
So you want to be a consultant? - kurtmansperger
http://twintechs.com/so-you-want-to-be-a-consultant/
======
mindcrime
I don't want to get too caught up in quibbling over definitions, but I do feel
like there's a point worth making here: There is a difference between a
"consultant" and a "contractor", and I think it's worth being aware of. It may
or may not _matter_ to any given individual, but to some it will. And to be
fair, some of this is subjective, but here's the way I've observed it over the
years...

First of all, what do I mean by "difference between consultant and
contractor"? Well, if you go off as a freelance / solo developer, your
business card may say "consultant" but you'll still be "just another
developer" in the eyes of most clients, and in that role you're really just a
contractor. That is to say, you're contract labor... just a cog in the
machine, another brick in the wall if you will.

If you're on a 6+ month engagement where you show up every day from 8-5 and
write code in a cubicle all day, you're probably more contractor than
consultant.

OTOH, a "consultant" is seen as having valuable and highly prized insights and
knowledge, and is paid to help solve a problem, or work through a situation...
which may or may not involve writing code.. if it does, it would probably be
_highly_ specialized code that only a small number of people _could_ write.
But ideally, if your "consulting" you would be doing just that - working with
a high level executive (CTO, CIO, VP) or at least a mid-level manager, and
providing them knowledge and insights to deal with a situation.

If your work product for an engagement is a report or presentation of some
sort, and one or more recommendations about what the firm should do, or what
choice they should make between a set of competing alternatives, then you're
in more of a "consulting" role.

Anyway, that's my take. Like I said, some people won't care about any of this.
But it matters in that a "consultant" (per the above definition) is seen as
more of a colleague / peer to management, isn't necessarily sitting in a cube
from 8-5, and generally isn't seen as "hired labor". If that kind of thing is
important to you, I suggest specializing in something where you can be paid to
sharing your insights, not just for writing code.

~~~
atiffany
I'm not sure if I see your point as it relates to the article. Are you saying
that you think I should be describing another path apart from the ones I have
listed?

I get that the difference between the level of services you're describing for
a "consultant" vs. a "contractor," but I think that has more to do with the
capacity of the individual contractor/consultant than the label itself.

~~~
mindcrime
No, not making any comment about the content of the article... it's a great
article. This is just more generally addressed to people who are thinking
about going into "consulting" or "freelancing" or "contracting" or whatever
one wants to call it. I just want to point out that people should be aware
that just because they refer to themselves as a "consultant" doesn't mean that
they will necessarily be treated as such.

And again, a lot of people may not care about the distinction. For someone who
is used to sitting in a cube 8-6 as a W2 employee at Initech, they won't be
any worse off if they're sitting in a cube from 8-6 as a C2C freelancer. But
for people who think that going freelance is the route to more respect, more
freedom, and less of that "cog in the machine" feeling, then I advocate
spending some time thinking about how to make that leap to "consultant who
gets paid for sharing insights" as opposed to being just another (apparently
fungible) nameless, faceless coder.

------
mindcrime
BTW, two fun books for consultants, and would-be consultants, to read are
_House of Lies_ [1] and _The Firm_ [2].

Both are more about "management consulting" (aka, McKinsey, Deloitte, etc.)
than what most of us probably have in mind, but they are both entertaining
reads in their own respective right.

 _House of Lies_ is a sort of retrospective "tell all" from a former
management consultant, and inspired a TV program of the same name. At times
it's hard to tell how serious he is, and the TV show is clearly not meant to
be a completely accurate documentary (although it may be more truthful than
you'd think) but it's a fun read.

 _The Firm_ is basically the history of McKinsey, and while that might sound
pretty dry and boring, it turns out to be fairly fascinating. Lots of
interesting characters involved, and some fun drama and what-not. And it's
interesting to see how McKinsey grew from basically nothing, to being the
behemoth it is today.

[1]: [http://www.amazon.com/House-Lies-Management-Consultants-
Stea...](http://www.amazon.com/House-Lies-Management-Consultants-
Steal/dp/B001QFY1SA/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396981696&sr=1-1&keywords=house+of+lies)

[2]: [http://www.amazon.com/Firm-McKinsey-Influence-American-
Busin...](http://www.amazon.com/Firm-McKinsey-Influence-American-
Business/dp/1439190976/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396981759&sr=1-2&keywords=the+firm)

~~~
stfu
Since we are talking about Consulting a must read is the work on professional
service firms by former HBS Prof. David Maister. His website is super ugly (
[http://davidmaister.com/](http://davidmaister.com/) ) but his advice is
timeless, esp. since his writing is a lot about building the long-term client-
consultant relationship.

------
jgable
Question for author and others on HN:

How feasible is it to have remote employees when most of your work is on
embedded systems?

I recently started a software consulting group with a couple of partners, and
we are starting to hire. I'd like to offer remote positions, but since most of
our work is on embedded systems (e.g. medical devices), I don't think this is
really feasible. For any given system, there's so much pain in wiring, setting
up and debugging a test and development environment, etc. that it doesn't seem
worth it. However, maybe I'm overestimating the difficulty and underestimating
the benefit. Anyone else have success with remote work that is not primarily
on web systems?

~~~
atiffany
Is it cost-prohibitive to ship test devices to each of your engineers?

