Ask HN: What is the difference between contractors, consultants, and freelancers? - putnam
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bradknowles
Speaking only for myself and my own personal experience, here’s my take:

1\. Contractors are medium to long-term, and can usually be renewed
indefinitely, over a period of years or decades. When I worked as a civilian
employee in DoD, there were plenty of contractors who had worked on certain
projects for many years, and they frequently provided the long-term stability
for the project as the military and civilian employees changed more rapidly.
They might be employed by one company this year and a different company the
next, but they were the same people doing the same work, only this year it
might be for CSC (or a subcontractor) and next year SAIC might win the
contract — and turn around and employ the very same people through a different
subcontracting company. Contracting is almost always technical in nature,
although you could be a contractor project manager.

2\. A consultant is there for a short period of time. They are in, work for a
few hours or maybe a few days, and then they are gone. They don’t typically
come back. You can have consultants who are self-employed, or they might be
employees of a consulting company, but to the customer it doesn’t really
matter much. Consulting can be technical in nature, or business oriented. Many
consulting companies are smaller than contractor companies, but there are
always exceptions.

3\. A free-lancer is someone who might be working for multiple customers more
or less at the same time, but they are only self-employed. They also typically
get paid a flat fee for project work of potentially unspecified duration. Your
wedding photographer is most likely a free-lancer. Much commercial art is done
by free-lancers.

I’ve worked for a consulting company, on two separate occasions — Collective
Technologies back in the late 90s, and MomentumSI in the early twenty-teens.

I’m now a contractor working for a large company headquarterd in Austin that
was recently acquired by a much larger company from Seattle.

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BjoernKW
'Freelancer' and 'contractor' more or less are synonymous terms although the
former is more common in the software industry. The latter arguably is a bit
less prestigious, too.

The difference between a consultant and a freelancer is that a freelancer
solves a technical problem while a consultant helps with solving a business
problem (which might involve solving technical problems, too).

Freelance jobs typically are more hands-on while consulting gigs tend to be
more high-level.

As others on this thread mentioned this is also why consultants usually get
higher rates than freelancers.

Consultants also come in an employee variety, i.e. as in working for larger
consulting agencies. In that case and depending on their seniority within the
agency their work can range from anything a freelancer or employed programmer
would do to work a self-employed consultant would do.

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krasicki
The terms are interchangeable. You negotiate your own rates of compensation in
all cases. The scope of your responsibilities are also based on the job
requirements. Contractor is more tightly coupled to W-2 employee. Consultant
more likely a consulting firm employee. Freelancer most likely a C2C contract.

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brucephillips
You tell contractors what to do. Consultants tell you what to do.

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iDemonix
There's not much between them, especially freelancers and contractors,
although I'd say consultants are generally more expensive and are often
brought in to 'advise' rather than to 'do'.

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db48x
Not much, but consultants tend to get paid more than freelancers.

