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1) I strongly agree with the need for specialisation, and declared a presumption of specialisation early in the article. I also repeatedly refer to niches and o

1) I strongly agree with the need for specialisation, and declared a presumption of specialisation early in the article. I also repeatedly refer to niches and other things which insinuate that the consulting subject matter is not entirely trivial or commoditised. 2) Admittedly, much depends on the talent market to which one has access, but sometimes all the tooling and infrastructure in the world can’t make a dent in the fundamental requirement that the junior associates be extensively conversant with the subject matter as well as a variety of technical skills. I wouldn’t know; I have only been able to afford salaries entry-level folk would take. When I say entry level, I mean entry level. Like, “previously cleaned spyware at Geek Squad” entry level. The upside of this bargain from the perspective of someone in IP telephony is that at least one doesn’t have to pay for a raft of highly marketable IT skills (e.g. web development) that aren’t needed. That’s about the only upside, though. 3) I was referring specifically to the multibillion dollar PWC and Accenture scale, and made examples of them for that very reason. Did Joel say something like that? It sounds like something he’d say, I guess. I actually know a few fellow humanities majors who went to work for Deloitte—-people as far from a background in financial auditing and compliance as Heaven is from Earth. Yet, clearly, that’s what they do, because a group of very smart folks figured out how to dumb down, automate, package and bill that. 4) This article was intended for one-man bands more or less, not for people who have scaled up their consulting enough to fund one or more developers. Although still small and not without challenges by any means, that’s a considerably more luxurious place to be.

tptacek 8y ago
Why is Accenture and PwC at all interesting to the audience you have? Just like the spectrum between "entry level" and "billable", there's a (vast) spectrum between "1 man band" and "Accenture". There are many 10-100 person consultancies, most of them lucrative, and none of them are run like Accenture is. I don't know many people who have attempted to start something on the scale of Accenture, but a whole bunch of people who have managed to get 10+-person practices off the ground. Also: my whole point is that "previously cleaned spyware at Geek Squad" is kind of a silly hiring premise.
- abalashov 8y ago
  It was a rhetorical example about the extremes to which consulting can be processised, precisely to convey that there’s a huge spectrum in between. One often delineates things in extremes to demonstrate that something is, in principle, quite possible—-and indeed, to a very lucrative scale. I guess it didn’t read that way. And yeah, hiring that way is stupid, don’t do that. This article was largely a list of things not to do. :-) An omitted premise is that I don’t (any longer) live in a market with a non-negligible concentration of IT talent. Not that it matters much; I spent the last decade in Atlanta and couldn’t have conceivably paid anything remotely resembling a decent IT salary even by those standards.

tptacek 8y ago

Why is Accenture and PwC at all interesting to the audience you have? Just like the spectrum between "entry level" and "billable", there's a (vast) spectrum between "1 man band" and "Accenture". There are many 10-100 person consultancies, most of them lucrative, and none of them are run like Accenture is. I don't know many people who have attempted to start something on the scale of Accenture, but a whole bunch of people who have managed to get 10+-person practices off the ground. Also: my whole point is that "previously cleaned spyware at Geek Squad" is kind of a silly hiring premise.

abalashov 8y ago
It was a rhetorical example about the extremes to which consulting can be processised, precisely to convey that there’s a huge spectrum in between. One often delineates things in extremes to demonstrate that something is, in principle, quite possible—-and indeed, to a very lucrative scale. I guess it didn’t read that way. And yeah, hiring that way is stupid, don’t do that. This article was largely a list of things not to do. :-) An omitted premise is that I don’t (any longer) live in a market with a non-negligible concentration of IT talent. Not that it matters much; I spent the last decade in Atlanta and couldn’t have conceivably paid anything remotely resembling a decent IT salary even by those standards.