I have worked on an embedded systems team where some of the employees were
remote. The biggest challenges were with sharing details for reproducing
specific issues, but emailing videos and lots of conference calls made it a
functional environment.

~~~
jgable
No, for most of our projects, the test systems are small enough so that it's
not cost-prohibitive to ship. I just know that every time we bring up a new
system or board, there can be days of debugging stupid problems, and that's
with everyone and all our electronics gear in the same building.

You say the environment was "functional". For you, did the advantages of
having the larger applicant market outweigh the disadvantages?

~~~
atiffany
For me, it's hard to say because a lot of other issues led to problems. The
project had poor management overall, and we were also dealing with language
barriers and vastly different timezones. I think in our case it wasn't worth
it because were located in San Jose and there was plenty of talent we could
have hired locally.

So, if you're based somewhere crawling with tech talent and the nature of your
product already attracts it, then it very well might be a net-negative to
operate your team remotely.

Otherwise, I think you'll find it's worth navigating some of these setup
issues to be able to hire the best from wherever you're based.

~~~
jgable
Fair enough. We are in Orange County (CA) so there is enough tech talent here
to justify keeping our candidate search local. Thanks.

------
atiffany
I am the author of this article, and I'm happy to answer any questions about
tech consulting right here.

~~~
doctorcroc
Just a question on #1. What are the opportunities for a new grad going into
one of these companies like Accenture, Deloitte or IBM? Do you just take a
spot as a cog in the machine, or do you actually get valuable
consulting/client experience?

~~~
kurtmansperger
I have interned at PWC and Deloitte and then after graduation, I worked at
Deloitte for 5 years. I found that I was able to do valuable work right after
joining and even as an intern. As an intern at PWC I did ethical hacking and
had a good deal of oversight, but was able to own writing up documentation and
participated in client calls. For a later project that summer, I had direct
client contact and was seen as a strong contributor to the team. At Deloitte,
my experience was similar as an intern but with slightly more ownership. Once
joining Deloitte after graduation, I was holding one on one meetings and
design sessions on a regular basis with the client about 4 months in.
Initially, my project was more focused on data analysis and while I did have
interactions with the client, they were limited as I did not need to interact
with them much. Experience will certainly vary from person to person as the
responsibility given to someone will change by project and also with how well
management knows you, at least earlier in your career. After about a year or
two, it is not uncommon to be owning an entire piece of the project and it
goes up from there. They probably wouldn't hire you if they didn't feel they
could put you in front of a client early on.

~~~
doctorcroc
Thanks for the reply - I asked because I'm considering an offer for entry-
level consulting at a big IT firm, and I wanted to have a sense of what I'd be
doing. My background is in petrochemicals, so I figure I'll be in that domain
for a bit. Ideally, I'd like to move around in different domains and see what
I like best. Do you think an entry-level hire would get a decent chance to
explore?

------
protomyth
I went through a placement person for my time as a consultant. He handled the
accounting, medical insurance, taxes (all withholding), and paid me 70% of the
bill rate. If you went full up 1099 he passed on 90%. It was a pretty nice
arrangement for me at that time in my life.

Do remember, many of the employees you deal with will think you are a member
of the true oldest profession (Genesis 3:1).

~~~
nchuhoai
Do you know how you would go about these days to find a placement person?

~~~
protomyth
No idea, I happened into to it by being invited by a friend.

------
nchuhoai
Some comments and questions as well here (total noobie):

1) I can't comment on the viability of getting great clients by going big
consulting firms, but it feels quite indirect. And probably can't expand
developing experience as noted.

2) Seems very ideal and in fact something I'm trying to pursue right now, but
I suffer from the classic chicken-egg problem where I can't get clients
without having prior clients.

3) Seems more like a natural extension once you grow your network enough

4) Sweet spot. I'd love to find a small consultancy, you'd get the best of
both worlds, steady flow of clients, but nearly the same flexibility as being
an independent consultant. Are there resources to finding those unicorn
consultancies? I'm doing mostly Rails/full-stack work, but most consultancies
seem to be either local or not that flexible with part-time/remote

~~~
atiffany
"Are there resources to finding those unicorn consultancies?"

Great question. AFAIK, there are not.

I have tended to only find out about them by word of mouth after spending some
time in a particular area of specialization. Back when I was doing Flex,
Universal Mind and Digital Primates were well-known in that arena. You tended
to see them in conferences, and some of their employees were the ones who
authored the best known technical books on Flex. So there is one idea: find
out where some of the renowned bloggers, authors, and developers in your field
of interest do their consulting.

------
ashsyn
I'm a technical project manager now (used to be a web stack developer). Does
this advice apply to PMs as well?

~~~
atiffany
I am a tech lead & developer who wrote this based on my own experience, so I
can't guarantee that all of it does.

------
Oculus
Could anyone point to some good resources for drafting contracts (templates,
apps, ect.)?

~~~
mindcrime
[http://www.amazon.com/Consultant-Independent-Contractor-
Agre...](http://www.amazon.com/Consultant-Independent-Contractor-Agreements-
Stephen/dp/1413316220/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396981975&sr=1-3&keywords=contractor+nolo)

[http://www.amazon.com/Service-Agreements-SMB-Consultants-
Ser...](http://www.amazon.com/Service-Agreements-SMB-Consultants-
Services/dp/0976376024/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396982054&sr=1-2&keywords=consultant+agreements)

