4 ms·

Man you’re not wrong, but imho it’s a pretty bleak world where you have to have the competence as an independent consultant to survive the last 20ish years of y

Man you’re not wrong, but imho it’s a pretty bleak world where you have to have the competence as an independent consultant to survive the last 20ish years of your career. No doubt many of us can attain that, but I’d venture to say that the majority of people can’t. Whether mental defficiency, physical limitations, etc, there are a lot of curveballs in life that don’t set most people up to fit this role.

lotsofpulp 8y ago
One option is to raise children that will grow up to support you in older age and live together to cut down on babysitting and housing costs. That’s the norm everywhere people can’t afford to live individually.
scarface74 8y ago
If you have a mental deficiency you’re kind of out of luck anyway when it comes to being gainfully employed. On the other hand, one reason I would think about being a consultant is because it would be a lot easier physically than typing on a keyboard all day and risk RSI.
- thatoneuser 8y ago
  I guess I should have been better at that statement. I’m not talking mentally disabled in the low iq sense, but more on a relativistic sense. I would wildly guess that consultants make up 25% or less of the workforce (really that’s an intuitive guess so it’s probably a lot more or less). Which would imply only around the top % to match that number (whatever it is) are even capable of being a consultant. And then you have to have the social/network skills, the ability to plan around uncertainty, the ability to shift industries if yours becomes automated or your knowledge falls too far from modern practices, etc. Don’t get me wrong I’ve worked as a consultant and really enjoyed it. But I’m also young and I can take risks like that. I honestly fear for anyone who doesn’t have a severely privileged background attempting to make this a viable career alternative to traditional work. There are so so many gotchas.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    Ideally, I would prefer to work for a consulting company as an overpriced “implementation consultant”, “digital transformation consultant”, etc. I’ve been recruited (ie lunch with hiring managers who wanted to talk to me) for such a role because of my experience based on my resume but I knew that I needed to take some time to get more real world experience in a few areas - cloud and front end and the $cool_kids JavaScript stack. That being said, I am in my mid 40s and consider myself competitive in the local market as a back end developer/architect with the Microsoft stack and fairly competitive with AWS. As far as being “privileged”, I found the industry to be mostly merit based over my 20+ year career. I’m a minority, below average height, went to a no name state college and I have a slight disability - not the model of someone with any “privilege”. I’ve never been rejected for a job that I thought I was qualified for - I also only use recruiters. I don’t waste my time blindly submitting resumes. That may change in three or four years when I am looking for my next job. There are relatively few local companies that do the type of consulting that I’m focusing on compared to standard “full stack” developer/architect roles.

lotsofpulp 8y ago

One option is to raise children that will grow up to support you in older age and live together to cut down on babysitting and housing costs. That’s the norm everywhere people can’t afford to live individually.

scarface74 8y ago

If you have a mental deficiency you’re kind of out of luck anyway when it comes to being gainfully employed. On the other hand, one reason I would think about being a consultant is because it would be a lot easier physically than typing on a keyboard all day and risk RSI.

thatoneuser 8y ago
I guess I should have been better at that statement. I’m not talking mentally disabled in the low iq sense, but more on a relativistic sense. I would wildly guess that consultants make up 25% or less of the workforce (really that’s an intuitive guess so it’s probably a lot more or less). Which would imply only around the top % to match that number (whatever it is) are even capable of being a consultant. And then you have to have the social/network skills, the ability to plan around uncertainty, the ability to shift industries if yours becomes automated or your knowledge falls too far from modern practices, etc. Don’t get me wrong I’ve worked as a consultant and really enjoyed it. But I’m also young and I can take risks like that. I honestly fear for anyone who doesn’t have a severely privileged background attempting to make this a viable career alternative to traditional work. There are so so many gotchas.
- scarface74 8y ago
  Ideally, I would prefer to work for a consulting company as an overpriced “implementation consultant”, “digital transformation consultant”, etc. I’ve been recruited (ie lunch with hiring managers who wanted to talk to me) for such a role because of my experience based on my resume but I knew that I needed to take some time to get more real world experience in a few areas - cloud and front end and the $cool_kids JavaScript stack. That being said, I am in my mid 40s and consider myself competitive in the local market as a back end developer/architect with the Microsoft stack and fairly competitive with AWS. As far as being “privileged”, I found the industry to be mostly merit based over my 20+ year career. I’m a minority, below average height, went to a no name state college and I have a slight disability - not the model of someone with any “privilege”. I’ve never been rejected for a job that I thought I was qualified for - I also only use recruiters. I don’t waste my time blindly submitting resumes. That may change in three or four years when I am looking for my next job. There are relatively few local companies that do the type of consulting that I’m focusing on compared to standard “full stack” developer/architect roles.