only paying a part of a yearly salary to me.

As the business grew, and fast forward 5 years later, I'm still the core
developer. Our relationship has matured to the point where I'm kind of an
inside-outsider.

Lately they're doing a lot more work with me. They're growing. The 5 years
I've invested and billed honestly through has paid them dividends.

What happens? They want to save money by bringing in a developer in house.
Someone's been calculatoring a little much. The most interesting part, they
want me to manage (but not manage) that person.

I let them know that I can't run a second off-site daycare because I have to
be on call 8 hours a day for someone outside my office. If they choose to
transition to an internal team and no longer use my services, I'm happy to do
the knowledge transfer and training as they would like, but I can't change my
business.

A lot of companies are in this boat -- quite often getting into custom
software development, not knowing the first thing about software. I believe
this partly happens because there's a lot of business problems people are
trying to solve with technology, without understanding how technology is built
or maintained.

