6 ms·

After being laid off in 2016 I joined a big consulting company (you've heard of them but they're not Accenture) because I needed to pay the rent. I didn't come

After being laid off in 2016 I joined a big consulting company (you've heard of them but they're not Accenture) because I needed to pay the rent. I didn't come up through their training program as a new graduate but as an experienced developer. Every year I got glowing praise from the client - I solved the problems they had faster than their in house guys did, I delivered on time with the lowest defects of any contractor across all firms that worked at the client, and was a domain expert in one of the client's systems after about six months there. Do you know what the consulting company offered me as a raise? $150 on top of my base salary. Not $150 a week or month - $150 total. When my consulting company reviews came back, despite high praise from the client, I wasn't enough of a member of the consulting company's team because 1) I didn't hang out with only consultants from the company, 2) I didn't attend drinking events every week with consultants from that company, and 3) I was too specialized on what the client did, so how were they going to move me to another client for more money? I stuck around for another year and then the client negotiated hiring me on directly. I will starve before I work as a consultant at someone else's consultancy. I'll start my own one-man firm first.

thisisnico 6y ago
Worked at an MSP. Company charged $165 an hour for my work. I was being paid $16 an hour. This is sysadmin/IT Infrastructure work.
- nmfisher 6y ago
  I'm not defending consultancies here - working at one would be my own personal hell on earth. But when charge-out rates are so much higher than salaries, this is because their value is in the customer relationships and sales pipeline, not technical competence. It's far, far easier to replace technical talent than to replace customers.
  - DangitBobby 6y ago
    Just because you can make exorbitant profits off of your workers doesn't mean you necessarily should. I'll never understand why someone would you want to own a company that treats its people like shit and sucks to work for.
    - ImaCake 6y ago
      Middle management can run distraction on the owners so that they don't see the misery of the operations people who actually keep the buisness going.
      - ardy42 6y ago
        >> Just because you can make exorbitant profits off of your workers doesn't mean you necessarily should. I'll never understand why someone would you want to own a company that treats its people like shit and sucks to work for. > Middle management can run distraction on the owners so that they don't see the misery of the operations people who actually keep the buisness going. More likely, the owner is greedy and just doesn't care about how miserable the employees are as long as the cash keeps coming in. Some people just plain lack the regular moral compass and feelings of empathy, and others have gotten good at holding on to BS justifications to assuage any guilt they feel.
      - thisisnico 6y ago
        Ownership was fully aware and encouraged.
    - Aeolun 6y ago
      Why would they care? They’re running a company, not a charity. Of course I don’t necessarily see it like that, but I can see how people would. Especially if they’re already competitive.
      - hetspookjee 6y ago
        Why not necessarily on topic, I do wonder when this ruthless mindset will become viewed as a negative. Currently its perfectly normal to defend your dislikeable choices as business choices; because we are running a business. I've had a couple ideas in the past for businesses that I always openly share with others in the nearest detail hoping someone would pick it up, with the thought that I don't wanna make money of it, I just want to have that product or service, simply because it's not there yet. I'm sure this mindset exists but I am unsure what a formal term might be. Utilitarian comes to mind but not quite.
  - thisisnico 6y ago
    This was the attitude 100%. Especially in Tech consulting, sales is everything, absolutely everything.
    - dlhavema 6y ago
      And sales commissions can be crazy high too. They are not just paying the IT people.. admins, HR, etc all need to get paid too.. not trying to defend crazy high rates...
- singlow 6y ago
  This is a very skewed view of billing and profit. I have worked at consulting agencies as an engineer most of my career, in management for a few years, and have seen the numbers. There are quite a few overhead considerations you need to take into account. Just in payroll, a $16/hr employee is a lot more expensive than that number. Closer to $30-$50/hr with taxes, healthcare, and other per-person costs. Then add office space, equipment, sales and marketing cost, management, HR. Some management hours are billable but not most. Then consider that most employees don't bill 100% of hours. If we paid an employee for 40 hours, I would be impressed if the billable hours were more than 35 on a good week. (We did not bill for stand-ups, breaks, and other events that were not directly project-related.) Additionally consider the risk factor, that some clients end up not paying for one reason or another, or we comp time due to mistakes, going over budget, etc. We still pay the employee.
thephyber 6y ago
> I'll start my own one-man firm first. It's a shame there isn't a cheap turn-key way to do this right now. That could go a long way to unbundle these mega-consultants. Company-creation-as-a-service (CCaaS) with shell-company-in-offshore-tax-haven (SCiOTH) and automatic-tax-minimization-as-a-service (ATMaaS) would go a long way to help the average small company reduce their expenses and to coax Congress into actually fixing tax loopholes which currently primarily help only the corps which are scummy enough to take advantage of these extreme tax-minimization techniques.
- agustif 6y ago
  Stripe atlas gets you an LLC on Delaware for 500usd, close enough if you ask me.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

