I worked for a small web-consulting agency for 3 years that allowed me to be a part of everything from the sit-down consultation with the client, to the estimat

I worked for a small web-consulting agency for 3 years that allowed me to be a part of everything from the sit-down consultation with the client, to the estimation of engineering effort, to the design/build, and to the demo and support of the production version. Its not a given to have this access and you generally have to ask for it, but it is available to you if you ask. Pros: I learned how to listen to customers, create proposals that tend to close, and upsell... all while being able to build the end product. This has helped me to close a good number of side projects after I moved back to working for larger companies. Cons: The challenge working as an engineer in these small firms is that your resources are limited to the budget of the customer, which can be too small to do top-notch engineering work. You can generally find the balance without sacrificing too much quality, but you will never be completely satisfied with your work-product.