4 ms·
Staying too deep in tech. As a consultant your number one thing is making money. Find high paying clients, establish good relationships, do good work but don't
by daxfohl 7y ago
Staying too deep in tech.
As a consultant your number one thing is making money. Find high paying clients, establish good relationships, do good work but don't get too far in the weeds of tech stuff. From everything I've read and experienced, deep technical work doesn't pay well or market well. Dumb stuff like setting up Magento is where the big money comes. People who are mainly technical seem to do better at companies. There are of course exceptions.
My business did not succeed. I still enjoyed the three years I spent on it. I got to work with lots of different things that I would never have had much chance to do otherwise, and get paid for it. I ended up going back into industry though once my primary client had to pull back my hours, and so far am happy enough with that decision too.
- jklepatch 7y agoI am sure Magento pays well but I don’t think it has to do with being more simple. Ex: wordpress developer vs react / frontend dev, who makes more? React / frontend. This being said, for really high paying consulting gigs, i think that its definetely not in tech but in sales / marketing/ strategy.
- AlchemistCamp 7y agoStephanie Hurlburt talked on the IH podcast about doing 7-figure contracting deals for C++ graphics work (math, C++, GPU optimization and various technical work). https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/044-stephanie-hurlburt-of-binomial https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/044-stephanie-hurlburt-...
- jklepatch 7y agoYes and mainframe consulting is also very well paid. But these are outliers
- daxfohl 7y agoLike I said, there are exceptions. To do this you have to be a well known expert in a highly valuable skill. I'm sure Troy Hunt does fairly well in security consulting on Azure for instance. Being an expert in something challenging but that doesn't make the client money (say Haskell, or whatever the distributed DB flavor of the month is) doesn't pay beans. Nor does knowing 50 languages or web frameworks: the client only cares that you know one. Determine up front what you want to specialize in, if you go this path.
- AlchemistCamp 7y ago> Nor does knowing 50 languages or web frameworks: the client only cares that you know one I 100% agree with this. Specialization is worth it. Nobody cares if you're fairly close to workplace competence in ten things, but people will beat a path to you door (or inbox) if you're world class at one. I'd also add that when you add to your skill stack, make sure it's complimentary skills you can use with your existing strength, not alternative skills that accomplish the same thing. https://youtu.be/bIpgUmn5yK8 https://youtu.be/bIpgUmn5yK8