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I have an Internet buddy in Chicago named Thomas Ptacek. [...] I decided to invite Thomas out to coffee. At the end of the conversation, Thomas said something

• sneilan 9y ago
  It could work in the 90s & early 2000s but now that people are beginning to understand how to price software, it's harder. Just like how cars in the 50's-60's could be wildly overpriced but today cars are mostly sold in volume. People back then didn't know what cars were worth yet. A fool and his money are soon parted and people that pay $15k consistently for things they could get for $100 eventually go broke or out of business. This blog post repeatedly pops up on ycombinator from time to time but doesn't really provide historical context.
• friendly_chap 9y ago
  While it definitely sounds a bit forced to me too, but we are talking about nerds talking (ha!) here. Have you ever heard yourself and your tech colleagues talk? :P
  • Xc43 9y ago
    Well it seems straightforward to me. Efficient.
• deleted 9y ago
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• matte_black 9y ago
  No. The market is too efficient now, the information too commoditized. In order to charge that much as a consultant you would have to have a very particular set of skills, skills that you acquired over a very long career.
  • maxxxxx 9y ago
    Do you know this from first hand experience? I used to know a guy who made around $5000 a day. His main skill seemed to be that he had the ability to talk to CEOs in their own language. Once you are on that level a $50000 consulting engagement is not much money.
    • putnam 9y ago
      Was he a programmer?
      • maxxxxx 9y ago
        He used to be but then he advised on enterprise software like SAP and Salesforce.
        • milofeynman 9y ago
          I know a guy like this. He ended up a VP at a big company like Salesforce a few years ago, got laid off spent a year and a half blowing money on drugs and women. Came back and fudged his LinkedIn / resume to make it look like he was a consultant those years (no months only years on his LinkedIn) some company is back to paying him 300-500k salary. It mostly seems to be about selling yourself hard and interviewing a lot until you find the sucker who is desperate enough to hire you. Another thing he did when he was originally getting hired was to start a MBA class in a small town and never finish it so that while he was applying he could say he was getting his MBA. He does SAP and such. Not a route a lot of people will want to take.
          • maxxxxx 9y ago
            Just to be clear: the guy I am talking about is very smart, knows his stuff and has a lot of integrity. My point is that the main factor that allows him to make the big money is not his technical skills but his ability to talk to people at all levels. Technical skills are needed but not sufficient.
          • 9y ago
• deleted 9y ago
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• Xc43 9y ago
  As a budding freelancer, I will try to have a talk about the value I bring instead of rate per hour. My point is while it might not happen that a business owner tells you how much value he got out of you, you now know that's what he thinks and charge accordingly.
  • putnam 9y ago
    Is it working for you?
    • Xc43 9y ago
      I found a client in one week. I have no portfolio but have worked at a local online ERP company for one year. And before that finished university in CS. Headhunters was not the way for me. Nor the big websites for freelancers. I found a website for freelancers in my region and applied to two projects. Got one. But went in with a hourly rate.
  • mgkimsal 9y ago
    You have to be able to size up their market, their company, some idea of sales/volume/revenue/etc. Sometimes it's easy to ballpark, perhaps based on headcount (even assuming part time workers, you could probably ballpark $50k per person - a 50 person company would be grossing ~$3m/year just to stay open in the US, I'd think, but in most cases it would probably be 50-100% more than that, depending on industry, location and type of workforce). Looking at a small company that's pulling in $500k, there's almost no way anything you do for them service-wise would be worth $300k to them (short of you taking over operations or similar). For a company pulling in $50m, there's almost certainly $300k of value you could bring to some department, doing probably the exact same work you might do for the $500k company.
    • Xc43 9y ago
      Cool thanks. My first client told me their sales is mid hundred millions CAD. And they are expanding into other industries that require my skills. So in all likelihood their revenue will go up. I guess I was lucky by finding them without screening them. I will keep an eye for that in the future, thanks.
