4 ms·

The bottleneck is that I sell a service and I can only offer so much of it. Also, my base rate is 100 EUR/hr, about $125, although I always quote a fixed price.

The bottleneck is that I sell a service and I can only offer so much of it. Also, my base rate is 100 EUR/hr, about $125, although I always quote a fixed price. I found a niche in writing Mac device drivers for a big company this year. I had to buy a hardware USB analyzer and IDA Pro to reverse-engineer a good chunk of LabVIEW so I was able to charge a good price for that project. I could raise my base rate and charge more for projects (fixed price) but that doesn't scale and there are only 24 hours in a day.

Russelldb 16y ago
> there are only 24 hours in a day Per person. Trade on your name? You are an A+ player. You must be turning work away. Take on more work than you can handle and farm it out to A-/B+ players. Consultants don't scale but consultancies can benefit from scale to some small degree.
- wagerlabs 16y ago
  I just outsourced a project to my brother, a first in a few years. I also know a great local 3D modeler often in need of work. It is sounding like I'll need to transition into running a consultancy. Nothing new, I ran my own offshore development a few years back. Good 50% margins for a bit of marketing, sales and project management work. I haven't had to turn work away only because I've been able to queue up projects and space them out. Oh, and because clients have been patient while I've done that.
petervandijck 16y ago
There's a trick a lot of contractors/consultants use if they work in the same industry for a while. They create a "platform" (which honestly is just a few libraries of code), and then charge clients more to use their "platform" (which comes with nice-looking sales materials). You still do the same amount of programming, and charge the same for that, but charge extra for use of the "platform". You sell the client on the fact that they'll save heaps of money using your platform because a lot of code is already written. This isn't actually true, code re-use doesn't save that much money, but it sounds good and they tend to buy it. I've seen it happen over the years again and again and again. It's a bit tricky but loads of people do it. It used to be cms platforms, now it's social networking platforms or mobile app platforms. Same trick. It's a little dirty though but one of the only ways to actually "scale" consulting. The other way is to have high-powered sales people, and hire superjunior beginner who do all the work. I think that's even dirtier.
- wagerlabs 16y ago
  I don't think it needs to be dirty. I think a "platform" is a good idea.

Russelldb 16y ago

> there are only 24 hours in a day Per person. Trade on your name? You are an A+ player. You must be turning work away. Take on more work than you can handle and farm it out to A-/B+ players. Consultants don't scale but consultancies can benefit from scale to some small degree.

wagerlabs 16y ago
I just outsourced a project to my brother, a first in a few years. I also know a great local 3D modeler often in need of work. It is sounding like I'll need to transition into running a consultancy. Nothing new, I ran my own offshore development a few years back. Good 50% margins for a bit of marketing, sales and project management work. I haven't had to turn work away only because I've been able to queue up projects and space them out. Oh, and because clients have been patient while I've done that.

petervandijck 16y ago

There's a trick a lot of contractors/consultants use if they work in the same industry for a while. They create a "platform" (which honestly is just a few libraries of code), and then charge clients more to use their "platform" (which comes with nice-looking sales materials). You still do the same amount of programming, and charge the same for that, but charge extra for use of the "platform". You sell the client on the fact that they'll save heaps of money using your platform because a lot of code is already written. This isn't actually true, code re-use doesn't save that much money, but it sounds good and they tend to buy it. I've seen it happen over the years again and again and again. It's a bit tricky but loads of people do it. It used to be cms platforms, now it's social networking platforms or mobile app platforms. Same trick. It's a little dirty though but one of the only ways to actually "scale" consulting. The other way is to have high-powered sales people, and hire superjunior beginner who do all the work. I think that's even dirtier.

wagerlabs 16y ago
I don't think it needs to be dirty. I think a "platform" is a good idea.