thisisnico 6y ago

Worked at an MSP. Company charged $165 an hour for my work. I was being paid $16 an hour. This is sysadmin/IT Infrastructure work.

nmfisher 6y ago
I'm not defending consultancies here - working at one would be my own personal hell on earth. But when charge-out rates are so much higher than salaries, this is because their value is in the customer relationships and sales pipeline, not technical competence. It's far, far easier to replace technical talent than to replace customers.
- DangitBobby 6y ago
  Just because you can make exorbitant profits off of your workers doesn't mean you necessarily should. I'll never understand why someone would you want to own a company that treats its people like shit and sucks to work for.
  - ImaCake 6y ago
    Middle management can run distraction on the owners so that they don't see the misery of the operations people who actually keep the buisness going.
    - ardy42 6y ago
      >> Just because you can make exorbitant profits off of your workers doesn't mean you necessarily should. I'll never understand why someone would you want to own a company that treats its people like shit and sucks to work for. > Middle management can run distraction on the owners so that they don't see the misery of the operations people who actually keep the buisness going. More likely, the owner is greedy and just doesn't care about how miserable the employees are as long as the cash keeps coming in. Some people just plain lack the regular moral compass and feelings of empathy, and others have gotten good at holding on to BS justifications to assuage any guilt they feel.
    - thisisnico 6y ago
      Ownership was fully aware and encouraged.
  - Aeolun 6y ago
    Why would they care? They’re running a company, not a charity. Of course I don’t necessarily see it like that, but I can see how people would. Especially if they’re already competitive.
    - hetspookjee 6y ago
      Why not necessarily on topic, I do wonder when this ruthless mindset will become viewed as a negative. Currently its perfectly normal to defend your dislikeable choices as business choices; because we are running a business. I've had a couple ideas in the past for businesses that I always openly share with others in the nearest detail hoping someone would pick it up, with the thought that I don't wanna make money of it, I just want to have that product or service, simply because it's not there yet. I'm sure this mindset exists but I am unsure what a formal term might be. Utilitarian comes to mind but not quite.
- thisisnico 6y ago
  This was the attitude 100%. Especially in Tech consulting, sales is everything, absolutely everything.
  - dlhavema 6y ago
    And sales commissions can be crazy high too. They are not just paying the IT people.. admins, HR, etc all need to get paid too.. not trying to defend crazy high rates...
singlow 6y ago
This is a very skewed view of billing and profit. I have worked at consulting agencies as an engineer most of my career, in management for a few years, and have seen the numbers. There are quite a few overhead considerations you need to take into account. Just in payroll, a $16/hr employee is a lot more expensive than that number. Closer to $30-$50/hr with taxes, healthcare, and other per-person costs. Then add office space, equipment, sales and marketing cost, management, HR. Some management hours are billable but not most. Then consider that most employees don't bill 100% of hours. If we paid an employee for 40 hours, I would be impressed if the billable hours were more than 35 on a good week. (We did not bill for stand-ups, breaks, and other events that were not directly project-related.) Additionally consider the risk factor, that some clients end up not paying for one reason or another, or we comp time due to mistakes, going over budget, etc. We still pay the employee.

thephyber 6y ago

> I'll start my own one-man firm first. It's a shame there isn't a cheap turn-key way to do this right now. That could go a long way to unbundle these mega-consultants. Company-creation-as-a-service (CCaaS) with shell-company-in-offshore-tax-haven (SCiOTH) and automatic-tax-minimization-as-a-service (ATMaaS) would go a long way to help the average small company reduce their expenses and to coax Congress into actually fixing tax loopholes which currently primarily help only the corps which are scummy enough to take advantage of these extreme tax-minimization techniques.

agustif 6y ago
Stripe atlas gets you an LLC on Delaware for 500usd, close enough if you ask me.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]