• mgkimsal 9y ago
  For those saying this doesn't happen any more... it still can, and does. However, the bigger issue most people face is finding those people who can actually get that sort of value from our knowledge/skills/etc. I can give the same info to 2 companies, and one can make several hundred thousand dollars (in savings, new sales, etc). The other may not even be operating at a scale where they'll see $10k in increased value, even doing the 'same' thing the other company did. Determining who those companies are, then connecting with the appropriate people, that is still the hard part. Meeting someone for coffee, giving them $15k in 'value' from a conversation... probably does happen now and then. I don't think many 'consulting engagements' actually happen at a coffee shop for an hour or two ending with a $15k check being handed over, however. (but maybe I'm too cynical and it does happen a lot)
  • ethbro 9y ago
    The weird thing with consulting (in my experience) is that a customer almost never knows how capable they are of effectively using a consultant's time and output. "Okay, we signed a one month consulting engagement, starting Tuesday." Consultant(s) show up on Tuesday, no db's or credentials have been set up, everyone seems surprised they're there. It consistently amazed me how much consultant time companies waste. When if all of this had been ready, I could have delivered much more value by the end date. And then same problem with actually using any work produced. I'd estimate the effective-ineffective customer split is somewhere around 30-70.
    • putnam 9y ago
      Why do you think this happens?
      • Ascetik 9y ago
        This has happened to me as well. It's because whoever hired the consultant hadn't forced anyone to do those tasks. It's their own fault really. I recently did some consulting for a Veeam configuration and it took a good 12 hours to get them to set me up a VPN and get access to all the servers I needed to review their setup. Should have been ready from the get-go.
• mathattack 9y ago
  Yes. I've had friendly conversations turn into paid consulting work because, "Then we will pay more attention."
  • putnam 9y ago
    What do you think new freelancers and consultants get stuck on that limits their success?
    • mathattack 9y ago
      The key is to have people you've worked with who can bring you in to their org and vouch for you.
      • putnam 9y ago
        You have never converted a cold client? Has anyone done this before?
        • mathattack 9y ago
          I haven’t needed to yet. Much harder if your reputation doesn’t precede you. Think about applying for a full time job. How much does it help having someone internal who can vouch for you to HR and the hiring manager? Consulting is no different.
• zwdfoo 9y ago
  No, it has already been debunked several times on HN. The $X0.000 salary has also been debunked several times. The two are promoting and namedropping each other.
• shanemhansen 9y ago
  People on my linkedin talk to each other that way. It's bizarre how wannabe "coaches" talk.
• speby 9y ago
  Value received (perceived or real) does not necessarily equate to the amount of real dollars a customer would have been otherwise willing to pay.
• k__ 9y ago
  Yes. But there are different levels. You don't have to be good enough to convince the CEO of Microsoft to make good money. There are many many more small companies that still can give you good money and are more easily convinced.
• projektir 9y ago
  To some people, probably. I'd wager most people don't have someone like tptacek as an internet buddy or knowledge that would interest them, though. They literally mentioned HN karma rank titles... so much for fake internet points? Does this sound odd to anyone else or just me? There's likely some small percentage of people who can go on to do consulting and charge lots of money. That this applies to a greater amount of people remains to be seen and is not proven by this post.
  • saryant 9y ago
    "Internet buddy" can be as simple as emailing someone with a question. Someone once emailed me with a question about a talk I gave at a conference. A few years later we ran into each other—he was working for a major client of my employer and I was asked to give them a technical presentation, neither of us knowing that we were about to run into each other. Most people are too afraid to cold-intro themselves. Just send an email, worst someone can do is ignore it. FWIW, I emailed Patrick, author of TFA, a couple years ago with a question and he helped me out. Then last month I emailed him again and we met up for coffee in Tokyo. Just email someone you'd like to meet and ask.
  • tptacek 9y ago
    I don't know what this even means. I think Patrick and I might have exchanged a total of one (1) super secret Internet friends secret messages before we met for coffee and me and Cory kidnapped him for the day. If you're in Chicago and you haven't made a hobby out of calling me an NSA shill (or if you can credibly claim that you've done so only out of irony), we're "internet friends" enough that I'll grab coffee if you have something you want to talk about.
    • projektir 9y ago
      I guess I had higher expectation for the term "internet buddy" than what is used here. I generally figured it's a term implying some familiarity, and that getting emails from randoms is unwelcome. But perhaps the other commenter makes a good point regarding cold-introing. I always read various people say "I get thousands of emails..." and assume there's no reason for them to read mine. I don't think I ever called you an NSA shill, although I did commit the grave offense of suggesting that Firefox is a secure browser, which I imagine is even worse. :P Sadly, I'm pretty far away from Chicago and likely will be in the foreseeable future.
• wglb 9y ago
  Yes, it did. I know both of them and have heard the story from both.